Teen Escapes Troubled Childhood

Teen Escapes Troubled Childhood
Posted By: Donna Lowry

As Amber Brown sketches on a paper in class, there's obvious artistry in the lines and something more not so visible.

"My escape. My comfort zone," she admits.

Amber deserves an escape.
She's had a childhood filled with havoc and confusion.

Once, she recalls, "My grandmother and my uncle were fussing and led into a chaotic argument and everyone was just running around the house, yelling, fighting, police were called and I remember just hiding in my closet with my flashlight. And, I was reading a book. I just felt like if i took a moment to read a book while everyone argued... it would lead my mind away from everything else going on."

The everything else going on in her life included a mother in a fog.

"She drinks alcohol, so she was placed in rehab and I was to live with my father and he relied on drugs and also alcohol," she explains. "And, every day was drugs, alcohol, drinking."

The days also involved occasional visits by the Department of Family and Children's Services.

"I would say Family and Children's Services, they would come to visit us, we would come and visit us and without going i the house. They would come and visit us and come and talk with us and ask questions, or they would come and pull us out of class and that's embarrassing, your counselor coming to get you out of class," she explains. "If you have any bruises, you have to lie about it, because i'm the type of person, I don't like ot explain my self , or explain my situation."

Her sister, 13 months older, left home at 16 got married had a baby and is now in the military.

Amber continued finding strength in knowledge.

For a school project based on the Alice Walker book The Temple of My Familiar, she decided on a less conventional way of doing the assignment.

"I created a snow globe on love is universal. And, I have a lady in here, heart and watches and clocks," Amber shares.

"She's so creative and, she warms your heart," enthuses Carol Kelly, an English teacher at Therrell High School who has become a mentor to Amber.

Amber reconciled her feelings for dad before he died a few years ago.

"He called and he told he that he would like for us to come back and have dinner with him. That he was going to stop doing drugs," she explains.

But, she says the hurt she'd suffered ran too deep and she didn't accept the dinner invitation.

"And, the next day we got a phone call that he had overdosed on drugs and he had a stroke," she shares. "I can just remember sitting in the hospital room and plugged to all the machinery and just having let everything out and having to express myself through all of the disaster we had to go through. Being beaten, being cursed at for know reason, scared to come home."

She calls that time extremely hard, but a personal breakthrough.

In recent years, she's found some healing in the relationship with her mother.

"After rehab, we got an house, an apartment, which we live in now. She's not drinking at all. Now instead of pushing me away, or not calling much, we spend time together. We go out maybe get our nails done and have mother-daughter time," Amber explains.

Amber, of course, has beat the odds.

"I prayed about it," she says.

She's also on her way to attend the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.

"My future is going to be a successful one and I'm going to you my secondary education to better my future," Amber explains.

"She's a survivor and she doesn't whimper. She doesn't complain," shares Kelly.

"She's adored by her teachers, the administration, the students. We think she will leave here and be successful in college and definitely be a productive citizen," enthuses Borst Hurst, Therrell High School Principal.

"My childhood. I was forced to mature at an early age. So, I feel if I just look at my education and focus on perseverance to help lead the way, that I'll succeed," explains Amber.

Amber is a 2009 winner of 11Alive's Class Act Teens Award for outstanding kids who have beat the odds.