Everyday Heroes-Shannon

In a perfect world, every little girl would grow up safe and secure. She would feel protected and loved in her home. She would be free to explore the world around her, and spend her childhood discovering who she is, what she’s good at, what she loves.  In a perfect world, no little girl would need to be removed from her home and sent to live with strangers.

 

But it’s not a perfect world, as Shannon VanderArk, 29, of Mt. Vernon knows.

 

Shannon is one of the little girls taken from her home for her protection, never to return. On many levels, hers is a tragic story; but to listen to her tell it, hers is a story of hope and purpose – of the persistent, determined love of a foster family that helped her overcome her family legacy and gave her a foundation for her future and her future generations.

 

The abuse, which Shannon describes as physical, verbal and sexual, started when she was four. Her abuser was her mother’s live-in boyfriend and continued until Shannon was removed from the home by Children’s Protective Services at age seven. Her mother denied the allegations, marrying her daughter’s abuser while he was in prison serving his sentence for what he did to Shannon.

 

Meanwhile, Shannon entered the Child Welfare System. While she was now safe from her mother’s boyfriend, her life was still far from perfect.  Shannon was one of thousands of children in the overburdened foster care system, and found herself rapidly moving from home to home. She can’t give an accurate count of the number of homes she lived in, but knows she lived in Whatcom, Skagit, and Oak Harbor-all between the ages of seven and eleven. She remembers carrying everything she owned in a large black trash bag and feeling like “nothing seemed permanent. As soon as I thought, ‘well, maybe this is someplace I’ll be staying for awhile’, I was told to gather my things, it’s time to leave again.” 

 

She remembers never feeling grounded, “I really didn’t know where I would be sleeping next, or what school I would attend, or what city I would be living in.” The frequent moves and school changes left huge gaps in her academic and social development.  How do you learn when you may not have the same teacher next week? How do you make friends? At a time when most children are having slumber parties and doing homework, playing soccer or learning to play piano, Shannon was worrying about where she’d sleep that night. Underneath all of the anxiety this created, she longed to return to her home. Even with all the pain, at least it felt like a place where she might belong. She longed to feel important, necessary, loved.

 

Shannon was growing up; getting older and more and more detached from life emotionally. By the time she turned eleven and was facing yet another move (the foster family was having marital problems and thought moving her might help), her Social Worker informed her that if this new placement didn’t work out, her next stop would be a group home.

 

This couple, Don and Trish Herzberg, were brand new foster parents. Shannon would be their second placement. Shannon recalls thinking that their home was the most beautiful place she’d ever seen. The Herzberg’s lovely home proved to be a place of great healing for her. They introduced her to “a different kind of love”.  Don and Trish were faithful members of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Mt. Vernon, and Shannon started attending church with them.   She sees this as the turning point in her life. 

 

Somewhere in the acceptance and love she felt from her foster parents, her church, and her new relationship with God, Shannon says she began feeling her heart change: not holding on to her past so much, seeing herself through the love these people had for her rather than through the circumstances of her life.

 

In the seventeen years since Shannon came into the Herzberg’s newly licensed foster home, everything’s changed. Shannon met and married Collin, 27, now the worship pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, the same church she first attended with the Herzbergs. Collin was in youth group with her, and they became high school sweethearts. Now married eight years, they have two children, Canaan, age seven and Taylor, age four. She and her birth mother have a reconciled relationship – Shannon is quick to say that she is a wonderful grandmother, and that her mother, too, is growing and learning . . . “she’s a lovely woman who . . . suffered a life of abuse, she has grown leaps and bounds.”

 

For years, only the people closest to her knew her story because Shannon was afraid that others wouldn’t understand, or would somehow look down on her because of it. But she kept finding herself in situations where everyone in the group was telling their life story, so she shared a bit of hers. This happened several times, and each time she told a little more to bigger and bigger groups. Shannon says when she finished she would wonder if she’d said too much, or alienated people, but every time, someone would come up to her and thank her for being so honest.  It’s led to opportunities to help others that she hadn’t expected. One time, a young girl came up to her and shared that she, too, had experienced sexual abuse at the hands of a relative, and that she’d never felt safe telling about it before but she felt she could trust Shannon because of what she’d shared.

 

These types of results led her to believe that there is “a purpose and a plan for everything that we go through. If it [her story] can impact just one person, then it’s enough.”

 

Her need to make a difference led her to join with Fostering Together in their efforts to raise up foster families in Washington. She’s been a guest speaker for them and this December started a foster parent support group at her church . . . the same church she’s attended the past seventeen years.  Shannon’s desire is that in speaking out, she can give encouragement and hope to children in foster care--hope that they can “change their family legacy”. She sees that change in her family already. When her son, Canaan, was helping her at the sign up table for her support group, he grabbed the sheet and put his name down as a volunteer; he said he wanted to help by “playing with the kids that don’t have families.”

 

It isn’t a perfect world. But Shannon would say, that with foster families like the Herzbergs, scared, lonely, and hurt little girls can find a place where they belong, and from that safe place, they can go out and help other scared, lonely, and hurt children. They can make a difference.