I can honestly say that my ¾ Cherokee heritage is hated most by my mother; oddly enough. my grandmother in Cincinnati, Ohio raised me instead of my mother in Swannanoa North Carolina. This was a good tragedy for me due to the novelty of having a Cherokee baby in Ohio. Me being unique and precious to family and strangers would soon come to pass. As age sets upon me, there was a kind of shell shock when I started school. My skin color appeared insulting to most children and intern there were bullies all day every day. They found reasons to bully me with every aspect of who I am and as time went on so was my hair color and the fact it was curly didn’t help at all. The green shade of my eyes scared people and really stood out with my dark skin. …show more content…
Mr. Stanton was my history teacher and made it a point to be different. He came into school dressed like the current character we were studying. He was a wonderful teacher that spent many hours after school with me helping me deal with cultural differences and why I was a threat to others. Mr. Stanton taught me about my heritage and how to deal with the conflict I dealt with every day. Understanding that everyone is different and how one day I would not be different to others any more helped me deal with the bullies and life situations for the rest of my life.
We moved so much and it seemed that we were always going to a “better neighborhood” my grandmother would tell me, but they weren’t good at all. The neighborhood was always predominantly Anglo American and middle class which left me bullied and scarred still.
At 14 years old my social skills were embryonic to say the least and always been culturally diverse; my grandmother thought my Aunt Sherry could help with this because of her high social and financial status, but once again there was no good outcome of this. The situation I endured from staying with my Aunt and Uncle that year lead to a huge sex trafficking cult that was the attention of the media once I broke my