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When an 'issue' becomes personal
Erin Gormley looks back on when her life had fallen apart--at age 12 going on 13
Sporting a blue Mohawk hairdo, a nose ring and combat boots didn't help Erin Gormley fit into the mainstream Palo Alto high school scene in the early 1990s. But it did reflect her inner anger and alienation from a terrible period where her family, and life, fell apart when she was "12 going on 13."
Gormley, now 25, with a professional job in San Francisco, and looking poised, well-groomed and fashionable, recently looked back over her years of despair and confusion after her family fell apart, as featured speaker at a donor-appreciation luncheon for the Palo Alto-based Adolescent Counseling Services (ACS).
She detailed the sudden separation of her parents in 1988 and their struggles with emotional, relationship, alcohol and drug problems that threw her and her older sister into turmoil, drove her sister away and caused Gormley to become a runaway and, later, a major negative fashion statement.
"The simple fact was that I had done nothing wrong, and yet I blamed myself for everything," she said. "I carried this burden around like a chip on my shoulder. My mother had gone crazy--my fault. My father was a dysfunctional mess, also my fault. You name it and I was to blame.
"When you carry something that big on your shoulders, you can't stand tall."
After a brush with Santa Clara County juvenile authorities as a runaway, Gormley wound up in Caravan House, a modest-appearing three-bedroom home for troubled girls in Palo Alto operated by ACS. She shared the house with five other girls and the house counseling and support staff.
"I didn't like being there," she recalled. "Being part of the social service system in a town like Palo Alto, you were different." She entered Gunn High School and wore her anger and attitude like a badge.
"Only now do I realize the one bond I shared with the children of the social service system, whether it was the girls of Caravan House or the young kids in the Children's Shelter (in San Jose)." That bond is the burden of self-blame.
"This was something I recognized when I looked around and at the time it was comforting. I wasn't alone in this mess. I was part of a bigger picture. Of course, it was a bigger, sadder picture."
Earlier, she noted that she had even ridden her bicycle along the street where Caravan House sits and not noticed it as being different.
"But here I was with five other girls who had all been through the emotional ringer and was now going to live with them . . . Looking back, I see that fact that I was able to remain in Palo Alto a Godsend. However, at the time I wasn't so sure.
"Because I had been through so much in the course of a year, I wasn't the same person I used to be. This would come up time and again, when at school I was in constant contact with some of the same people who had known me from elementary school, before my family's downfall.
"What could've possibly happened to turn a girl, who was an ace, not only in school but also in every sport imaginable, into a girl with multi-colored hair, a disdain for school and also authority?"
Gormley said she believes that "teenagers in general have to try so hard, even under normal circumstances" that life can be a real challenge.
"You have the latest fads to keep up with, you've got peer pressure to contend with and God forbid that you look any different than anyone else. Well, add to that the fact that you live in a group home because something must be wrong with you that you don't live with your family and the pressure doubles (maybe even triples)."
There was an "us against them" mentality among the five girls: "I didn't feel like anyone knew what my life had been or was like," she recalled. "All I knew was that my life had been so hard up to that point and it was still difficult. I didn't give people a chance to know how being abandoned, abused and neglected made me feel. I couldn't have because I didn't know.
"The one thing I knew too much about was anger: Anger at the fact that I felt I was paying for other people's mistakes. Anger because the counselors got to go home at night and I couldn't. Anger that I didn't think anyone cared."
But then "one little sentence" began to turn things around for her. She said she hadn't given any thought to how the house was run, where the groceries came from, about the volunteers who came and went--I thought they had all been sentenced to community service"--or about the occasional gifts the girls received, which she thought the house had bought. Then they were treated to a weekend at Point Reyes.
"We learned an anonymous donor had provided this," she said, and it hit her. "Wow. Not only did someone care enough to provide us with a trip, they had just cared . . . Someone in the community knew enough about us to give us something they thought we'd enjoy. And they were right. I found out that, thanks to numerous, nameless donors, we were always being provided for. Whether it was Easter baskets or stockings for Christmas, there was always something that meant that someone cared."
She left Caravan House at age 15 and lived with her sister, Melissa, in San Francisco, "unprepared for real life" and she became an eventual high school dropout. With her sister's help and guidance, she obtained both a GED for high school and a job in the brokerage industry. She now works with the principals of a venture capital firm.
"I've worked hard to get where I am without ever forgetting where I've been," she said. Gormley has recently returned to Caravan House and met some of the current residents, and felt some personal frustration and sorrow at seeing the same anger and distrust in their eyes when they see her, an outsider.
Gormley said her sister is working toward a Ph.D. at UC Davis, and they have reestablished a relationship with they parents. And she recently announced her engagement to be married.
Printed with permission by the Palo Alto Weekly
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