jolene cross

biography
From the very moment that Jolene Cross took her first breath in 1988, she was average as could be. As the middle child, she was often overlooked by the gaze of her parents (who really didn’t have much excitement to offer to her life anyways). Jolene accepted that fact, however, and soon learned to enjoy the solitude and serenity that she was given on a day-to-day basis. Even as a young girl, she had an intense passion for reading anything that she could get her hands on. If her nose wasn’t buried in a book, it was highly unlikely that she was conscious in the first place. Certainly, she had the ability to socialize and make friends, especially when she reached proper school age, but Jolene was perpetually pessimistic and preferred to escape to a world other than her own. This carried with her throughout the childhood that she was handed.

Her life became an absolute cliché when the summer before her sophomore year of High School hit. Jolene, always average from head to toe, developed a rare friendship with a boy that lived on her street, and within a couple weeks, he became her first boyfriend. She was completely smitten, and when he asked to go without a condom while she was losing her virginity, her always cautious mind flew out of the window and she didn’t think twice before saying yes. Coincidentally, a couple weeks later, she was struck with morning sickness every day. Her parents and siblings were supportive, though visibly disappointed, but of course, when word got out in school that one of the nerds was knocked up, walking through the halls greeted her with snickers and low-blow-nicknames. Initially, she dealt with this by hiding away like she knew best and blocking her peers out.

Jolene, though, was determined to be a damn good mother, because she knew that it was her responsibility to do so, even if she was only fifteen at the time. Part of that meant that she had to show the people around her that she wasn’t ashamed to be carrying a baby, and by the time that she had a visible bump, she’d broken down her shell enough that she had true friends that she never would’ve met otherwise. She worked her butt off to maintain a relationship with the father of her child and tried harder in school than she ever had before. Her grades skyrocketed and she had never been happier. Finally, on May 9th, 2004, Jolene gave birth to her incredibly healthy baby girl, Amelia Elise Cross.

Two years later, after her graduation from High School, Jolene made the hard decision to leave her family and friends to relocate to Philadelphia to attend community college there. She was unable to balance school, work, and raising a child, however, and dropped out almost immediately. Instead, she began focusing on spending as much time as she could with Amelia, trying her hardest to be the best single mother possible.