Mom, Thank You for Being A Good Role Model

By Kimsang Nget
2024.5.15.

To celebrate Mother’s Day 2024, we would love to share with you a story of a girl named SP.  She is from a remote area in a province about 135km south-west of Phnom Penh city.  She comes from a poor and dysfunctional family.  Her mom passed away nine years ago when she was very young. Later, her father also left her, her younger sister and her grandma to remarry.  Since her grandmother is very old and cannot work, SP was not taken good care of while growing up.  

SP dropped out of school since grade 5.  SP and her younger sister worked hard for their relatives to have food to eat.  They experienced loss, were bullied, blamed, scolded, and also violence.  The greatest suffering she experienced was being raped by her relative when she was 14 years old.  These experiences of being abused and violated made her a mistrustful, acutely stressed person with low self-esteem.  She saw herself as ugly, worthless, helpless, stupid, and hopeless.  She usually reacted to things with doubt, jealousy, great confusion, and aggression.  She also lacked self-care and communication skills.  She grew up in frustration and neglect.  At the Girls’ Home, her personality was very challenging and staying with roommates was very hard for her. 

SP was found by Pleroma Home for Girls (PHG) in July 2020 after the authorities reported her case to us.  Before SP was brought to PHG, she was rescued from an abusive relative by provincial officers.  However, there were setbacks in helping her because she required  many interventions and needed to learn many coping skills to deal with her emotions and needs at the time.  SP herself also wanted to get further education and gain job skills for her future.  Such learning and education were what she truly needed to cope with her emotions and recover from her trauma. 

When we started working with her, we saw that she had many mixed emotions of pain, sadness, pettiness, loneliness, isolation, fear, heart-brokenness, depression and anger.  She sometimes behaved and responded to others with violence and disobeyed caregivers.  She rarely called her family.  Our staff understand she has trauma and know all this is not her fault. We have all worked as a team with the goal of supporting her and building her up again.  Our team has been working so hard to support her as well as her family.  We help our clients by deploying a client-centered approach and her case is no exception.  

We work hard on busy schedules to cater to her special needs. We do not see her as a problem but as a golden seed to grow and to nurture and to let flourish. We responded to her with kindness, patience, genuine love, honesty, care, and consistency.  After one year of adjustment and stability, she was able to attend regular school.  Later on, she went on to learn how to become a hairdresser and also graduated from e-learning complementary junior high school.  She is currently working at a salon.  She is so happy that she can apply her skills to work.  Now she can make money to support herself and her family.  She is willing to learn and hopes to develop her   knowledge and job skills in anticipation of new  opportunities.                                                                        

On April 3, 2024 – her program’s graduation day – she wrote a letter to her mom who is now in heaven. Her letter says, “To my dear mom, I am so happy today!  Do you know your daughter did it.  I am so thankful to you for giving birth to me.  Even though you are not on earth with me, I still remember your words to encourage me to do things.  Your words have encouraged me so much.  You were the strongest person that I have ever seen.  Thank you for being a good role model to me.  Today is a great achievement of my life.  I am so excited!”

She also expresses her gratitude to the organization and their support.  Her big achievements are due to a lot of support from the people around her.  She especially gives thanks to God for blessing and helping her to accomplish these great achievements, as well as to learn how to feel loved and cared for.  Learning from Jesus and our staff, she is committed to spreading this love to others, especially girls and boys in need.  She has also repented and asked for forgiveness for her misbehavior in the past few years. 

We praise the Lord for blessing her life so far. We also show our appreciation for our staff and partners for their great contributions and all their support in bringing about this positive change in SP’s life. We pray that the Lord will help her have a good time and cultivate relationships with the people around her as she moves on to a new page of her journey. 

Let us celebrate Mother’s Day and congratulate SP on her achievements together!!!