I Came Into This World Set Up for Failure

I want to tell you the truth about where I came from. Not the polished version. Not the version that starts at the part where things got better. The whole thing. Because I think someone reading this needs to know that the starting line they were handed does not have to be the finish line.

Mine was not a good starting line. 

The Beginning.

I was born to two seventeen year olds. One of them was in foster care at the time.

Let that land for a second. My mother was a child in the system when she had me. My father was seventeen. Neither of them was equipped to parent.

My grandmother finally put her foot down. She told her husband she was taking me in. He did not want to raise me. He was mostly a mean man. Not all the time but I barely remember the good moments. What I remember clearly is being called stupid. Over and over. By the man who was supposed to be one of my safe people.

When I look back now I understand something I could not have understood then. I was not stupid. I just did not process things the way other children did. Trauma does that. It rewires how the brain takes in information. It makes comprehension harder. It makes reading feel like work. It makes you feel like something is broken inside you when really something was just interrupted before it had a chance to form properly.

However, I did not know that at seven years old. All I knew was that the word stupid was being aimed at me by an adult and it was landing.

The Question I Could Not Stop Asking.

About four years after I was born my birth mother had a son. She kept him. I want you to sit with what that does to a child.

I know now, as an adult, that the circumstances were different. I was already with my grandparents. She had remarried. Life had changed. There are reasons that make sense when you are grown and can see the whole picture. But I was not grown. I was a child and a child cannot process circumstance. A child can only feel the absence and ask the question.

Why didn't she come back for me. Why didn't she keep me. Why was I the one left behind.

That question lived in me for a long time. It shaped how I saw myself. It confirmed everything my grandfather was already telling me , that I was not worth much, that I was not someone people chose, that there was something fundamentally wrong with me that made people leave or not come back.

Nobody came and corrected that story for me. So I lived inside it.

Elementary School. Middle School. The Worst Years.

I went almost everywhere with my grandmother. Even if that meant sitting for three hours at the beauty salon. She was the constant. She was the love but love, even the real kind, cannot undo everything.

I was in the lowest reading level. My comprehension struggled. I still sometimes have trouble fully understanding what I read and I have made peace with that, it is not a character flaw, it is a fingerprint of what my early years looked like.

My friends were always younger than me. I did not fit with my own age group. I did not understand why at the time. I just knew I did not belong.

Stupid. Buck teeth. Ugly. Those were the words that followed me through elementary and middle school. I did not invent them. They were handed to me by other kids and reinforced by the adult who was supposed to tell me differently and did not.

When you hear something enough times it stops being something other people say about you and starts being something you say to yourself. I was stupid so why even try. I was ugly so why even dress up. Let me hide. Jeans and a t-shirt. Stay small. Stay invisible. Do not call attention to something that is already embarrassing just by existing.

College was not even a thought. Why would someone like me go to college.

I had no self worth. No self esteem. So I set myself up for failure too. I dated people I knew did not actually like me. Because why would they. I already knew the answer.

The Pregnancy at Eighteen.

At eighteen I got pregnant.

I remember the feeling of thinking here it is. Here is the proof. I always knew I was going to fail and now I have. However, something happened when Victoria was born that I did not expect.

She needed me. Specifically me. Not a better version of me. Not a fixed version of me. Me, as I was, right then.

I made a decision that changed everything. I was not going to let her grow up without her mother. I was not going to be the absence in her story. Whatever it took, I was going to be there.

I went to trade school. I built something from a starting point that the statistics said was impossible.

Victoria did not save me. I want to be clear about that because women get told that story too often and it puts too much weight on a child. She gave me a reason to stop listening to the voices long enough to hear my own.

The Marriage That Failed. And What I Did Next.

I eventually married. That marriage failed.

And here is the thing about failure when you have already been told your whole life that you are going to fail. It feels like confirmation. It feels like everyone who ever doubted you was right. It feels like you should probably just stop.

I did not stop.

Not because I am extraordinary. Because I was tired of the alternative. Because stopping meant the voices won. Because somewhere underneath all the damage there was a woman who had been trying to get out for a very long time and she was not going to let one more hard thing be the thing that finally buried her.

The Life the Statistics Said Would Not Happen.

Let me tell you what happened instead of what the statistics predicted.

My mother was in foster care. I became a foster parent.

I was given up. I adopted four children plus a bonus child who will always be mine.

I was called stupid for years. I ran a nonprofit from scratch with zero experience and led it for seven years. Then I built not one business but three. One of those, Low Tide Lighthouse which is five programs for foster and adoptive families built from the ground up because nothing like them existed anywhere else.

I had no self worth. I now spend my life helping other people find theirs.

I sat in the lowest reading level. I am writing this for you right now.

I grew up feeling like I was not chosen. I became someone who chooses people. On purpose. Every single day.

Failure didn't define me. It only made me stronger once I got the voices of others out of my head.

That took a long time. I will not pretend it happened quickly or cleanly or all at once. Getting other people's voices out of your head when they have been living there since childhood is slow, nonlinear, and sometimes you think you have done it and then something happens and there they are again.

They got quieter and my own voice got louder. Eventually I realized that the story I had been handed at the beginning was not the story I was living anymore.

To the Person Reading This.

If you came into this world set up for failure, through circumstances, through the people who were supposed to love you, through a starting line that was not fair, I see you.

I am not going to tell you it was all part of a plan or that everything happens for a reason because I do not believe in saying things like that to people who are still in the middle of the hard part.

What I will tell you is this.

The voices that told you who you were going to be, they were wrong. They were talking about their own limitations, their own damage, their own inability to see you clearly. They were not describing your future. They were describing their fear.

You are not what happened to you. You are not the label someone put on you before you were old enough to argue with it. You are not the starting line.

You are what you do next.

And next is still available to you. Right now. Today.

I came into this world set up for failure.  I didn't fail.  Neither will you.

If this resonated with you

I speak on these topics at women's conferences, faith events, and leadership gatherings. Her signature keynote, The Person I Was Waiting For Was Me, takes audiences from the fairytale they were handed through the moment they finally stopped waiting for someone else to make them whole.

I also works with foster and adoptive families through Low Tide Lighthouse, offering the honest preparation and steady support the system was never designed to provide.

saraphinamare.com  ·  lowtidelighthouse.com

Saraphina Mare  ·  saraphinamare.com