“I just turned 30,” he told me. His life was far from glamourous, but he has come to grips with that as he ages.
“I was taken away from my parents at age 1,” he said with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. He went on to tell me that he has pins in his back and even a small plate of metal in his head, caused by the hands of his father. It was at that point that I began to understand why the Department of Children Services took him away from his mother and father at such a young age.
Apparently, he went into foster care and eventually back to his parents and then back into the foster care system and then back to parents. It was a tug of war between parents and people he didn’t know. Allen later became a ward of the State of Indiana.
“It never did heal properly,” he told me while talking about his child abuse and battle scars. I then asked him if he ever sees his father today and if so, has he forgiven him? He smiled, “I have forgiven him.”
While forgiving is one positive step, moving forward can take years. Allen is homeless and living in shelters some nights when the temperature drops while living on the street other nights.
By the way, Allen told me that when he told his father that he forgave him, his father responded, “I appreciate it, but there is nothing I can do about it now.”