Photo cour­tesy of Gwen Thomas 2010

Gwen Thomas of Vacav­ille, CA.  Gwen is a 19-year old, soon-to-be, first year col­lege stu­dent.  I first encoun­tered this young woman through read­ing her blog Per­ma­nent Issues — with a cap­tion that says a mouthful…“i’m learn­ing to live with em’”

It was Gwen’s blog, that made me want to see how much more there was to her.  Sim­ply put — she has a way with words.  One look at her blog, and you will agree.  This young woman, even with all life has dealt her, is on her way to great things.

The Inter­view:

1.  When I read a blog post about your mother a while ago, it sounded like there is a sit­u­a­tion between the two of you. Did she raise you? Is the rela­tion­ship estranged/strained?

My mother is a drug addict, or once was…or still is. I don’t know. We don’t talk, I have never seen her. She gave me up for adop­tion when I was born.  My father has spoke of her and said that she is noth­ing like the per­son she once was nor does she look the same.

2.  How is your rela­tion­ship with the fam­ily that adopted you?

She is such a beau­ti­ful lit­tle woman.  My bio­log­i­cal grand­mother was good friends with her, so her and my bio­log­i­cal mother,a asked her to adopt me.  She has been there for me through every­thing and I couldn’t have asked for a bet­ter sup­port sys­tem. She has never treated me any­thing less than as her child. In a lot of sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions kids aren’t treated with the same love, or given the same atten­tion, as the bio­log­i­cal chil­dren, but this wasn’t the case for me. In fact, it was the total opposite.

3.  Obvi­ously, you have endured your share of life’s strug­gles.  Do you give credit for any par­tic­u­lar ones for con­tribut­ing to the per­son you are today?

Yes, I have been through my share. Uhm, the obvi­ous adop­tion was a hard one to swal­low. I am also a vic­tim of rape, as well as abuse.  I turned to cut­ting and starv­ing myself as a result of my inner tur­moil.  I went through bad breakups, a lot of drama, and just every­day grow­ing up. In my opin­ion, any num­ber of these things can either break you down or build you up. They broke me down — so now I’m build­ing myself back up, and it’s a work in progress…I am a work in progress.  But I am/will progress.

4.  Wow.  That’s trau­matic.  Rape and abuse.  What hap­pened exactly — if you don’t mind talk­ing about it.

At the time when the inci­dent occurred i didn’t want to say any­thing out of guilt.  I felt dirty, wrong, used, all the above, so I held it in and it in turn, fes­tered into anger, pain, depres­sion, and a total emo­tional roller­coaster.   I felt like it was my fault for being at the party, tak­ing a sub­stance i didn’t know any­thing about when in actu­al­ity the ‘friend’ I was there with wasn’t a friend.   She went off and did her thing and left me with some­body i didn’t know.  It wasn’t a high-pressure sit­u­a­tion at the time, just a lit­tle kick­back.  That is, until the drugs were intro­duced into the scene.  I felt like it was all for the sake of a good time.  I’m still haunted by the fact i don’t know how many peo­ple did god knows what to me or how long I was where I was.   I just remem­ber com­ing to and voices ask­ing if I was okay.   My pri­vates were hurt­ing and my pants were off.   My shirt was okay but my under­wear were nowhere to be found…still a mys­tery.   I never went to a doc­tor either.  I always thought I should have, but never did.  I just prayed every­day noth­ing was wrong with me — that I hadn’t been given a dis­ease or preg­nancy.  A few months ago, for the first time, I went through a rough time because I had a ovar­ian cyst and was hos­pi­tal­ized for a week and had surgery.  Thank­fully, while going through all that they ran every test you could think of and I hadn’t con­tracted any­thing nor was I preg­nant.  You live and learn and boy did I Live and Learn!

4.  I’m very sorry to hear that, but happy to know that you emerged so strong from it all. Do you have peo­ple close to you that have helped you through those times or have you had to rely solely, on Gwen when over­com­ing your obsta­cles?

It’s weird because I’ve always had a lot to say…until it comes to me.  In some of those sit­u­a­tions, I spoke on it — and in oth­ers, I said noth­ing.  It just depended on how bad of a toll it took on me and how much of it I could hide.  The sit­u­a­tion with the rape, I held in.  I didn’t tell any­one about it until a few months ago when me and my older sis­ter were hav­ing our usual talk and she opened up to me about some­thing that hap­pened in her life.

5.  Obvi­ously, you have inter­nal­ized a lot of the pain that you decided to remain silenced on.  Let me ask you.  Do you have a cir­cle of friends that you allow into your space? If so, what attracts you to those par­tic­u­lar people?

