SUMMARY

Ashley was born in North Carolina. She was born to a seventeen-year-old single mom. According to her, two days compete for the worst day in her life: the first is the day she was taken from her mother; the second is the day she arrived at the Moss´ foster home four years later. The day she was taken from her mother, she had left South Carolina bound for Florida with her mother, her mother´s husband, and her younger brother Luke. She was only three years old. Before she was taken from her mother, she was an intuitive two-year-old, soaking up language and behaviors from a crew of rowdy adolescents who were trying on adult attitudes and habits. She used to get attention by acting grown up. Her mother used to spend her time hanging out with friends, while her sister was taking care of Ashley. After her mother got pregnant with Luke, everything changed for Ashley. Dusty, her mother´s husband was abusing her mother, physically and emotionally. Once he almost hit Ashley with a chair. Ashley´s mom was about to leave Dusty many times but she never did because she was afraid of him.
After the day Ashley was taken from her mother, she never was given back to her. Ashley spent nine years of her life in fourteen different foster homes. She was always waiting for her mom to come back and take her back to South Carolina. Ashley’s mom suffered from addition problems with drugs. The government always said that she was not able to take care of Ashley and Luke. While Ashley was waiting for her mother, she had to be in different foster homes with many different people who did not care about them. The worst foster home was the Moss´ home. Mrs. Moss was a cruel woman; she used to give hot sauce to the kids whenever they did not obey her. Mrs. Moss took away the gifts that Ashley´s mom gave her. She also used to make them share their outfits with the other foster girls. Many times Ashley and the other foster kids who lived there tried to let to the social workers know what Mrs. Moss was doing to them, that she was abusing physically and emotionally of them, but they did not believe them. Ashley finally got out of that foster home, because supposedly she was not a good influence to the other kids, not because it was a bad place for her. After that, Ashley went to another house where things were much better. Unfortunately Luke had to stay in Mrs. Moss’ foster home. During those years, Ashley saw her mother a few times. She always told her that she was about to finish the process to get her back to home. However there was something that stopped her from getting Ashley back. At the age of twelve, she was adopted by the Courters ´family who were the only ones who helped her and loved her.