They Picked the Wrong Victim: Courtney West Surviving Childhood Abuse and Being Adopted Into a New Family

And then...

Even being in a safe environment, did it take a while though for you to turn a lot of those defenses and survival mechanisms off?

Yeah.

To this day, I still struggle with trusting.

Sure.

And not really my parents.

Like, I learned to trust them.

But sometimes, you know, sometimes I get sent back in that survival mode because of, you know, the effect that that trauma has on you.

And growing up, like it'd be years past.

Mind you, it took four years for me and Cameron to get adopted while in a safe home because of the failure in the broken system.

But like, it was so scary to me because that's four years of uncertainty.

And that's four years of having a different last name than your parents.

And at school, people are very confused.

They're like, Well, why don't you have that last name? And then Ellie getting adopted first because her birth parents, my birth mom, her rights were terminated, right? But Ellie has a different dad than me and Cameron.

So her birth dad signed over his rights and she got adopted first.

And that was really confusing.

And I remember crying.

I wanted to be adopted.

I wanted... for it to be done, but Ellie got it first.

And I was kind of confused, but I was happy because they told us that they weren't going to separate us.

So if Ellie got adopted, that meant we were staying.

So that was good.

I was jealous, but it was good.

And then we got Daniel.

Daniel got adopted in like six months because he was just free for adoption if he stayed for us for six months because his parents' rights had been terminated.