My little baby girl…
Is she gonna be okay?
We’re doing all we can, but she may not survive.
She was born too early.
Her body hasn’t had the time to properly develop.
She has breathing difficulties and other medical complications…
She may not survive.
Hi, I’m Chantal.
That’s me in there.
It was touch and go, but I’m a fighter.
I survived.
I’m 20 years old now and
I’m still a fighter…
This is my story.
I was so sick when I was a baby that
I needed to spend a lot of time in the hospital.
The bills were bankrupting my Mom and Dad
who were already poor.
It got so bad that after six months
they couldn’t afford it any longer,
so they had to make the heartbreaking decision to put me in care.
It was tough growing up in a children’s home.
My health gradually improved
which was wonderful,
but I couldn’t help feeling I’d been abandoned by my parents.
All the other kids at school had Moms and Dads that loved them,
but mine couldn’t have loved me.
After all, they’d put me in care, hadn’t they?
I was much healthier by the time I reached 8 and
things were getting better because I was adopted into a loving family.
When I turned 9,
they thought I was old enough to meet my natural parents again.
They believed that this was the right thing for me to do.
So, I met them,
my real Mom and Dad and my two younger sisters.
At first, it was just short visits
but over the years,
these became longer and my natural family became a part of my life.
It wasn’t easy at the beginning because
I resented them for abandoning me when I was so ill and so young.
But,
they were so poor in comparison to the family I now lived with.
I grew to understand how hard it would have been for them,
and began to love them as much as my adopted family.
It was hard to be in the middle of two completely different families,
especially when my birth family unit began to fall apart.
This happened just after I’d started high school.
Mom told me and my sisters
that my Dad was moving away to live with our Grandmother for a while.
She made out it was to help look after her,
but in truth, he was leaving home,
something she never told us.
One day,
my foster Mom took me and my sisters to a Halloween hunt evening.
We were having so much fun
until my foster Mom asked my sister how my Dad was.
To my horror, she said my Dad had started drinking!
I was so shocked.
I knew straight away what this meant.
Mom would never let Dad drink when he was with her
because she was brought up in a home where drinking meant trouble.
Dad must have left home!
The feelings of betrayal were back.
Why had my Mom told my younger sisters and not me?
Why had Dad started drinking?
Did we annoy him that much?
Did we do something wrong?
Had he stopped loving us?
When I confronted my Mom
she apologized for not telling me,
but by then I was too hurt to listen.
I felt like the mother-daughter bond between us had been broken,
and things would never be the same again.
I still felt very close to my sisters, though,
and would always be there for them.
With Dad gone and me not getting along with Mom,
I spent less and less time with my sisters.
But every weekend I’d go see them and
take some money around so they could get something decent to eat.
My Mom had started to neglect them,
spending more and more of the housekeeping
on cigarettes and other stuff for herself.
Then, things suddenly got a lot worse.
In my last year of high school,
I had a huge row with my foster Mom
and got thrown out of the house.
I had no choice but to go live with my Mom.
Things there soon went from bad to worse.
Mom started stealing my money!
I confronted her but she denied it.
So, I had to hide it.
One day when she couldn’t find where I’d hidden my money,
she went crazy and started yelling at me and behaving aggressively.
It was really frightening but
I stood up to her.
Not long after,
it became so bad I had no choice but to leave.
I sat down with my sisters
and explained to them that I had to go
and that I loved them and would always take care of them.
I took my things
and was lucky enough to get a place in a nearby shelter,
sharing a room with other young girls like me.
We all got along great
and it gave me the stability in life I needed.
I was able to go back to school
where I soon qualified to go to college.
At that time,
I saw less and less of my sisters.
Then one day,
I heard things at home had become so bad
that one of my sisters had ran away to live with my Dad.
I knew this was wrong, and
it would be awful for her to live with him, so
I made a plan.
I would call her and ask her to come over so we could talk.
Then, I did the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life.
I called the children’s aid society
and told them what had happened
and arranged for them to meet her
and talk to her about how things were.
My sister was reluctant to talk to them at first,
but when she finally opened up,
she told them things that even I didn’t know about.
It nearly broke my heart,
not just because life had become so hard for her
but because they were so bad that
she didn’t feel she could tell me about them.
I felt relief that they decided to take her into care,
but what about my other sister?
I had to tell them about her as well.
I told them that my Mom was tough
and getting my sister away from her would be hard.
I was able to get a message to my sister
so she knew someone was coming for her.
She secretly packed her bags and,
although terrified,
she was ready when the knock came on the door.
Not long after she was taken into care,
my sister suddenly turned up on my doorstep with her bags.
She was in tears because she wanted to live with me.
Seeing her there looking so frightened almost broke my heart.
I made my mind up there and then that,
despite still being young myself,
I would fight for custody of my little sister.
The next six months
was a battle between me and the authorities for her custody.
They said I was too young,
and to make it worse,
Mom was demanding to have my sister back.
It was at this time I was accepted into college,
so things should have been looking up.
But out of nowhere,
my Mom turned up at the college office demanding to see me.
It was so humiliating.
She was making such a scene,
demanding that I give her some money.
But even if I wanted to, I had no money to give her.
I needed every cent for me and my sister.
When I refused she started to follow me home.
The last thing I wanted
was to her to find out where we lived now,
so I had no choice but to call the police.
Calling the police on my own Mom?
You can imagine how terrible that made me feel about myself,
but I had no choice.
I had to do it to protect me and my sister.
That happened over a year ago,
and it was the last time I saw or spoke to my Mom.
It’s been tough to get here but
things are much better for us now.
For someone lucky to just have survived being born
I think every day is a miracle.
I know growing up for me and my sisters has been tough,
but to conquer all the hardships and be where we are now
is wonderful.
When you look up at the mountain in front of you
it seems impossible to climb.
But with a strong heart,
love, and determination
you’ll get there.
And, believe me,
the view from the top is amazing!