Profile Final Draft

Emily made muddy footprints across her yard as she trekked towards her car, her mother in tow. Her shoes squelched in the mud creating a mess— curse the rain and the lack of grass seed—but what wasn’t a mess these days? The twenty-minute car ride was quiet, but not out of the usual. She had learned over the years that her mom was a woman of few words. Today was her mom’s birthday so Emily treated her with a trip to the Garrison House. They walked in, ordered, and sipped on their coffees—the brick, wood, and comfy furnishings provided a relaxing atmosphere. They drove back to their house and Emily felt content. “Good day,” she thought.

After she settled into her bed, her favorite relaxation spot, she heard steps coming down the stairs. Her mom appeared in the doorway, Bible in hand. A few passages were read aloud and her mom left just as fast as she had come.

“Huh, that was weird. I don’t know that was about,” Emily thought to herself as she continued about her business.

Time passed. Her stepdad descended the stairs and started reading aloud from his Bible as well. He closed the book, looked her in the eyes, and in no few words told her, “You can repent or you can leave.”

Emily scrounged up her most prized belongings and started calculating her next moves. She would not “repent” for the dividing issues between her two families and being deemed too irreligious for Patrick’s liking, he would get too much of a power trip off of that and this was the last straw. Leaving was, in her mind, her only option. She left that day and never turned back.

Although she didn’t let this issue hold her back from pursuing her dreams, and will be graduating from the University of Iowa in May, getting kicked out of her home a few weeks before the end of her senior year was definitely an issue she never saw coming.

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Emily Marvin’s home life has felt strained for as long as she can remember. She came into the picture when her mom and dad were 17 and on the brink of graduating high school. Even though the pregnancy came as a shock, her parents tried their best to make it work, but their best didn’t prove to be enough. After her parents parted ways, Patrick arrived shortly after.  Emily’s mom, Miranda, and Patrick were wed in 2001 when Emily was five. Her siblings, Alayna and Jayven, entered the picture a few years later.

She doesn’t remember many of the specifics of growing up, as most memories of childhood are fuzzy around the edges, but she does recall a feeling of uncomfortableness within her home.

“To put it into words, it kind of felt like absolute garbage. I just felt like I didn’t belong there,” Emily said.

Outside of family meals and church outings, Emily spent much of her time alone.

Her feelings of being excluded were punctuated by many factors. One of which was her mother’s unwillingness to show affection.

Emily’s mom grew up in a household where it was uncommon to display love for one another. Because of this, Miranda had trouble displaying these feelings to her kids.

“I can probably count on one hand the amount of times she’s said ‘I love you’ or said something like it,” Emily said. “With my dad and grandma, all I got was love and hugs.”

Not only did her mom lack in the area of showing affection, but she lacked in the area of showing her own authority as well.

Many times when Emily asked to hang out with her friends or go to social events at school, her mom would tell her to go ask Patrick. No opinion. No second thought. Ask Patrick.

She could tell Patrick reveled in having total authority within the house and would prohibit her from participating in many activities without a second thought.

“He would say yes or no based on his mood. We wouldn’t even be doing anything that weekend as a family or there would be no reason other than he just didn’t want me to go,” Emily said.

Taylor King, one of Emily’s friends growing up, saw this kind of strict behavior in her parents quite frequently.

“I remember the first time Emily was able to to stay the night at the house, it was a good fight with her mom because she didn’t like my parents for not being religious and not doing things how she did them,” Taylor said.

Needless to say, Emily didn’t get to spend much time with people outside of her house, but Patrick didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he discounted her feelings as if they were invalid.

Emily recalls sending an email to her mom the summer before her senior year, in which she detailed all of her feelings about Patrick making her uncomfortable and feeling mistreated in her home.

Her mom never responded to the email, but Patrick made sure to as soon as Emily came back. He said her email was filled with “lies and misinformation.” She was confused as to how it could be lies when it was simply how she felt.

Then came the religious restrictions on her actions.

Emily recalls reading the Harry Potter books when she was in upper elementary school, a book series many kids have grown to know and love.

Her mother stumbled upon her reading these books one day and promptly told her to return them. In her confusion, Emily asked why and was told the books contain evil themes, including witchcraft and spells.

Emily decided to make a big show of returning the books but would continue to read them in private. After getting caught, her parents started to regularly censor books she brought home.

Her grandmother on her dad’s side, Deborah, would regularly buy her books over the summer, which Emily, as an avid book reader, loved. Her parents would sift through these books once she returned home for the fall and confiscate any books they deemed to be “unholy.”

Other restrictions such as the “no dating rule,” among others, came later. All rules that she didn’t know even existed until she broke them and was admonished for her behavior.

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Emily became accustomed to this life, in all of its undesirableness, but everything started to go downhill her senior year of high school.

The rift between her mom and dad’s side of the family continued to grow and Emily got caught in the middle. The summer before her senior year started her mom and stepdad started battling her dad, Damon, for child support, even though he had already provided her nonofficial support through the years by housing her in the summers and providing her with the items that she needed. Her dad submitted and started filling out the necessary paperwork.

