Robert

As a child, Robert learned to live without electricity, running water, food in the cupboards. He felt the loneliness of returning to an empty home, silently wishing someone had cared enough to wait up for him, cared enough to be there. It was his life for more than 10 years, the life he lived with his alcoholic, drug-addicted father.

“I wanted to feel like there were rules, so I made up a curfew and created a story in my head that I had to be home because someone would be waiting for me,” Robert remembers. “But he was never there.”

Instead, Robert’s father spent his time getting drunk and high, throwing away any money he earned at his minimum-wage job to fuel his addictions. It was a cycle Robert’s family and friends believed he was destined to repeat. For a while, Robert believed it, too.

Until he couldn’t take it anymore. The emptiness, the neglect, the hardships no child should endure.

As he began confiding in adults, Robert started to understand he didn’t deserve to live without electricity, without food, without love. He soon joined a loving foster family eager to accept him as their own. Instead of listening to others label him a failure, Robert heard words of encouragement and praise.

“That’s when my dreams got big,” Robert says. “When I was with my dad, I thought I’d be lucky if I finished high school. But, with them [my foster family], it was a total flip – it was mind-blowing.”

Already in his teens, Robert was close to “aging out” of foster care and, because of his upbringing, worried about life on his own. While other parents taught their children how to manage allowance, study hard and strive for success, Robert watched his father lose job after job, stop paying bills and spiral downward as he succumbed to his addictions.

Fortunately, Robert learned about CHS’ Independent Living program, which helps teens learn skills vital to live independently and make positive decisions as they become adults.

“As I learned, I tried to inhale the knowledge,” he says. “I learned about banking, housing, how to hold a job – my dad never taught me any of it. Without this program, I wouldn’t know it.”

Robert credits CHS for teaching him how to maintain his studies so he could finish high school; prior to joining the Independent Living program, he assumed he’d drop out of high school like his father. Instead, Robert’s a high school graduate (with honors), a college student and an intern with the Walt Disney World College Program – a dream come true for the aspiring photographer.

“CHS helped me get to where I am,” Robert says. “And I expect myself to do so much more – I won’t be the mediocre kid who just gets by. I have lots of dreams, and they’re all pretty big.”