My dearest daughter Jene’,

You know when I call you by your name at my Dad’s house they quickly refer to you as Nikki. Which is a perfectly nice enough name, but is not the name I gave you when you were born and is not how I think of you in “my” mind. So in my mind you will be Jene’, which rhythms with Renée, and is a very lovely name. Your middle name as Debaney. The A in that is a short A, making a smooth flow, not and Long A, making it sound like some kind of Irish through off.

So, Ms. Nikki Jo, you were born Jene Debaney Snyder. You were born when I was at my personal worst. Does that mean I loved you any less? Of course not, it just means I was totally incapable of taking care of anyone including myself. Am I trying to make excuses for the bad choices I made in life? I hope not, although I wish I could. It would be so much easier to blame my bad decisions on the bad things that happened to me when I was not fully mature myself and on the people that played a part in that, but I refuse to do that. There are lots of folks in this world who grew up with adversity and are now very wonderful folks in our society. It takes emotionally immature folks to continue to blame their bad choices in life on others. I try to think I am half way mature now anyway.

There is no way to begin this simply, so I must begin by trying to answer questions I think you will have. The first one I’m thinking of is a doozey, so I better prepare it by telling you the truth about who I was, and I am going to try and clean it up by letting you know who I am now. As much as I like to tell myself that I am no longer ashamed of my past, the more I am ashamed of writing this paper which I know you will read one day. All I can say is that I am sorry, truly sorry, not that fake-butt sorry that folks try to say they are, but I deeply regret so many decisions I made before, during the time of, and after you were born. Ain’t any sense in me whining about it though. I only hope that one day, you may have some understanding of what a nut case I was and maybe excuse me of some of the dumbest things I did. I only hope that you are not the hard head I was, and your older sister Joy is, and that you have to learn everything the HARD way. I can laugh writing that sentence now, but that junk is not funny, believes me.

My mother had six children. My older brother and sister were raised by their father, and came back and forth to my grandmother, my mother’s mother. Grandma Clara and Poppa raised me most of the time. My momma was not really capable of raising children, but I don’t hold that against her. Some people aren’t, and they have them anyway. My momma put some of us through some changes coming up, but nothing we shouldn’t have been able to get over. My older sister and brother were in a “Children’s Home” for a while and my sister, whose name is Sherry and lives in California”, has NOT gotten over that. I guess I need to ask my brother Bill how he feels about “his” childhood. He lives in Arkansas. I am 42 as I write this, Sherry is 52, and Billy is 51. In between me and my brother Billy, my mother had 2 little boys she had adopted. They were born out of marriage, and in the 50s you just didn’t do that. I have tried to find these two boys, but have come up empty. They are still my brothers wherever they are, and I would like to tell them so. My mother didn’t tell a lot of people about these two. She told me, and I know that if I can ever find them I have to tell them just how much their mother loved them. My mother lived in pool of guilt because of her past. I feel so sorry that she had to live that way. Lord knows, I understand my mother.

Anyway, I’m trying to give you some background info here, so I better move along. Then came me. Your Grandpa Stan and my mother were married for a short time. They couldn’t get along. There was always violence in my mother’s relationships with men, except with her last husband Walt whom she married late in life. I don’t blame the men or my mother for this type of behavior. Men were conditioned to behave in that manner, and women for some reason or the other felt they deserved it. I, myself, made many mistakes with men. I was in my late 30s before I got to the point where I felt I deserved more out of a relationship than what I had had all my life. It’s all a self-esteem thing, and what you see as you are growing up. Violence was normal as I came up, so I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. I only hope that your life has not been subjected to that. (I got off track again). So, I was born. Apparently my Daddy was a decent man. He as a hard worker, I know that much. If you ask him you can get all his virtues J, I don’t plan on getting into any of that one way or the other. He is my Father and I love him. None of us are perfect people. We can get close though through the Blood of Jesus, but I’ll get into that more later. So, I lived with my grandmother, then other relatives, my Dad tried to get me, they (my Moms family) would not do that, so I ended up back and forth between my Mom and my Grandma most of the time.

