Loving Life's Moments: 20 years in the making...

Imagine this. You are eight years old. You have spent most of your young life taking care of your younger siblings. At the time there are nine kids. ranging from ages 9 years to 2 months old. It has been your responsibility to make sure they are safe, and warm, and fed. This could mean anything from stealing milk to cooking food. This could mean taking a beating for something you didn't do so that your younger siblings didn't have to endure that. Mind you I am an eight year old child myself. This was the life I lived, this is all I knew, and this is all they knew. My own mother abandoned her children but kept having more. I remember it very clearly every summer she would give birth and bring a new baby home from the hospital. The only problem was she was so high or drunk all the time that she couldn't actually take care of these babies. So someone had to do it, and that someone was me.

Imagine this. You are eight years old and all of a sudden everything you have known is suddenly ripped right out from under your feet. Your entire world all of a sudden shattered right before your eyes. Imagine being home with your siblings and mom one moment, and then all f a sudden you find yourself in a strange building full of other children, and only a few of them your siblings. Imagine standing or sitting there watching one by one as your siblings are being shipped out to emergency foster homes. Not knowing at the time that this would very well be your last time seeing some of them for a very long time. This is my reality. This is what happened to me in 1997. Ten children. Eight boys. Two girls. A family forever ripped apart. All because the two people who decided to bring all of these children in to the world, couldn't care enough to take care of them, to stop the drugs, and abuse. They chose the drug life over the ten lives they had brought earth side.

I saw my siblings a few times at "sibling visits" but by 1999-2000 most of them had moved on. Foster families turned in to adopted families, and just like that they were gone. I vowed at a very young age that when I turned 18 I would get them all back. Oh how naive I was. I have spent the majority of my childhood, teen years, and adolescent years searching and praying that one day I would fin them all. It has NOT been an easy journey, it has been a journey full of pain and heartache. Unimaginable emptiness. My heart has been shattered into nine different pieces.

Almost twenty years later, I have accomplished what I always dreamed would happen. I have located and reconnected with 8 out of nine of my siblings. It hasn't been easy. Trust me when I say it has been one of the most heart breaking journeys I have been on thus far. Two weeks ago I found our second to youngest sibling. He was only two months old when we were placed into the foster care system. He was adopted right away and I never heard from him or his family again. He is nineteen years old now.

Here are my siblings. My blood. My family. Even though we weren't able to grow up together, and we all have very different stories, we are one.

Here are some pictures of all of us now. From oldest to youngest.

This is the oldest Joshua Paul Martin he is 29

This is me Rebecca Marie Martin and my twin sister Pauline Marie Martin we are 28

This is Daniel William Martin he is 27

This is Brandon Ian Serrels he is 25

This is Samuel Robert Stephens he is 24

This is Noah Jacob Goudeau he is 22

This is Joseph David Stephens he is 20

This is David Bender he is 19

That is all that we have found so far, some of us haven't yet met in person. Like David he is in Japan right now, he is a United States Marine. Brandon is is West Virginia and not interested in a relationship.

Here are a few recent pictures of some of us together,