Healing the pain
Miss Teddy
Miss Teddy was 14 when she ran away from home to live with her boyfriend. After enduring years of abuse and neglect from her father, she couldn’t take it anymore.
“He never showed me the love he showed others,” Miss Teddy remembers. “He just stopped caring about me.”
But life didn’t get any easier when Miss Teddy ran to her boyfriend. She soon became the victim of his fist, the victim of unwanted attention from his friends.
Within months, she was pregnant. It didn’t stop her unborn baby’s father from continuing the abuse, threatening her each time she tried to escape.
Before long, though, her boyfriend was arrested … she could finally leave. Certain she couldn’t return home, Miss Teddy asked to be placed into foster care and soon joined our “family” at Children’s Home Society of Florida.
“I felt like it was a new beginning for me,” she says.
Not only did Miss Teddy finally have safety, but she also learned how to stay healthy during her pregnancy, how to prepare for motherhood and independence. After her son was born, Miss Teddy learned even more, such as how to properly hold her newborn, safely put him to bed and console him when he cried.
Because of the guidance and stability Miss Teddy found, she secured her own apartment, graduated high school and enrolled in college. Each step, she explains, brings her closer to providing the life she believes her son deserves.
“I want him to have the life I never had,” Miss Teddy says.” I want to give him all the love I never got.”