The Effects of Untreated Mental Illness on a Family | Adriene Caldwell

“Most people think foster care is a safe place—but did you know over 20% of people in prison came through that same system? Adrienne Caldwell survived it… but that’s not the whole story. She was placed in care after years of abuse and trauma, only to discover later that her mother wasn’t cruel—she was schizophrenic and untreated. Adrienne lived it, wrote about it, and healed through it. And in today’s episode, she shares the journey from trauma to forgiveness—and how her mother finally got the help she needed. This one will break your heart—and piece it back together

>> Tiffanie: some stories aren't just hard to hear, they're necessary. Did you know that less than 3% of former foster youth attended college and that 20% of the US prison population was once in the foster care system? Those aren't just numbers. There are lives shaped by a system that often fails the most vulnerable. My guest tonight, Adrienne Caldwell, knows this reality all too well. Her story isn't just one of survival. It's one of defiance, resilience, and hope in the face of unimaginable darkness. She has lived through trauma that most can't even fathom. but she's refused to let those experiences define her future. Adrienne, I want to thank you so much for being here with us today.

>> Adriene Caldwell : And it is a privilege to be on the show with you. So thank you for giving me this opportunity.


I have written a book called Unbroken Life Outside the Lines

So, may I go ahead and start? I have written a book. It's called Unbroken Life Outside the Lines. And it is the story of my early childhood to my early 20s. During that time, I have either been a witness to or a victim of the sexual assault of a young girl, the drowning, death of another girl, extreme emotional and physical abuse, abject poverty, mental illness, homelessness, horrifically abusive foster care, bulimia, drug and alcohol addiction, death, suicide, incest, and pedophilia.

>> Tiffanie: So, just to name a few.

>> Adriene Caldwell : Yeah, yeah.

>> Tiffanie: Jesus.

>> Adriene Caldwell : I. I've got a lot of experience under my belt. I was thinking that I would tell you this story, about the sexual assault of the little girl, because, it is. It was a crime. So I need to give a little backstory for it. My grandfather moved my family. He retired Navy, moved the family from Fayetteville, North Carolina, to Houston, supposedly because they had better jobs. And then he abandoned the family. So the family was no longer able to afford the rental house. We moved into a two bedroom apartment, and there were, I think, six or seven of us in it. I was still young. I was about 4 or 5 years old. And one day we were in a courtyard, and a man had brought this beautiful, fun black Labrador. And it was myself, my girlfriend Jane, my other friend Mike, my little boyfriend Mikey. And, my grandmother came out and checked on us and saw that we were having fun, just chasing the dog, running around, playing, and she went back inside. And then the man said he needed to take Buster, the dog, for a walk in the woods, and did any of us want to join him? So we agreed. And, he was holding Jane's hand and leading the way. And my boyfriend Mikey and I were holding hands and we came along the path. There were these two large steps, like you would have to literally step over them. You couldn't just step on them. And it was right then that I got a very intense feeling that something was wrong. And that's when I dropped Mikey's hand. I ran back to our apartment and I said, jane's in the woods with that man. My uncle shot out from the apartment, went and found her in the woods. And when he came back, he was carrying her in his arms. Her dress was completely covered in blood. And my uncle was screaming at me, go to your room. Get in your room. Go to your room. He didn't want me to see it, but I had already seen it. And what we would later find out was that man had used branches to violate this five year old girl. And I would later hear that they were not certain that she would be able to have children because of what he did that evening. Of course, police were called, and I sat in the front of the cruiser and I gave a description of the man as best I could. It actually turned out that he lived in the apartment complex and he was friendly with my grandmother. So they did catch him, huh? And he served a whopping three years. He destroyed that little girl's life, and three years is all he served.

>> Tiffanie: That's bullshit.

>> Adriene Caldwell : I couldn't agree more. And I, I, still have that image to this day of my uncle coming in the door, carrying Jane blood everywhere. And I. I learned something very valuable that day. And it was to listen to my inner voice, to pay attention to, to what my gut is telling me. Because it, you know, alarm bells are going off, you know, that that's a sign to get out. And that's what saved me. And unfortunately, Jane was holding hands with the man in front of us. I couldn't stop them and take Jane with me. the only thing I could do was run and get help. And that is really when I started to learn how cruel the world can be to little girls. And it cascaded after that, her family.

