Title: Someone Has Led This Child to Believe Pdf A Memoir
"Revealing and much needed." (Booklist) In this unflinching, unforgettable memoir, Regina Louise tells the true story of overcoming neglect in the US foster-care system. Drawing on her experience as one of society's abandoned children, she tells how she emerged from the cruel, unjust system, not only to survive, but to flourish. After years of jumping from one fleeting, often abusive home to the next, Louise meets a counselor named Jeanne Kerr. For the first time in her young life, Louise knows what it means to be seen, wanted, understood, and loved. After Kerr tries unsuccessfully to adopt Louise, the two are ripped apart - seemingly forever - and Louise continues her passage through the cold cinder-block landscape of a broken system, enduring solitary confinement, overmedication, and the actions of adults who seem hell-bent on convincing her that she deserves nothing, that she is nothing. But instead of losing her will to thrive, Louise remains determined to achieve her dream of a higher education. After she ages out of the system, Louise is thrown into adulthood and, haunted by her trauma, struggles to finish school, build a career, and develop relationships. As she puts it, it felt impossible "to understand how to be in the world". Eventually, Louise learns how to confront her past and reflect on her traumas. She starts writing, quite literally, a new future for herself, a new way to be. Louise weaves together raw, sometimes fragmented memories, excerpts from real documents from her case file, and elegant reflections to tell the story of her painful upbringing and what came after. The result is a rich, engrossing account of one abandoned girl's efforts to find her place in the world, people to love, and people to love her back. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
THE HEARTBREAKING, YET MOVING AND INSPIRATIONAL MEMOIR If you’ve read Regina Louise’s first book, ‘Somebody’s Someone,’ seen the Lifetime movie, ‘I Am Somebody's Child: The Regina Louise Story,’ seen her interviewed on TV, etc., then you know about her infuriating (not at her, but at the “system” which victimized her for so long), heartbreaking, yet ultimately INSPIRATIONAL story.She recalls in this 2018 book how in her therapist’s office in 1998, “Nearly two decades past emancipation from foster care, I was STILL confounded by the weight I carried, the baggage of feeling unwanted, unavailable---to myself… My life had reached a junction. Sure, I was a successful hairstylist by then, and loved the time I had with my clients… but even so, in my personal life I walked around in circles as though I’d witnessed too many wars… I sometimes couldn’t sleep, eat, or find meaning in the everydayness of every day. Grief and loss held me hostage…” (Pg. 5-6)She notes, “To this day, I’m not sure I’d recognize my mother if she were to pass me in the street… I’ve never known the exact date, or the conditions, under which my mother determined it was a good idea to leave me and my sister with people who let a grown man---Uncle Alphonse---indulge himself on the innocence of her adolescent childhood, only to then sneak away in the night. Now I tell myself that my young mother [her mother gave birth to Regina’s older sister at age 13] did the best she could with what she had, and at the time her best probably dictated that we would be better off… with the devils she knew as opposed to the ones she didn’t.” (Pg. 17)Her father was the singer Tom Brock, who released one album: “His lead song… debuted on the pop charts at number ninety. Yet his album was a dud.” (Pg. 21) He abandoned her to the child care system when she was 12. She recalls, “This was an incredibly impressionable time for me. And without knowing the socio-racial implications of what it meant to be displaced, black, and female, all I wanted was to be NEEDED, to be celebrated, and to be accepted for the gutsy girl I saw myself as.” (Pg. 42)During a trip to the ice cream parlor to celebrate her birthday, “I’d moved closer to Miss Kerr… Miss Kerr placed her arm around me and scooched me even closer. I don’t ever remember feeling so safe, so okay with being touched before that moment. I was amplifying, her kind of joy… And in those moments, it wasn’t about my being black or Miss Kerr being white. In those moments, it was more about the freedom from the oppressive weight of failed dreams. I sank into her embrace, and somewhere in the holding on, I made a wish to never have to let her go… I fell in love with Miss Kerr shortly after that trip to the ice cream parlor… No one from my bloodline or otherwise came to visit, called, or wrote me love letters about how they missed me…” (Pg. 43)She recalls, “Instead of pining over my parents’ rejection of me, I fell deeper in love with the way Miss Kerr called me ‘sweetheart’ when we weren’t at the shelter… The way she said it… made my heart feel … like anything I thought to do was possible simply because I’d been called a sweetheart… I was head over heels when---because of my running away one day to get to her house… I was allowed to sleep over at Miss Kerr’s… Miss Kerr invited me in AND called the overnight staff at [the home] to explain the situation, and that she’d bring me back the next day. She presented me with my very own toothbrush… I took my time to brush: I wanted that moment to last… the girls from ‘The Waltons,’ had nothing on me… ‘You can be anything you want, sweetheart,’ Miss Kerr told me one day… Her words baptized me into the river of believing. I COULD be whatever I wanted to.” (Pg. 46-48)Gwen Forde, “was to become my social worker/nemesis for the duration of my status as a ward of the court… Gwen Forde’s job was to make sure that I got … somewhere to live; a decent family that would take me in as one of their own; and, to Gwen’s preference, a family that was black… ‘You do know, Regina, that you ARE black?’ was both the systematic indictment, and accusation disguised as a question that lay beyond my childish abilities to understand… Was it not enough to be excommunicated from my family of origin, cast as an outsider?... Perhaps it was just one more reminder for her not to feel her own shame of what it meant to be rooted in an identity that was both invisible and startlingly inescapable.” (Pg. 56-57)She states, “Kids like me didn’t have time to pay attention to adults’ crazy ways of saying things. We were asked questions about our parents we had no answers for. The worst being: What on earth did you do to make your family not want you?... I fought for what I could: my right to be loved. And as far as I understood it, love was the color of whoever was willing to love me back.” (Pg. 58-59)She recalls, “When those twenty-seven placements ‘failed to take,’ sometimes it was because the men in those homes wanted to have their way with me---especially the home where the Preacher lived with his wife, son, and three daughters… Years later… I learned that allegations of neglect and abuse were filed against this same family. Gwen Forde was made aware of what was going on … because I attempted, on every occasion I had, to tell her.” (Pg. 61) She adds, “I asked Gwen if it would be okay if I lived with Miss Kerr because she didn’t seem to mind the way I was… Gwen threatened to place me in … the children’s psych ward, again. Mostly; I ran from all those homes to be with Miss Kerr.” (Pg. 63) Miss Kerr’s petition to adopt Regina was, sadly, rejected by the court.She says passionately, “All anybody had to do, really, was search into their own hearts, their own experiences with family, acceptance, belonging and togetherness, failure and loss. And imagine for us girls something more dignified, more humane… All anybody had to do was approach us from a place of worthiness, accept us in all our flawed humanity because all I---we---wanted was to know what it felt like to give and receive love.” (Pg. 104)She suggests, “If anything, I would consider my ‘condition’ this: I had an adverse reaction to my childhood, to being unwanted, rejected, and pathologized for it. There was nothing for me to be loyal to other than my own recklessness, truancy, and the fact that no matter how hard I wanted to belong to something, TO SOMEONE, I was stuck in a system hell-bent on marginalizing my potential to want more and do more.” (Pg. 143)She recounts, “I swore to God that one day I’d write the book … that would be there for the young girl or boy who wanted to know how to make sense of the great big world they’d been literally dropped into… I’d learned in my black studies class that this was what we black people always did. We were known for always coming back for our own: this one cared for that one… I wanted other black children lost in foster care to be more than just ordinary; I wanted every one of us to know what it felt like, sounded like, looked like to be extraordinary.” (Pg. 156)Ultimately, Regina started her own successful hair-styling business, confronted her father [“There’d be no more secret hoping, dreaming, or rationalizing that one day my father might suddenly change, and want me”; pg. 183], and wrote her first book [“It helped me feel as though I wasn’t a freak, and although I may not have had the nuclear family model growing up, I had a story worth telling”; pg. 207]. She did rounds of TV interviews, etc., but always had to acknowledge that she did not know “Miss [Jeanne] Kerr’s whereabouts.”Until one day she received an E-mail with the subject line, “I am so proud of you, sweetheart!” “It was from Jeanne… an old coworker… at the shelter, had read a newspaper article about me and reached out to her... She had a son… He was twenty-six years old. She was on her way to bring him back to Alabama, where she and his father, her husband, were living.” (Pg. 218) She calls Jeanne, who tells her, “You were my first child… I have something I want to give you… It is your birthright… I want to make you my daughter.” (Pg. 219-220) Ultimately, the adoption was approved, this time.This is a truly wonderful book, and ultimately a moving and inspiring “love story,” and a beacon of hope for all who have ever felt forgotten, and unloved.Resilience, Focus, Stamina and Inner Power! Regina Louise is a survivor role model. Swimming back through childhood horrors, this book guides the way through a terrifying past into light, love and the shore of survival.What is horror? Dictionary states horror is "an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting."Piercing descriptions so vivid and painful weave through the pages that I had to shallow breathe, then pause and take deep encouraging “you can push through this” to continue reading. Imagine the reality of young Regina Louise, living these experiences alone and without support.This book skillfully shows, not tells, Regina's survival. Received it yesterday, and completed reading it in one sitting.This book reinforces, NO MATTER WHAT, follow the inner whispers of your heart, trust yourself, even when no one seems to believe, nor seems to care.This book is a guide for those going through life devastation. Dictionary defines devastation as "great destruction or damage, overwhelming shock or grief".This book is a compassionate window for those who may never experience devastation.This book is an invitation to listen to the “song of your soul”, to show up for yourself when you are all you have.This book is a guide to save your own life, to open your heart with compassion, to know you have within you what you need. Accept, trust and celebrate you.Regina, thank you for sharing this deeply honest, insightful gift.
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