Her Father raised my sister Paula, who now lives in Texas, and is 38 years old. Her memories of our mother are different from mine and that is sad, but it allows her to have wonderful memories of her Dad and that is good. She is a lovely woman and God blessed me by allowing me to find her on the Internet a few years ago. Our families vacationed together soon after that and it was wonderful.

Okay, now the nitty gritty. I was a WILD kid from the very beginning. I started running away from home at 12 years old, I had sex, I did drugs, I did anything that you can imagine when you get old enough to imagine it. I wonder now if anything could have been done about me back then, but I doubt it. I had never really had any type of relationship with my Dad at all. I didn’t know him. I thought that was what I was missing from my life, so I (at the age of 13) hitch hiked from California to Kentucky and found him. I think about that now and I can look at it as if it were another child and think how very sad that situation was. A little girl, 13 years old, missing something so much out of her life that she would subject herself to unspeakable danger to try to find the missing part of herself.

When I found my Dad, he had just lost the love of his life. My sister Jennifer’s mother. He was drinking too much and had sent for your current mother Sheila and her 2 year old daughter to help him take care of his house and Jennifer, and whatever. The situation there was strange, and the stories Sheila told me even stranger. You’ve got to imagine I was already confused and probably strange myself. Anyway, it was not a good situation. I didn’t find the missing link to myself there, and I moved on.
I continued to move on, just like that too. All over the county, drugs, alcohol, men, trying to fill up emptiness in myself. Like a hollowness in my soul.

I had your older sister Joy in 1982, then Jake in 86. I had four children that died in between those two. They call them miscarriages, but they were still my children. By the time I got pregnant with you, I was a full-blown crack cocaine addict. That was really nothing much more than the heroin, and tons of other drugs I had been addicted to before it. It was just my current addiction. I was with a man named J.C. Reynolds. A hard working black man who did his best to get me to go to the Doctor and to stop using drugs, but I was too far-gone for that. You have got to imagine, by that point I had already lost your brother and sister to the HRS and I praise God they took them then before I could drag them through any more than I already had. But I felt like there was nothing else worth living for, and I was doing whatever it took to get drugs.

I knew when I went into labor with you that you would be born positive for cocaine. I had stopped using about two weeks before you were born, probably throwing my body into shock, but the day before I went into labor a girl came by and gave me some drugs. Other than that, you would not have been positive the day you were born. Not that every day of my pregnancy before that I wasn’t getting high. I was. And a lot. It’s just that I HAD made a decision to ATTEMPT to make a change right before you were born.

So when you were born, you were white. All along J.C. and I thought that you were his child. What a shock, huh? Now you remember that I said I was doing whatever it took to get drugs. That included getting money from men. Do I remember which men or who or when? No I don’t. Not even a clue. All I know is that it broke J.C.’s heart, but he was still willing to care for you as his own. When I saw you I knew that I wanted more than anything in this world to try to be a good mother to you and to get your sister and brother back. Now, by that point Joy and Jake were with Debbie and Tiny. They had the perfect little family, and I was a horror story to that side of my family. It’s funny how people forget their own horror when they look at someone else’s.

I saw a social worker while I was in the hospital, and I let them know that I really wanted to try to get myself together. They started helping me, and J.C was helping me, and I was trying to help myself.

I did okay for a while, a short while anyway. I even got to the point where I went to see Joy and Jake. I can’t begin to tell you what a nightmare that was, the things that were said, how I was hurt to the core of my being, I will say though that that is no excuse for the next move that I made and that was to leave you with J.C. and to go back out on the streets of Tampa Bay and to do the best that I could to kill myself slowly. I figured J.C. could raise you, but the HRS could obviously tell that you were not his biological daughter and they took you to a home.

