Lisa Mead Story - Overcoming Childhood Trauma

Lisa Mead: My name is Lisa Meade. I am from Effingham, Kansas and I am a first generation college student. When I first started elementary school I lived near Nortonville, Kansas and between Nortonville and Cummings and then when I got out of high school, I now live in Effingham, Kansas which is like ten minutes from where I used to live. One of the things I used to really want to do was be an archaeologist. I don't like bugs, I don't really like dirt, I don't like working in the heat, and I was like that's probably not a good idea. But, I had always loved history and so I was like, well, what profession could I do something that has to do with history. As I got older and into high school I started babysitting and I found out I love working with kids. I would love to be able to teach kids about history and I want to see if I can make them realize that history is a fun topic. All my favorite teachers were history teachers. My sophomore year and my senior year I had the same teacher, her name was Miss Hanson, and she was great. She was very dedicated to her work, she would be there to help you, and she was a teacher who, if I was having a bad day, she would let me talk to her. She could tell when something was wrong. I want to be that person where if you need to talk about something, it's just, you're having the worst day of your life and you don't think it's ever gonna get better and you just need to vent. I want to be that teacher where my door's open. I want you to be able to come in and feel comfortable talking to me. The kids that, quote-unquote, nobody wants are the kids that I have this soft spot for.

Betty Engle, Lisa's great aunt: Ever since she was small she was always for the underdog. She's always wanted to help everybody and I think that will help her, I do.

Lisa Mead: The kids that have the more troubled past, the troubled backgrounds especially, if it's a family problem because of the stuff that I've been through in my life. I understand where they're coming from a little bit and so I know that to them it's a big deal having somebody to accept you. Having a place where you feel okay and accepted is one of the greatest things you can possibly give somebody. In one word, I feel like my childhood is just kind of tragic. At the very beginning especially. I moved around a lot after my mom passed away.

Betty Engle: Her mother was killed and that was when she was four. So of course, I was the one that had to go pick her up from the daycare after we got word of her mother's accident and bring her back to my house. Something she was with me for about almost another month before her dad moved her out there and took her out on her own.

Lisa Mead: But my father was not a very good person or a very good parent. When I was eight a lot of stuff happened and I almost drowned. My dad decided well fine, we're gonna put you up for adoption and so he gave my maternal grandmother first chance and if she would have said no I would have just been sent to the Oregon foster care system and so my grandma adopted me legally when I was eight and it kind of feels like a lonely childhood. I think for me it was better, there was a lot less physical abuse but it was still really hard emotionally because she wasn't outrightly loving, and so I just got to the point where I would come home from school and I would stay in my room all day.

Well, I didn't really have a lot of help getting into college. The family that I babysat for my sophomore year all the way up to the summer after my freshman year of college. They helped me with, like, how to find the applications to the schools and apply.

Joel McNerny, family friend: And I was asking her if she had done any scholarships or if she had applied to college yet, and she didn't really know how to go about doing that.

Lisa Mead: When I got in I was I was so excited and I like ran to tell everybody.

Joel McNerny: She was very excited and thrilled and bouncing all over the place.

Lisa Mead: It wasn't only I got into my dream school but it was, I can leave here and go somewhere else and do what I want to do, and be myself. And so, it was a great, overall it was just it was a really great day when I got that letter. My mom was going to be a teacher before she had to drop out.

Betty Engle: I think trying to do what she thought her mother wanted her to do as part of her dream.

Lisa Mead: When I was younger I felt guilty, you know, why am I here and my mom's not and so part of it kind of grew out of that but it became, I want to live a life that my mom would be happy to know that's her daughter. As I was growing up, just knowing that I had somebody to talk to even if it was one teacher and it was like once every three weeks that I actually managed to get a word in with that teacher, that kept me going a lot of times just knowing that somebody cared.