My Story: Part Two

It’s Wednesday, November 22nd, and today we’re covering part two of a three-part story. My story.

If you missed part one, you can find it here.

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My Story

If you’re new to How to People, this is not our usual format. We talk a lot about community strategy, tactics, and psychology.

But for reasons outlined here, we taking a three-week detour.

At 22 years old, I had zero ambitions. At least not on the surface. Anytime I’d entertain the idea of being a lawyer or entrepreneur, years of rejection through foster homes, failing tests, and the stigma of being a high-school dropout sobered me right up.

By then, I had an apartment. I had lived in my car while working for Pacific Monarch where I cold-called people and tried to sell them on timeshare appointments (I didn’t even know what a timeshare was). This gave me enough to rent a hotel room for my daughter and me. From then on, it was one temporary job after another until we landed in a $435/month apartment in Southern California and began a (really) slow ascent.

I had no financial acumen and would often need to pay my rent in weekly installments, slipping a little bit of money and a handwritten note outlining when remaining payments would come in under the manager's door after closing. I bought my first wall decorations at Pic N Save. My dining room table was a clearance outdoor patio set. I had a plant stand for an entertainment center. We ate a lot of cereal.

The day that my co-worker Becky told me I was smart was an inflection point. I walked back to my desk with a new, tingly sensation: anticipation. Someone believed in me.

The thing is, I had a secret of my own. I wouldn’t say it aloud and wouldn’t think about it often, either—but I believed in myself, too. Believing in myself seemed like an act of rebellion. I had been objectified for most of my life and in many different ways: first by my stepfather, then by my mother, next by dozens of foster parents, judges, social workers, counselors, and case notes. At times, I wasn’t even April, instead referred to as “plaintiff”, “subject”, or “child”.

There are some really wonderful foster homes out there, but I didn’t see but one or two of them, which is very common. Foster parents get paid to take care of you. Some would load up with as many kids as possible and live off the income. Almost none would spend extra money on you. I received a $91 allotment each year for clothing and shoes. I remember one particular Christmas, I was sent to a warehouse with a bunch of other foster kids. There were boxes of donated clothing from which we were allowed to choose a few items. None were in my size (and all were wildly outdated). I walked away with a few oversized shirts. And that was Christmas.

So the idea that I could be worth a bright, bold future was a wild one. Loved kids go to college. They come home for holidays and get care packages and see their senior pictures hanging on the wall.

But still, every once in a while, I’d feel it; that little spark I suspect many of us have experienced. As if just for a moment, the internal curtain is pulled back and you can suddenly see all of your potential, and it’s so much bigger than you thought—but before you can even process it, the curtains close and you’re already forgetting what it looked like.

As I approached my desk, I repeated the word in my head. Smart. Smart.

How does someone know if they’re smart? How can I know that it’s true? Back then, I thought of intelligence in rather elementary ways and I could only think of one answer: an IQ test.

I sat down at my desk and Asked Jeeves for an official IQ test. He directed me to one by something called Mensa. I had never heard of it, but it looked very official.

That afternoon, I took an IQ test. The results were 147. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, so I consulted the IQ chart. It...wasn’t bad.

Current me doesn’t give stock to standardized testing. You’d be astounded at the shockingly stupid things I still do weekly. But back then, in my limited scope of the world, I only thought one thing:

I was smart. Mensa said so.

I never went back to Becky and told her about the test or anything else. I wasn’t at that job but for a few more months. She does not know how her one little sentence impacted me. Because here’s the thing:

Once a possibility opens in your mind, there a 20 new tangential possibilities that come with it. If I’m smart, I can do things like get a better job, read bigger books or…

…go back to school.

I could go to school.

School was such a romantic thought. Books and lockers and stressing over tests. It was so terribly adult-like. Full of people who had bigger ambitions than temp jobs and cereal.

The very same day I took the test, I picked up a schedule of classes at my community college. I read through class descriptions in every category that interested me the same way I used to pour over scholastic book fair flyers. Wide-eyed and hungry to learn.

