I remember how it all started my son and the problems he had keeping up in school, and never quite feeling he was smart enough. He would get so discouraged and tell me mom I will be so happy when I don’t have to go to school anymore. Those words still haunt me till this day because they were words that became the start of a lot of heartbreak for me. He began to skip school because he no longer made the grades and soon became left behind and finally expelled from school. He began to hang in the streets with other expelled kids which eventually lead to criminal behavior to make quick money.
Well he ended up in juvenile detention in our home town too many times to count, and eventually he found himself in a juvenile facility away from home. I would go visit him and see him with black eyes and bruises. It would break my heart to see him locked away like that. He was only a child that had made bad decisions, but did he deserve to be abused that way?
His behavior continued on a downward spiral of in and out of juvenile facilities until he reached his eighteenth birthday and graduated into the correctional facility. He was locked up so often that he never really spent time at home with us, always in jail, for every holiday and his birthdays. I often think why him why things had to be so hard on him and why did his life have to end up this way? He is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. I love my son with all my heart and really breaks my heart that he can’t be with his brothers, family or friends. So I continue to fight for all the other children and keep my son at the center of my thoughts as I help others.