I don’t know the details of what happened after that. I was lost. I tried to cover the guilt and hurt with as much of anything that I could to just be numb. I not only had my hollow spot inside me now that was empty, but I had the pieces of my own body, my children, that I had allowed to be (what felt like) wretched from me. Ain’t any sense in me lying, at this point I didn’t give a dodo about anything or anybody. I tried to hurt and destroy anything or anyone I came into contact with including myself. I hated. I hated everything and everybody.

Well, now I guess I need to make a long story short. I went to prison. I lost all rights to all three of you children. I had no idea that I had any right to even apply to get any one of you back. I really didn’t feel like I deserved any of you, and I only wanted what was best for you all. JJJJJJeeeezzzz, when I look back on it, I realize how mixed up I was. Just how confused.

I was blessed though to have made some wonderful friends in jail and prison that helped me find the Lord. Now I also realized that the hollow spot and the emptiness that I had always felt was a spot that God had reserved for himself and that if I allowed Him to fill this area of myself that I would be fulfilled. I did that and the Grace of Jesus Christ saved me while I was in prison. This was a wonderful thing and God delivered me from my drug addiction and I have NEVER used hard drugs again since then. Now that sounds wonderful, but you have to remember, I had a whole lifetime of screwing stuff up and I wasn’t quite through yet. You see we have a sin nature my daughter, and mine was kind of a big one.

When I first got out of prison, my Daddy allowed me to stay with him. All was well, for quite a while. I was under the impression that the courts would never allow me any rights regarding you children, and I would, under no circumstances, get any of you back. Sheila called me at that point and asked if I would allow her to adopt you. I know I didn’t really want to do that. I felt that it wasn’t fair to her because she was raising you and she loved you so much, but I just couldn’t do it. I want to tell you, that people tried to convince me at that time that my own Daddy was not my Daddy and it is really easy to get confused if you don’t have a clear head around some people.

Later, I went to Technical school and got a decent job. I had two more children. Your brother George born in December of 91 and your sister Jamila in 93. I had started drinking a little bit again. Now you have to understand, I can’t do a little bit of anything for long and if given the opportunity I will drink 'til the cows come home. I had stopped going to church, but every once in a while I would have spurts of 6 to 8 months I would go, and then probably the same amount of time I wouldn’t. On and off.

About this time, your brother Jake and sister Joy were really cutting up with Debbie and Tiny. Boy I laugh about that now. You see they wanted Joy and Jake originally because they thought they could not have children, and then they had two of their own. Now, I guess my seed has a little wildness in it, and when things started getting tough they allowed me to start seeing my kids and eventually get them back. Strange, this was the same woman who would not allow me to send a Christmas present for the first years after I got out of prison.

Anyway, I was with Jamila and George’s Dad. When I got the older kids back, I realized that this was not what he had bargained for so the kids and I were on our own. I was working, living in the projects, doing the best I could with what I had to work with. At this point I was drinking some, but we were doing okay. The projects are not the best place to live, but it was temporary. I knew we would be getting our own house soon, and we do. This will be our 7th Christmas here in Hope Park. God has really blessed us.

So one day I answered the door and a TV camera was in my face. Apparently Sheila had told a TV show that she couldn’t find me and that she wanted so much to adopt you, etc. Well, I never figured out why she didn’t just ask my Dad or her own mother and dad where I was, but if it takes a TV camera I guess it just does.

It was obvious that me living in the projects with four children did not come close to comparing with the life that you had with your Mom. I knew she loved you, and she promised me that she would never stop me from having contact with you. I truly NEVER wanted to pull you from her anyway. It’s not that I didn’t want you, of course I did. I just felt that it would not be fair of me to take you from the only mother you had ever known. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think I had a snowballs chance in the sun of getting you back anyway. So I might as well act like I was being the “better person”.

So I did. I managed to look like a zip fool on TV and to drink like there was no tomorrow during the whole situation. The TV show was very encouraging about my drinking. Anyone would drink at a time like that, right? At least that’s what they told me.

