My story
My mother has been unhoused for over two years. She blames me for it.
I haven't spoken these words out loud to anyone at King Hall despite it weighing on me and greatly impacting my own educational experience. I think it's time I tell my story.
One of the main legal issues I would work on during my AmeriCorps fellowship was helping tenants with their Unlawful Detainer cases. There were very clear rules that I had to follow, with the first and most important being to never render legal advice. They were not my clients, I was not an attorney. My role was clear: I would help pro se litigants fill out the paperwork to keep them in their homes, educate them about their legal rights and the eviction process, and then I would send them on their way.
For years my mother had been barely scraping by, only narrowly avoiding evictions in the past. The only reason why she still had an apartment was because of the eviction moratoriums put into place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
My mother and I have always had a tumultuous relationship. My parents had their first child when they were teens. By the time they had me, my dad's youngest, they were only 23. Between being young parents, battling cancer, financial instability, and unhealed childhood traumas, our family has always felt dysfunctional.
I felt like my mother had mentally checked out of our family years before she physically left me and my siblings with my dad. But I had always done everything I could to fix what I could. I raised my newborn sister while juggling high school and college applications so my mom could work. Once I got a job, I sent her money to pay for daycare or her rent. As always, when the last eviction notice wound up on her door, I set her up with all the legal resources that I could. This time it wasn't enough.
Resources were steadily decreasing as we got further away from the pandemic, and there were no more protections that could keep my mom in her home. Despite doing what I could to prepare her for court, and help her during her mediation and hearings, she had to vacate her apartment by January 17, 2023. Worst of all, she blamed me for it.
From the point on, nothing that happened to me mattered to my mom and my older sister. I couldn't be frustrated when my personal statement was deleted because at least I wasn't unhoused. I couldn't be happy when I got into school because it was still my fault for losing my biggest legal battle yet. Slowly, I stopped telling people anything about myself both at school and at home. I was ashamed that I get to live this life while my mother is unhoused and my dad doesn't think he'll make enough to pay the bills each month because he's taking care of my grandparents.
There's a lot of hurt between the two of us that can't be captured in a short blog post, but looking back what hurts most is knowing that so much responsibility was put onto a child from both of my parents. Campoverdi's First Gen and some of our other readings have discussed that first-gen students' experiences such as mine cause these students to grow up too fast. I find myself now more than ever grieving my childhood, and the fact that I've felt like an adult for so long.
I often hear stories about the relationships that people have with their families in our class, and I feel like there is something wrong with me for not having the same relationship. My partner's family knows more about me than my own family because I've stopped telling my own family anything about me. When my partner's family asks about me, or I hear about the relationships everyone seems to have with their families, I physically hurt because I realize that I'm now a stranger to my own family. But how do you repair years of strained relationships?
Since getting to law school, I've kept not just my family but all of my peers at arms length. Much of this hesitance to share these experiences goes back to my shame. I don't talk to people at school, but I also don't talk to my family back at home. So who's left?
I sat down today to write a letter to my past self, but I quickly realized that I don't feel ready for that yet. Law school has challenged me in every way imaginable. But most recently, the challenged I've faced is figuring out who is in my village.
Labels: Backgrounds, Belonging, family