Journey To Success

Journey to Success

My journey to success has not always been an easy one, in fact, it was the longest road I have ever taken but gets a little better with each new accomplishment.  In this letter, I am going to open up about my journey with all of you and share my trials and tribulations in hopes to help inspire the next person walking a familiar road.

My story starts the way most low-income family households start.  I grew up in a home with a single mother and a few siblings.  Food stamps and child support were our only source of income.  My mother would work from time to time but she never really could keep a job.

I realized my passion in life at the age of 10.  I knew I loved helping people and bringing joy to other people’s lives.  At just 11 years old, I helped comfort a grieving mother after her drug-addicted daughter ran away from home.  From there my need to help grew stronger with each new year.  I was always a very shy and quiet young woman so I did not start dating until the age of nineteen.

My first boyfriend was my kid’s dad I met the day after I graduated high school.  We were so in love in the beginning that we jumped in way too fast, but that’s what happens when you’re young and don’t have a healthy relationship to look up to.  My mother did not date because being a single mother to three girls she always feared that men would harm us if she dated, so she sacrificed being in a relationship for us, that is a mother’s love for you.  My father, on the other hand, jumped from one bad relationship to the next. He was not a bad person or anything; he just opened his heart to the wrong women, but for impressionable young women that can cause a lot of damage.

While being with my kid’s dad I dealt with a lot of physical and mental abuse, and with each day, it got hard to get out of bed in the morning, but you can do all things through God.

I had my one year old daughter, was pregnant with my son, grieving over the death of my mother, and taking up to four college classes, while still being abused by my kid’s dad.  I was bad off.  I felt like I had nowhere to turn.  The only thing that was getting me through this was my children.  I loved them both so much.  The only thing that kept coming to my mind, at the time, was if I loved them so much how could I keep them in this dangerous environment.  Even worse, bring a new baby in the middle of all this pain and hate, so I felt abortion was the only way to save my child from having to grow up in a bad environment.  When you give up hope that is when God is working overtime for your benefit.  I gave up on myself but God never gave up on me, he was already making moves for me I just could not see it for myself.  The number I found in the phone book that I thought was an abortion clinic was actually the Center for Women & Families and they referred me to at Necole’s Place (now BsideU For Life) and they offered me life.  To help guide and strengthen me to become the woman God always meant for me to be.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart BsideU For Life.  When I was lost, you helped me find my way back to God.  In addition, you helped change my life for the better, and thanks to everyone’s love and prayers I made it, graduated from Jefferson Community College with my Associate degree,  and have been accepted into Spalding University School of Social Work!

I am forever Grateful.

Sincerely,

Keisha Sutton