Lucedaleblessed
Active Member
Only a few days after she turned 18 her bed was empty. She had left during the night.
She had left a letter where she claimed that she had been playing an act because we tried to kill her some years back when we took her to Michigan for a weekend boot camp. She wrote that she had been living in fear for some years and she just waited until she could leave without being forced back.
It has been some weeks where we have searched for her. It seems that she is living in a town two hours drive from here working in a restaurant. Thanks God she got her high school exam.
Thinking back on it I should have realized that something was up. Usually money in her hands would have been spent fast but lately she had no desire to spend money on anything. She must have been saving her money for this so-called escape.
I am disappointed. Sure the camp was tough but it was not supposed to be a punishment. It was lessons in team work and personal accountability. We had researched the camp and we still believe that it was a sound and safe program they had going there. When I check it on Facebook even now years later they are still in operation and the teenagers who have been there state on the Facebook page that they want to go back.
Maybe the camp was a shock for her because we had always shielded and serviced her to a point where her problems were more our doings than her. Before the camp we were not that strict about chores and homework. We also took lessons back from the mandatory parent seminar at the end of the program so we changed and there were consequences when she didnt pull her part. Her grades improved and we didnt have so many fights about chores so I really believed that she benefitted from the program. Apparently I was wrong. She was according to her own words just too afraid to talk to us.
*Right now I will let her reach out to us. I believe that she can manage for herself. She is 18 and an adult. She has made this choice and now she has to stick with it. Still I am sad. If she feared for her life then why didnt she tell anyone? I hope that she will return some day to talk. I want a relationship with her but I know my daughter enough to know that she has to make the first move. Otherwise she will just move on to a point where we cannot find her.
She had left a letter where she claimed that she had been playing an act because we tried to kill her some years back when we took her to Michigan for a weekend boot camp. She wrote that she had been living in fear for some years and she just waited until she could leave without being forced back.
It has been some weeks where we have searched for her. It seems that she is living in a town two hours drive from here working in a restaurant. Thanks God she got her high school exam.
Thinking back on it I should have realized that something was up. Usually money in her hands would have been spent fast but lately she had no desire to spend money on anything. She must have been saving her money for this so-called escape.
I am disappointed. Sure the camp was tough but it was not supposed to be a punishment. It was lessons in team work and personal accountability. We had researched the camp and we still believe that it was a sound and safe program they had going there. When I check it on Facebook even now years later they are still in operation and the teenagers who have been there state on the Facebook page that they want to go back.
Maybe the camp was a shock for her because we had always shielded and serviced her to a point where her problems were more our doings than her. Before the camp we were not that strict about chores and homework. We also took lessons back from the mandatory parent seminar at the end of the program so we changed and there were consequences when she didnt pull her part. Her grades improved and we didnt have so many fights about chores so I really believed that she benefitted from the program. Apparently I was wrong. She was according to her own words just too afraid to talk to us.
*Right now I will let her reach out to us. I believe that she can manage for herself. She is 18 and an adult. She has made this choice and now she has to stick with it. Still I am sad. If she feared for her life then why didnt she tell anyone? I hope that she will return some day to talk. I want a relationship with her but I know my daughter enough to know that she has to make the first move. Otherwise she will just move on to a point where we cannot find her.