During this time, Emily received front row tickets to see one of her favorite artists, Ben Folds. She was elated to receive this birthday gift from her dad and snag front row seats. However, since this was in the midst of the heated tensions between parents, Emily’s mom and Patrick told her she couldn’t go until the paperwork was processed. Paperwork that had been submitted months prior, but still hadn’t gone through.

Her dad was furious, threatening to show up at their property with the sheriff if they refused to let him see his daughter. They finally relented, but the damage had been done. Emily felt stuck in the middle and at a loss for what to do.

Other instances of arguments between her families continued throughout the year. Her mom and Patrick would unreasonably prevent her from doing something, she would tell her dad, her dad would call them, upset, Patrick would confiscate her phone as a consequence, and the cycle continued.

After confiscating her phone and discovering messages of Emily discussing her situation with her friends and family, they would start to take away her phone on a regular basis.

Everything came to a head on her mother’s birthday, April 18, 2015.

Emily was told to repent for her actions and tell her dad’s side of the family to apologize for their behavior or she would no longer have a home.

She packed up that night and left to go to her dad’s in Omaha.

She texted her mom to arrange picking up the rest of her belongings and was told she’d have to wait until Patrick was at home.

I helped her pack up her things that day. All of her items were sitting outside of the house in the driveway and Patrick watched with eagle eyes as we loaded up what she needed.

“Patrick just sat there on the porch to watch, as if I would vandalize my own stuff or destroy their property. Even though they had lived with me my whole life and they know that I’m not that kind of person. I just wanted to get the fuck out of there, to be honest. Get all my shit. Get out. That’s what I’ve wanted since I was 8 years old,” Emily said.

I followed her in my car to her aunt’s house in Maryville, where she was told she could store some of her things and she dropped the remainder of her belongings off at Taylor’s, a mutual friend of ours who was willing to house her until graduation.

With graduation less than four weeks away, Emily was officially homeless.

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Many people were taken aback by what happened to Emily that year. Quiet, well-behaved Emily, salutatorian of her class, had been kicked out.

Former teacher, Carl Rankin, was one of these people. He knew that Emily’s family life was strained to say the least, but he didn’t know the full extent of it. He always viewed her as an amazing student, calling her a “veracious reader and an amazing writer.”  She remains one of his favorite students to this day.

Carl was also impressed by the maturity she displayed in handling her situation.

“What I remember the most is that she did not make a big pity party with it, and I believe many teachers at school never knew it happened.  Other than a sadness in her eyes, she did not let it affect her schoolwork or her academic performance,” Carl said. “I am amazed that after serious family issues as a senior in high school she was able to not use that as an excuse to fail or not try. She took that difficult time in her life and channeled it into dedication and success.”

Her teachers and fellow students weren’t the only ones that were worried about her. Her family was as well. Omaha is far from Bedford, so staying with her dad was not viable, but he was glad that she was able to find living arrangements with Taylor.

“She was welcomed into the house like she was me or one of my mom’s other kids,” Taylor said.

Damon is ultimately saddened by the whole incident.

“Ultimately, I am sad that Emily doesn’t have a mother. If anyone deserves one, it’s her. This old chunk of coal can’t provide that perspective for her. I can’t believe, as her daughter gave a speech at graduation, that Miranda sat at home, unable to stand up to her husband and, for the sake of the fact that you will NEVER get that moment back, show up and see her kid succeeding. And now Emily is about to graduate from college. Her mom is going to miss out on that as well. I can’t fathom it. As someone with an estranged parent I can honestly say. I can’t imagine going a week without talking to my beautiful Emily. How my father and Emily’s mother have gone years, I just don’t understand. You give everything you have to make sure they make it to adulthood and then you have nothing left for them? Their religion allows this? To me, there is nothing more monstrous than denying your child. I’m glad I don’t have to live with that guilt,” Damon said.

To top it all off, Emily’s mom and stepdad continued to receive $700 a month in child support for a child they prohibited from living under their own roof. Emily never saw any of it.

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Unfortunately, this isn’t a single incidence, kids get kicked out of their parents’ homes or disowned more frequently than one might think.

Kaycie Strobl, a fellow classmate of mine, said her cousin got kicked out of his house because he chose to no longer be a Jehovah’s Witness.

One of my former classmates from home recently got disowned by his dad after coming out as gay. He was written out of the will and was told to never come to family events again.

In the case of these people, they have to make do without their parents in their lives.

Emily hasn’t heard a word from her mother or stepdad since she got kicked out, other than to be told she got taken off of their car insurance.

Emily will be graduating from the University of Iowa this May with a Bachelors in English and Creative Writing with a focus in Publishing. Her mom and stepdad will not be there to see it, but the rest of her family is extremely proud of her. She still remains close with her grandparents on her mother’s side and even keeps in touch with Patrick’s parents as well.

“It’s shitty, but . . . life goes on,” Emily said.