Adena Nichole Scanga was born in Kennewick Washington “I was the first person in my family for five generations to be born outside of the state of Colorado”. She felt like an outsider to begin with, since day one Adena has been thrown into a lot of traumatic situations. She was split up from her whole family and put into foster care at a very young age after explaining to her grandma what her current living situation was like, which included sleeping behind a dresser with just a blanket and a pillow and calling that her bedroom: “I would wake up frequently with random people in the house, usually men that I did not know.”
Her mom put out a cigarette in the first root beer she had ever had. It was very upsetting to her and made her cry, leading to her mother locking her in a bathroom with no food or fresh water for three days. The only water for her to drink was in the toilet bowl. She was in total darkness for she was too young to reach the light switch and the sink, until her great grandfather found her asleep on the bathroom floor. She went to her great grandparent’s house and lived with them for a while, until the court decided they were too old to care for someone so young. “That's what led to me going to the foster home, and they started the process so my mom started doing more drugs and started to become more abusive and lying more.” Adena’s mom would tell her that
her dad would try to break in and take her which ended with a lot of problems making her dad end up in prison. At the age of two she testified in court because she was the only one that knew what was actually going on.
Her mom then left her again but this time she was left with a big and scary man, who she later learned was a “Boyfriend” of her mothers “ I don’t remember anything, I remember them coming in and then being taken to the hospital and being told that I had been raped”. She was only three. She was put into foster care and was forced to be friends with a little boy one year older than her, who she is still friends with today. “Trauma leads to other things”. Her grandparents adopted her and the new surroundings were very strange to her, they were older and had already raised their kids ;“they were already over with the little kid thing”. She then moved to California and that's where most of her life took off.
During highschool she had met her boyfriend who was very giving and very generous and accepted her for who she was and the baggage that she carried. He was willing to help and she had never met someone like him. Just four months into dating, they got the news that he had leukemia. “Less than a month later he was gone, after that I thought, well ,what's the point? Why do I even care? Why do I even wanna be alive If I don’t have that person?” she attempted suicide, but her attempt failed. And she ran away from home because she didn't want to go to the state hospital. After her month-long stay in the state hospital she was not looking forward to going home.
Everywhere she looked she was reminded of what she lost. She didn’t know what to expect at school and wasn't looking forward to how people were going to act.
Trying to overcome this trauma was very difficult and overwhelming, she found ways to cope that were not necessarily healthy. Her first husband was physically abusive, and her second marriage was very mentally abusive. “Now my third husband and I are making everyday work.”
Although not remembering being raped when she was very young, it really lowered her self esteem and made her think that she wasn’t good enough, and she did not see her self as clean or pure and that was very important to her as she was growing up Catholic. “I grew up thinking that those things made you unclean, even though I didn't have control of it. And I think that led me to using a lot of drugs, drinking obsessively and a lot of bad choices.”
Today, Adena is a paraprofessional at Salida middle school and is working towards becoming a special education teacher. She has created a family of her own, she is married with two daughters. And has learned relaxing hobbies like crocheting to help her cope with stress and anxiety. Adena overcame many adversities over her life and it made her the strong resilient individual she is today. Out of all the things she learned the most important is to keep going, life will get easier, and you're never really alone. “Everything will be okay in the end, if it’s not okay it’s not the end.”