Journal+5

Quotes/Information I definitely want to incorporate:
 * "It would be a better life. I'd be able to concentrate on my schooling. I made it onto the honor roll. It was good to have two parents taking care of me. I didn't have much of a choice."
 * "Back then, people didn't even... Actually my two little sisters didn't even know why and when I left."
 * "You always have regrets. You left your dad, you left your sisters, you let them down."
 * "My mind was free, part of it. You always think about them though."
 * She didn't have contact with her family because her aunt and uncle thought that she should just have them. She felt like she abandoned her family and that she might have been acting selfish.
 * "I went from a happy little girl, outgoing, tomboyish, to where I just come home from school and my mother and baby sister are gone. It put me into a shell that i stayed into for a long time."
 * She understood that her older sister dealt with things differently and resented her for leaving.
 * "As a kid, you're just being a kid. Happy, had a home, a house, a family. You just played and were happy."
 * "If it were now, I still don't think there was any person who would've cared enough to step in and fight for us."
 * She would have been failing school, and living with her mom in an unhappy home if she didn't move.

Quotes/Information I possibly want to use:
 * "There was no mother there. I was the mother, and that was too much for me."
 * Her dad didn't really want her to go. Her sisters didn't mind too much if it was best for her.
 * "You do always have regrets. I didn't know my dad was going to die."
 * "The age you were, you were thinking of just yourself."
 * She became very distant from her mother. She wasn't close to her siblings, and they weren't close to her. She didn't have much of any relationship with her mother until her aunt died. Two of her siblings died, but it hardly affected her because she was not close with them.
 * "I matured when I was eleven. I grew up fast. I took on the responsibility of two little sisters."
 * "So much bad stuff and sad things happened, you block it out, and the good memories are gone too. I can see the house, my dad, my sisters... I can't see my mom."
 * Her aunt and uncle were not the ones to take her in, she made them.

Quotes/Information I will most likely not utilize:
 * She went to her aunt and uncles on weekends to get out of the house.
 * "If I made another decision, it would've been bad for me."
 * She felt depressed and overwhelmed. She felt like she couldn't be a kid.
 * "For a couple months I almost changed my mind at the door. And it took a few months to get comfortable with Aunt Mary and Uncle Dick."
 * "It was more of a safe and secure place where you weren't afraid."
 * "It was a contest between my aunt and uncle with who I loved more."
 * She didn't feel like people loved her and was worried about losing loved ones.
 * "I had a breakdown of some sort. I just couldn't stand it anymore. My dad wasn't there, I was their mother.
 * "In my family, I don't think the time made any difference."
 * There were no family members like grandparents that could have taken care of them.

Ream, Jane. Personal Interview. 19, March 2011.