Many children are growing up without parents in today’s America. Most are born into single parent households and even mom is not really there for one reason or another.
Here is an example of what I mean, a 26-year-old California student penned a heartbreaking Craigslist advertisement this week in an effort to “rent a mom and dad” for the holiday season.
Jackie Turner, who says she has been sexually abused in the past and is estranged to her biological parents, wrote in the online post she is even willing to pay $8.00 an hour to the helping family.
“Hello, I am looking to rent a mom and dad for a couple of days during this holiday season. I have never lived with my biological parents in our family together,” Turner wrote in a now deleted Craigslist ad titled, “I want to rent a mom and dad.”
The William Jessup University student told KXTV she looks like a normal girl on the outside, but that isn’t the case.
“On the outside, it looks like I’m the American dream kid,” the 26-year-old said. “But I have a back story that most people wouldn’t believe if they looked at me today.”
Turner told KXTV she previously embraced gang life on the streets as a means to escape a life of physical and emotional abuse. However, after spending a year in jail she sought help from Christian Encounter Ministries, a camp for troubled adults.
“There’s still something deep inside of me,” she said. “There’s this void, my biological parents aren’t here, and it’s kept this hole inside of me.”
“I’ve never felt the touch of my Mom hugging me and holding me,” Turner continued to KXTV. “I don’t know what it’s like to look in my dad’s eyes and feel love instead of hatred.”
The California student says she has received countless responses from victims of abuse in the past after she posted her ad online. Now, Turner plans to organize a gathering of those individuals.
“When you speak up, people start learning that they’re not by themselves,” she said. “Often we lock things inside of ourselves, like a lockbox of our secrets. But then you let one out and realize, ‘I’m not by myself after all, am I?’”
