Ever since I was little, I have known the effects of forced sex on teenagers just like me. When I was two years old, my parents became foster parents and in the last twelve years I have had forty foster sisters. Not all of my sisters came from homes where sexual abuse was present, but many were. When I was still just three years old, my parents took in the worst case in the state of Illinois at that time. It was a girl who was regularly locked in closets and forced to eat live snakes whenever her father wasn't selling her to men for his poker debts. Though I was so young at the time that I can't recall much of her beyond the name and the story, my parents remember her as being scarred. She trusted no man and refused to be in the same room as my father.

Every girl shows pain differently. One of my sisters couldn't stand to be around the family during the holidays and would intentionally ask to be removed from our home only to come back in the spring. Another girl once asked my father how he could dare to love her when her own family had left her on the streets. Sometimes pain shows through violence and our home was no exception. Fights often broke out between disagreeing girls. My mom was trained to deal with violence, however, and often broke them up before things got too far.

This year my family and I moved to Kansas, where my parents decided not to renew their foster liscense. I began a new school and to make sure I was making new friends, my mom forced me into a club. I chose Coalition, a group at my school that organizes annual fundraisers and sends all the money collected to Invisibile Children, Uganda, and of course, Love 146. Through Love 146, I have found a cause I can be dedicated to. I hope to grow up and become a journalist and through journalism, I want to find a way to help make this world a better place.