The family you choose
“Her chosen family gave her help, a home, and most importantly hope.”
Written by Tanya Clark
It’s a gloomy Sunday afternoon as I sit inside a coffee shop waiting for Lisa to arrive. There’s the sound of frothing milk, the dull buzz of chatter and dings from a small door chime. I look up and see a woman in a pantsuit walk in, composed, collected and confident. The air feels heavy and thick, ready to burst, reflecting the story I’m about to hear.
“Lisa?” I ask.
She sits down and sets her latte towering with whipped cream on the table. Then she smiles a thousand watt smile. She’s a survivor in the truest sense of the word. She has stories to tell. So we begin.
Lisa endured both physical and sexual abuse as a child. Her earliest memory of it was when she was nine. Her parents weren’t together any longer; her father was an alcoholic and her mother favored boyfriends before her own daughter. She told both her parents about the sexual abuse from her mother’s boyfriend and an aunt’s boyfriend. Neither believed her. A few years later she attempted suicide by taking a bottle of pills.
She survived, only to move back and forth from one abusive household to the next until she was a teenager. She had witnessed her father abusing women, and seen the type of men – men who would rape a child and then sit there and deny it – her mother had living in their home. Lisa’s view of how to love and be loved was tainted from the start, but not ruined.
“My father was a physically abusive man so I witnessed him abusing women. He hit me once and I fought him back. My mother did not want me in her life so she put a lot of her anger off on me,” Lisa said. “I had one boyfriend who was very jealous and when I tried to leave him, he pulled a gun on me and held it to my head. I was able to get away from that situation but a lot of my physical abuse came from the traffickers.”
With hope of a better life, Lisa ran away to Los Angeles at the age of 15. Once there she was homeless until approached by a man who said he could help her. Once inside his home with nowhere else to go, he raped her and sold her to a pimp. After that, she was abused almost daily if she tried to leave, speak out of turn, or if she didn’t make enough money. She was kept under constant supervision and had no way out.
After almost two years, Lisa was in a liquor store while out working the streets. She didn’t feel well and didn’t know it yet, but was pregnant. She just wanted a break to catch her breath and read a magazine off a newsstand.
“I looked towards the counter and there was a security guard standing there. He didn’t work at the store but he was standing there buying something. A big guy. And he kept looking at me and I kept thinking, maybe he wanted a ‘date.’ And I didn’t want to,” Lisa said. “He left. I waited a few minutes and then I went outside. I saw him standing by his car and he asked if he could talk to me. I said no and started walking off and suddenly I heard a voice, so clear, that said, ‘Trust him.’ I turned back around and I started talking to him and he said, ‘You’re just a baby!’”
She knew she was being watched, so she tried to make it seem like she was conducting business. He told her he got off work at five o'clock and to meet him at a certain location.
“The first thought I had was, ‘Five o’clock is when [the pimp] picks us up.’ So five o’clock came. I saw the limousine on the opposite side of the street. One of the girls came and said, ‘It’s time to go.’ I looked at her and lied and said, ‘I have one more customer around the corner.’ And she said, ‘You’d better hurry up before the limousine gets here.’” Lisa said. “As soon as I got around the corner, I took off running. I kept hearing someone yelling, ‘Lisa!’ and I thought it was the pimp coming after me and I made up my own mind that he would just have to kill me because I wasn’t going to go back. So I kept running and hearing someone yelling, ‘Lisa!’ As I’m running, I looked over and it was the security guard.”
He brought her to a hotel and left her so she could sleep. The next morning he returned with food, and his mom and grandmother.
“They took me in,” Lisa said. “They became my family. I now call her mom, and he is my brother.”
After they rescued her, she found out she was pregnant, almost 6 months along. A boy. The baby was stillborn.
Lisa survived more than many can imagine. And in her words, she not only survived but is thriving. Her chosen family gave her help, a home, and most importantly hope. The impact that they have had on her life is immeasurable. Lisa hopes that by telling her own story and starting a nonprofit she can pass that hope forward.
“Surround yourself with people who love and support you. Don’t give up. Your past does not determine who you become and who you are,” said Lisa.
With that, Lisa finishes her latte and we stand to part ways. There’s so much going through my mind and so many things I want to tell her – I want to thank her for her voice and for sharing her story with the world. I want to tell her that the work she has dedicated her life to means the world to people she doesn’t even know, that while her past was awful and traumatic, she truly rose from it like a phoenix rising from the ashes. But there isn’t enough time and there’s a lump in my throat. So I manage to shake her hand, look her in the eye and say, “It truly was such an honor to talk with you today. Thank you so much for all you’re doing.” I stepped outside and as I watched her walk away, a ray of sunlight seeped through the clouds brightening the day with each second that went by.
Human trafficking is a very real problem in the world today. Per the Department of Homeland Security, it “involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act.” To get involved in the prevention and awareness, click this link for several organizations committed to the fight against human trafficking.