I am such a loner. I can admit it. I do have one friend and she’s been my best friend for 7 years now.  She is the most amaz­ing per­son to have ever been cre­ated. As I’ve grown, I have cut a lot of peo­ple out of my life and they have done the same to me. It has been for the best, I feel because peo­ple I used to be friends with wouldn’t cut it these days for var­i­ous rea­sons. I’m not anti-friends though and am always open to mak­ing new ones! How­ever, at the same time a friend­ship is a rela­tion­ship, so like a rela­tion­ship, I have my standards.

6.  Has hav­ing your blog served as an out­let at all, and do you rec­om­mend blog­ging for young women?

Absolutely!  I use my blog for every­thing, hon­estly.  My feel­ings, opin­ions, rants, the works.  I’m not close to many peo­ple so I write as if every post is a con­ver­sa­tion with a friend.  It works two angles, really.  1) If you just want to escape or 2) if you want to feel con­nected.  Since I am one of those peo­ple that feels like I’m never under­stood and that my thoughts are too far-fetched for any­one but me to under­stand, it really did become an out­let.  All of a sud­den, peo­ple started lis­ten­ing — or should I say read­ing, and it feels good.

7.  You are very intel­li­gent, artic­u­lat­ing your­self extremely well in every­thing I have been curi­ous enough to read by you ::smil­ing:: Where does that come from?

Thank you very much.  Since I was younger my mom has always read to me and I would always read out loud to her. Look­ing back on it, a lot of the time, I don’t think I gave her much choice. Per­son­ally, I have always enjoyed artic­u­late peo­ple — the way they put their words together and how it has the power to cap­ture a per­son. So when I got old enough to really be able to lis­ten to cer­tain musi­cal artists and read cer­tain books, I was able to appre­ci­ate, as well as dif­fer­en­ti­ate, between the good and bad.  That’s when I decided I wanted to be like the good, where I would take a lit­tle of that spe­cial style and make it my own.

8.  How impor­tant is edu­ca­tion to you?

Very…at least now it is. Through­out high school i didn’t apply myself very much. I actu­ally hated school. I would rather sleep in and show up later. I think if school started at 11 then i would’ve been a bet­ter stu­dent ::laugh­ing::  I did man­age to main­tain a 3.0 GPA and when I begin col­lege this fall, it will be much bet­ter because I real­ize now that edu­ca­tion is what you need to make it in the world — and more impor­tantly, to really uti­lize the gifts God has blessed us with, individually.

9.  You seem very grounded in your thoughts, Gwen.  Who are the peo­ple you look up to and why?

My mom and older sis­ter def­i­nitely, because they are strong, sin­gle par­ents, and beau­ti­ful African Amer­i­can women. They have the biggest hearts and are so smart. my nephew, Lamari and cousins Thorn­ton and Simon show me every time we talk and hang­out the type of rare, good men, that still exist within our race and the world. These are the peo­ple that keep me sane at most times and give me the stim­u­lat­ing con­ver­sa­tion i need to func­tion. a lot of laughs are in there too!

10.  Do you have any contact/relationships with other sib­lings or bio­log­i­cal fam­ily members?

Well, my fam­ily is very larger.  Alto­gether, includ­ing me, there are over 17 sib­lings. I would love to say we are all close but that is not the case. I do know most of them and I often com­mu­ni­cate with them, but I’m closer with some more than others.

11.  You and I talked, pre-interview, about how hard it is to talk about our­selves, but if you had to describe your­self, how would you break down your char­ac­ter? Another way to answer that is to say what those who know you would say about you.

Hmm…I’d have to say — in a word… Com­pli­cated! LOL! There are so many dif­fer­ent parts of me that if on dif­fer­ent days one per­son was to see me and talk to me about a cer­tain topic, and by chance, five of those peo­ple some­how met and the topic was me, there is a chance that none of them would agree on who I was as a person…Intelligent.  Fun.  Oh yeah, laid­back is in there too!  LOL!

12.  What do you love about yourself?

My diver­sity.  It makes me open-minded and easy­go­ing, which is good when you deal with peo­ple — and shop! LOL!

13.  What do you dis­like about yourself?

I have a bit of a tem­per and can have very short patience, but I’ve been try­ing to work on it so I hope I’m get­ting better.

14.  What do you feel been your great­est accom­plish­ment? That “it” thing that makes you proud to be Gwen?

My per­sonal growth.   I am com­fort­able being who I am and con­fi­dent in the new­found me.  It’s taken awhile and I’ve made many mis­takes along the way, but im dig­ging on the new Gwen.

I want to say “thank you” very much for grant­ing Baby­girlz its very 1st “In the Spot­light” inter­view, Gwen.  I sin­cerely, appre­ci­ate your can­dor.  It was a plea­sure.  Wish­ing you the best of luck in all that you do.