Danielle arrived at Mercy Home last year on the same day that we were putting up the Christmas tree in our Girls' Home. She hung back quietly as the rest of our girls talked and laughed, stringing Christmas lights and hanging ornaments.
Everyone assumed Danielle's silence was due to shyness and, not wanting to push her too much on her first day, let her be. After a while though, Naomi, one of our youth care workers, sat beside Danielle and asked her what she was thinking. Danielle's face hardened at first, and she looked at the floor, saying nothing.
''I've never had a good Christmas before," she said, quickly breaking the silence and putting her face in her hands as tears started to flow. "You wouldn't believe it, but this is the first time I've had a tree."
As Naomi later learned, Danielle had never known her parents and had lived most of her 16 years shuffling between distant relatives and foster parents. She had moved around so much that every Christmas was spent in a different home. Some of the people she lived with over the years were abusive, others neglected her. During one particularly bad time in her early teens, Danielle had to break into an abandoned building just to find a place to sleep.
Things briefly appeared to look up right around the time that Danielle started high school. She was placed in the care of a cousin, who opened her home to Danielle. But last fall, Danielle's cousin lost her house to foreclosure. The next day, she left Danielle at a friend's house and never came back.
For the next two months, Danielle lived on the streets, staying with friends, on park benches or in homeless shelters. Always a dedicated student, though suffering significantly from the instability of her home life, she managed to make it to school almost every day.
Finally, a school counselor took Danielle under her wing and offered advice that would turn her life around. A week later, Danielle came to Mercy Home on that cold winter day, just weeks before Christmas.
Since then, with the help of Mercy Home's staff and dedicated community of supporters, she has thrived and will even graduate from high school on time.
"My very first good Christmas was last year,'' Danielle said, her eyes briefly misting again. "To have two in a row-that feels like a dream."
Please note: Because we care deeply about protecting the privacy of our boys and girls, we have changed the name used in this story, as well as certain identifying details.