Now, I know that sounds a little bitter, and it also sounds like I am not taking responsibility for my own actions and if that is what a person would think reading this then that would be right. I only hope that through that decision that I made you have had the type of life that you deserve. You see, because I don’t know how you have been really. The gestures of family and the promises of contact were short lived, and although it has hurt me, I am not even sure it was wrong. Who knows what difference of my contact would have made in your life, or even if it would have been negative or positive. I only know that I still have that piece of me missing, and if it’s wrong of me to say that or to feel that way, well I’m just going to have to be wrong then. Sometimes I just get tired of trying to be “do the right thing”, I know I screwed stuff up in my life in the past, but that is IN THE PAST. You, Jene Debaney Snyder or Nikki Jo Sweat, are still of piece of who I am. You are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones, and there is nothing in this physical world that can change that. I love you. I don’t have to have been there physically to love you. I gave birth to you, and just like my mother always loved those two boys she never knew, I love you.

I do want to say that your Grandpa Stan has attempted to keep me up to date on how you are, but it’s always been like this big secret thing. I have a few pictures of you and I know you are a cheerleader and are doing well in school. You probably don’t know it, but you look like me, you and your sister Leighanne (who was born in 94) look like me. You have my chin. Lots of folks say most of my kids look like me, but I can’t see it. I know one thing though, and that is that each and every one of y’all is good looking! I WILL take credit for that.

I also have custody of your niece, Destiny. Joy had a baby when she was young, and she lives in Oregon now and has another child, a son. So there are five children here in our house. Jake is 16, George will be 11 Dec. 29th, Jamila is 9, Lee Lee (Leighanne) is almost 8, and then Destiny is 4.

I am very successful in my career now. I help other people getting out of prison and getting off welfare or drugs to get a job and become self-sufficient. I have been with the Corporation to Develop Communities of Tampa for about 7 ½ years now. I know how hard that is for my clients to transition into what is considered “normal” society, so I am blessed to be able to help others and have made a career in that field. I am a Junior in Springfield College of Human Services and anticipate graduating December of 2003 with a Bachelor of Science. It is my intention to then continue on and get a Master’s Degree, possibly in theology. God has blessed me with a wonderful husband and we attend Emmanuel Baptist Church regularly. My husband Leroy works on heavy equipment moving the earth he feels so much a part of. Oh, and I use no alcohol or drugs and haven’t in ages, and Leroy never has.

I don’t know what possessed me after all these years to sit down on this November 26, 2002 to write you this letter. I guess I have just been waiting for someone to give me permission to contact you. I have decided that I am giving myself permission to contact you, and to love you, and to wish I could have been a better mother to you and to your brothers and sisters. I am giving myself permission after all these years to cry and to grieve the loss of my daughter. Even if it was my fault.

Just know this if you don’t know anything else about me, I am here for you. I really always was, but I just didn’t feel worthy to be. God bless you and yours child.

All my love…………………..

  ¶ 11/26/2002 11:15:00 AM

  I would truly appreciate anyone that comes here, to look at my code and see why I can't get my left side to veritcal align to the top. I have tried everything. Just email me and let me know, okay.  ¶ 11/25/2002 07:36:00 AM

  Today's thought is:
I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all
that I am capable of becoming . . . This all sounds very strenuous and
serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it's no longer so. I feel
happy--deep down. All is well.
--Katherine Mansfield

All is well. In the midst of turmoil, let us remember, all is well; in the
midst of the pain of self-awareness, all is well. The struggle of the
turmoil, the pain that accompanies the lessons of self-awareness, are
preparing us for becoming all we are meant to become. We each have a
special gift to offer in this life. We will come to understand those gifts
and be able to give them as we grow with the pain of self-
understanding. All is well. Deep down happiness ripples, it's rippling to
the surface of our lives.

My lesson for today is understanding, of myself and others. Happiness
is the grade I earn each day of my "becoming  ¶ 11/19/2002 07:48:00 AM

  I have a new book, it's called working the 12 steps with Jesus!  ¶ 11/07/2002 06:48:00 PM