Born to a mother that was way too young to even consider raising a child, Kelly (who was named by the nurses in the maternity ward the night she was born) was put up for adoption. Going through the foster system was never easy, especially not for a kid who wasn’t adopted and bounced from house to house. Even though the odds were against her from the day she was born, Kelly was always a mostly pleasant child, she tried to look on the positive side of things. It wasn’t always easy, and she spent a lot of time by herself, but she was a generally happy child.
When she turned nine, it seemed that things were finally starting to look up for her. She was adopted by a couple named Drew and Kathleen Duncan that had been trying to have children of their own but were having no luck. Moving into a house that was going to be considered permanent was a little different for Kelly. The couple that adopted her bought her things, they pampered her, and she quickly became very close with Drew. There was a father/daughter connection almost instantly. Unfortunately, there was not that same connection with Kathleen. They just did not seem to click, and Kelly almost felt like she was unwanted whenever she was around Kathleen.
Things over the next year and a half were very rocky, it took Kathleen awhile to come around. But just as she was starting to come around, tragedy struck. Drew was driving Kelly home from a soccer practice when his car was struck, head-on by another driver. Both Drew and Kelly were sent to the hospital via ambulance. Kelly managed to pull through, but Drew had sustained much worse injuries since the car was hit on the driver’s side. He didn’t make it through the night.
Life for Kelly changed immediately. Kathleen blamed Kelly for the death of her husband, and she started drinking heavily. If Kathleen wasn’t ignoring the existence of the little girl, she was taking out all her anger on her physically. Kelly was forced to grow up very quickly and learn how to be independent if she wanted clean clothes or food. She taught herself how to do laundry and cook, all the while keeping up with her schoolwork. She’d figured out that the only way out of there was to do well in school and get into a good college, and that was what her plan was.
The physical abuse ended not too long after it started, once Kathleen figured out that Kelly was old enough to fight back. Instead, she just left the house for weeks at a time, off on a bender or God knew what else. In between schoolwork and housework, Kelly got a job as soon as she turned fifteen, bussing tables at a local diner. She started saving up money, and would study on her breaks. All her studying paid off, and she managed to graduate near the top of her class. She wasn’t the best, but she did well enough to get herself a scholarship to college, which she took advantage of and got out of Philadelphia as soon as she could.
Attending college up in New York, Kelly majored in social work at New York University. She decided that she was going to put the work in to become a child counselor. Her childhood might have been a much better time had she had someone to talk to, to help her. So she was going to be that person for other children who were going through similar problems. It took her a good six years, but she finally left NYU with a master’s degree in social work. Putting out her resume, she searched for a social work position while working crap jobs that she was ridiculously overqualified for to pay the bills. When the time finally came for her to be able to take the Social Work Exam, Kelly passed on the first try, and she was now able to add the MSW, LSW (Masters in Social Work, Licensed Social Worker) to the end of her name, and it made her resume look that much better to the agencies she was applying to.
It took awhile for everything to work out for Kelly, but by the time she was 26 she was finally hired at an agency as a counselor. The work she was doing made her happy, she loved being able to help people. To treat herself for her new accomplishment, Kelly adopted a dog as a way to congratulate herself. It took her awhile to make up her mind, but the moment she saw Boomer, she knew she had to have him. He was an Alaskan Husky that had been abused by his former owners, so he was very timid and scared. It took awhile, but Kelly was eventually able to get Boomer to come around.
Now living and working at a mental health agency in Tarrytown, Kelly is doing the work she loves and helping people, while her social life takes more of a back burner to work. It’s not the ideal way to live, but she’s happy.