I was, of course, a high school dropout, but luckily the school offered something called the “Ability to Benefit” test. If you could demonstrate that you can benefit from a college education, you could enroll without a diploma. I passed, and suddenly, I was in.

Before my first semester, I met with a school counselor who helped me choose my classes: Sociology, Philosophy, and English. I also needed to fulfill a PE requirement. When he told me I could do this by taking a dance class, I almost laughed. I enrolled in beginning jazz.

Inflection point two.

Nothing prepared me for how hard I would fall for dance. Everything, from the smell of the studio to the feeling of moving across the floor, felt like coming home. Throughout my time in the system, I was forced to go to counseling. Something I felt wholly unhelpful.

But this…this was therapy that worked. No talking was required of me, yet I was physically working through a myriad of emotions from joy to anger to goofiness. I was in community with others without even trying.

A fun little tidbit: when we move in unison with others, our brain waves also sync up. Neuroscientists have long studied the effects dance has on trauma recovery, empathy, and relationship building.

I stayed in that dance department for too long. It was my first taste of real belonging and family. It should be noted that I was a mess during those years. I may have turned the corner in some ways, but in others, I was still a wildly immature and broken girl, and my professors deserve a lifetime of whatever the hell they want for putting up with me.

In year three, another seed was planted. Jeanna Shelton, my modern dance teacher looked up at me, and in her usual no BS tone said, “You need to go”.

I was actually a bit stunned for a moment. Why did I need to go? Where would I go? This was home.

“Go get your four-year degree. Get out of here. You’ve been here too long and you’re getting too comfortable”, she said.

“How? I’m a single mother. Universities are too expensive”, I replied.

“I did it. I was a single mother. UCR has family residents. You can live there. Go.”

I went. I went on to live on campus at University of California, Riverside. I lived on campus with (by then) my two daughters. I majored in dance. I worked at a coffee shop and drove an old Chevy Corsica.

But when it was time to leave UCR, a new wave of panic was coming on. Dance was my world now. It was the only thing that felt right in my bones. And now what? Now where do I go?

After I left foster care, I still had somewhat of a relationship with my mom and half-brother. I was 9 years older than him and he was four years old when I went into foster care. My most profound sense of loss was not seeing his sweet little face every day. I loved that kid deeply.

A quick digression: when I was sent away, my mother and stepfather told our extended family that I had been taken away because I was incorrigible. The gist of it: I had been running away, rebelling, and ultimately told lies about my stepfather because I was jealous of him and my mother. So that’s what everyone thought, and I never had the courage to correct them.

I was 27 years old when my brother texted me “I just found a bunch of court papers about you and your dad. What they say he did—is it true?”

My brother was the one person whom I didn’t want to know the truth. Although I hated that he thought I was some sort of degenerate who told damaging lies about his dad, I also knew how close they were; how much they loved each other. To tell the truth would be to take his father away from him.

I told my mother about the text. I told her that I was going to answer him honestly. She lost her mind and told me that I would be disowned permanently if I told the truth.

I responded to his text with a single word: “yes”. Thus ended my remaining connection with family.

As my final semester in school came to a close, I started to feel a deep loss and disconnect. For a moment, I had found my footing and it had felt so good that I’d forgotten to consider:

• I had majored in dance (oof)

• I was a single mother of two

• I had a big student loan to pay off

• What small familial ties I had were gone

• I had to move off campus and out of my deeply subsidized family housing unit

• No real jobs were on the horizon

Because of my upbringing, I had made a promise that I would never move my girls around. They would know the same friends and community from kindergarten through graduation. So my geographic choices were also limited.

In some ways, I had come so far, yet I was starting to wonder if it had been a bunch of fake progress. A temporary reprieve from the dark, damp little world I belonged in.

But two more inflection points were coming my way. And I was about to learn some striking lessons in both business and community— ones that have become the two pillars of everything I’ve done since.

Onward,

April

PS: Thank you, thank you for the kind words last week. They are extremely valuable when trying to decipher and tell the chaos of my story

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