A fighting spirit shines through
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All I knew were refuges and kids and families that weren’t loving, they were broken families.
– Salvation Army community welfare client, Amber*.
At just 34, Amber’s warm smile and upbeat outlook on life masks a past of trauma, broken trust and a heartbreaking loss of innocence.
She’ll never forget the day, at the age of eight, when she crossed the road with her best friend and watched, horrified, as a car crashed into him, killing him and leaving her unscathed – but only on the outside. “That had a massive, massive impact on me,” she remembers. “And there wasn’t counselling back then.”
That same year, while still reeling with the shock of her best friend dying in front of her, Amber’s mum had an affair, breaking up the family and moving Amber and her siblings into a nearby public housing area.
Amber also felt abandoned by her father who wouldn’t take her to live with him. All this led Amber to underage drinking and delinquency. With little parental support and a home life that was dysfunctional, she found herself on the streets of Sydney at just 13 years of age.
She moved from refuge to refuge and become involved in more serious crime, as she surrounded herself with people who she thought could protect her. She remembers Salvation Army personnel handing out blankets to her on the nights when she slept rough.
The death of a close friend in a high-speed police car chase in which Amber was a passenger and her subsequent suicide attempt was the tipping point that made her realise life needed to change: “I thought, ‘alright, the car accident scared the hell out of me, I almost died, I need to now sort myself out.’”
And she did. During the next few years, Amber completed schooling to the end of year ten and got herself on track, all without the support of her family. She was coping, but only just. When she fell in love with a man who later turned to heroin she was pulled back into a cycle of despair, becoming an addict by the age of 18.
“I started smoking the heroin with him and next thing you know, another two years later, we’re still sitting in the same trap. I was weighing about 45 kilograms – I just thank God I never went to the needle,” she says.
Amazingly, Amber’s fighting spirit again kicked in and she left the relationship and managed to overcome her heroin addiction on her own. In her early 20s, she got a job and finally broke free from the cycle of self-abuse she had been caught in.
“I started working and I thought, ‘oh hang on, there is actually a life out there! I don’t need to be on drugs … I don’t need to be constantly walking around off my head.’”
Now a single mother of two young children, Amber is living independently and doing her best to deal with the hurts of her past through regular therapy and counselling. The Salvation Army has played a role in her recovery through her local Community Welfare Centre, where Amber knows she will receive loving kindness and a helping hand when she needs it.
“Things are a struggle financially,” she says. “But you know when you walk into the Salvos you’re not being judged. They’re fantastic.”
The Salvation Army will continue to support Amber for as long as she needs it. She plans to undertake a counselling course so she can help other young people who fall through the cracks.
“It’s taken a lot of counselling and it’s taken a lot of therapists and everything under the sun for me to actually realise that I’m stronger for what I’ve done,” she says. “I’m a firm believer that someone up there’s looking out for me because I should be dead.”
*Name changed to protect privacy
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