Allison

Alison

The first time I saw her, she was twelve years old and had been in foster care most of her life.

Her foster Mom of eight years had died suddenly, and the social workers were desperate to find her a stable placement as quickly as possible. She came for a visit, and she seemed to take to me.

I had space and the patience needed to support a child through such heartbreaking circumstances, so I was surprised when the social worker called me the next morning, saying, “Allison decided she wants a brown family”.

So I went about my life for just over two years. I had been exploring the notion of fostering a pregnant teen when the call came. “We have a fourteen-year-old who is about seven months pregnant.” It was Allison, and this time, she didn’t get to pick the colour of her foster family.

Her mother was an alcoholic, and Allison faced many challenges as she bore the scars of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The condition left her brain with holes that disabled proper cognitive and executive functioning.

When she showed up on my doorstep, I heard that for the past two years she had been placed with an Indo-Canadian family and had done quite well. That is, until she ended up pregnant. The foster parent had a young son and did not want him exposed to a pregnant Allison.

I saw the shame and could literally feel her sense of abandonment. My heart went out to her and all that she had experienced in her life. Through no fault of her own, she could not be expected to make decisions that would keep her from heartache and trauma. FAS did not make her brain that way.

Allison stuck pretty close to home during the last couple of months of her pregnancy. She was always cheerful and helpful. She was also so funny, and we formed a bond that I thought would last. She assured me that she did not drink throughout her pregnancy, and she even stopped smoking cigarettes.

Allison tried very hard to be a good mom, but within a month of having the baby, she began to drift back to her pre-pregnancy life. At eight weeks post-partum, she was pregnant again—this time with twins, who would be born before she turned sixteen years old.

There were two more children before she turned twenty. During those years, she met someone and they moved in together, living in their own style of dysfunction for about four years.

Sadly, Allison’s demons emerged…perhaps they never left…and she left her family for the streets.

Twenty years later, she’s still out there. She left behind five children who, though thankfully were never exposed prenatally, have all been forever affected by their mother’s FAS. Her inability to care for them, to commit to them, forever altered the way they faced the world. They worry every day if she is alive, even as she lives in a shelter, a five-minute walk from them.

I wish I could say that Allison’s story is unique, but I know personally of hundreds of others, born into addiction, trauma, and chaos. The details change, outcomes differ, but all have a common thread: loss.

Loss of self-worth, sense of being safe, family connections…loss of everything so many of us take for granted. And every year, the numbers grow for those born into addiction and so the generational cycles continue.