In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3 Olivia k Life Narrative “It was a bad road that I was on” I was born in Ohio. I was raised by my mother, mostly my mother. She was single. It was a single home. I have two brothers, one older and one younger. Family life was real hard. Tight with money. Mom wasn’t home a lot, so we basically kind of fended for ourselves and had to make it to school, you know. And we was on welfare. You know, wasn’t money for lunches, so we had special lunch tickets and school clothes and all that. It was tight with money, so growing up like that makes a lot of pressures in the home. Not really pressures. It was more like, it wasn’t really no definite rules, so we just did what we wanted to do, you know. So that’s pretty much how I grew up. School was really bad for me because of the money situation. I didn’t have what the other girls had so, you know, I slacked. I skipped out. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere in a certain place. Where I did belong was with people like me. On the same poverty level, you know. So we all ended up skipping out just to start smoking cigarettes and hanging out in the alleys and stuff. So I didn’t really care for school. The joys in my life are my family. My mother and my brothers. They’re a joy, you know, because we’re tight. We’re close, and I trust them, and there’s always unconditional love, so it’s a joy now that I look back on it, even though we had our hardships. . . . I’ve had an important relationship with my children’s father. My two girls. We met in high school, dropped out together. Moved in together. Lived together for four years. So that was an important relationship . Then when we split up, I got into another relationship with another man. Didn’t have no children with him. I started drinking when I was with him, so we split up. He split up with me ’cause of my drinking. And then I met another man, which is my third child’s father. That was a very important relationship; yeah, it’s probably the reason I’m here. In 2004, I gave temporary custody of my kids to my mother. I gave her the custody because I was using. So I said, you know, something’s got to happen. So mom said, “I’m going to take them for you.” So she got the two girls at that time. I hadn’t yet had my son. So I raised them until they were about two or three, yeah, well, one and two. Then I gave them to my mom. So, they’re still young. Because they live [far away], my mom can’t make it up here with them. And she’s got a block on her phone; it’s a money issue. You know, they’re writing me letters and stuff and coloring me pictures, and you know, it’s contact, but it’s not communication with them. There’s a difference. [Violence has been part of my life,] very much so. From the time I was a baby until I entered the [prison] gates. The violence on the end of it wasn’t my relationships. It was my mother’s relationship with her boyfriend at the time. I was between four and five when it started. She was with this man. He physically violenced my mother, physically violenced me and my brothers, and was sexually abusive to me until I was in second grade. So that would be about five to eight, in between there somewhere. He was physically abusive to all of us and then sexually molested me and things. And then my relationships with the children’s fathers were all violent. They was all violent relationships. You know, we had domestic abuse. . . . I want to [participate in a group about domestic violence], but I don’t trust a lot of the people in here with my information. Like the women I live with, I don’t trust them because I’ve had roommates that I’ve lived with, you know, and I would talk about it to them. And they would use it later for ammunition against me ’cause I still have contact with this person. . . . There have been...

Share