>> Tiffanie: When you did turn around, though, imagine if you wouldn't have. You might have even killed her.

>> Adriene Caldwell : Well, the thought that went through my mind was that could have been me. And I felt the guilt about not being able to help her, not being able to save her. But at the same time, I knew that that was very nearly me and that has stayed with me throughout my life.

>> Tiffanie: You did save her.

>> Adriene Caldwell : I wish I could have, I don't see it that way. But it instilled a fear in me. That never left. And like I said, I've learned to trust my intuition and it has saved me in many, many situations. So.


Jane says she witnessed a young girl drown in a Houston pool

Okay, out of the list that I named, was there anything that you're particularly curious about?

>> Tiffanie: you were going to say something about her family?

>> Adriene Caldwell : Oh, her family. Once she got home from the hospital, they moved immediately. And our apartment complex, it wasn't a luxury complex, but it was decent. You know, things like that weren't supposed to happen there, especially by another resident. I never saw her again. So the only image I have is, you know, my uncle carrying her and screaming, get in your room. I never stayed in touch. I don't think anybody wanted that. I'm sure they just wanted a fresh start.

>> Tiffanie: So Mikey, stay. When you ran back or did he follow you?

>> Adriene Caldwell : We were holding hands, you know, five, five year old boyfriend, girlfriend holding hands, walking behind Jane. And I dropped his hand and turned around and that's when he followed me. Now I think he went to his parents apartment, he didn't come to ours. But yeah, it was horrifying. And sitting in the patrol car, giving the description, trying to explain what had happened. It's. You don't forget something like that. And it. I learned at a very early age the danger that you can face as a girl, as a female. After that apartment complex, the family kind of broke up. My grandmother had four children, so they coupled up and went on their way. My mother was schizophrenic and physically abusive. She wasn't able to hold down, she wasn't qualified enough to hold down a job that she could afford to pay child care. We went to live with my aunt and uncle and it was a hot, just miserable Houston summer day. And the pool was just completely crowded. Like you could barely move around, nobody could swim. It was packed and I had just eaten lunch. And of course there's that old wives tale. You have to wait 30 minutes after you eat before you get in the water. And I was sitting on a, chaise lounge and that's when I saw the girl face down, her head was close to the wall, the side of the pool. And right about at the same time that I saw it, my uncle saw it and he ran over, he grabbed her out of the water and he tried doing cpr, but she was gone. So that was another example of how dangerous life can be. Life is precious and very fragile.

>> Tiffanie: So how old was she?

>> Adriene Caldwell : I think she was between 7 and 9. And I think what happened is she hit her head against the Side of the pool. I think she knocked herself unconscious and she drowned. So, you know, another experience where, you know, people aren't looking out for young girls. That's what I was learning, that I would need to learn to look out for myself and to protect myself. Between those two things, the sexual assault and then the drowning, I felt very powerless, very helpless, very vulnerable. It was shocking. It really was. Especially with all the people in the pool and all the parents around on the chaise lounges, and nobody saw this girl. So, yeah, it's a shame.

>> Tiffanie: So young.

>> Adriene Caldwell : And that's another memory that emblazoned, in my mind. I can still see my uncle grabbing her out of the water and doing compressions and trying to. Trying to revive her. But she was already gone by that time.

>> Tiffanie: Did you end up in foster care?

>> Adriene Caldwell : Yes, I did. So my mother, schizophrenic, she. Okay, I'll tell you the whole story. She had found information on an inmate out at Alcatraz in San Francisco. They had been corresponding, and my mom wanted us to leave our apartment. By this time, we were living in government apartments. I was the only white girl there. There was no one else in that project that was white, not for another year and a half. So the week before school ended, she took my brother and me down to the Greyhound bus station, and she tried to force me to get on bus. Now, my family, my aunts, I had two sets of aunts and uncles. They. They didn't intervene. In fact, they never even came to come check up on me, the caseworker that came out. So I went to my school counselor with the support of my best friend, and she encouraged me to go to the counselor and let them know what's going on. And so I did. And the social worker came out and, said that it was just a mother daughter dispute and everything was fine. And what's interesting is cps, Children's Protective Services was called on my mother when I was in first grade. So if they had taken the time to look. Now, I know this is pre digital, but if they had taken the time to look, they would have seen the. There was already a file on me for abuse. I refused to get on the bus at the Greyhound bus station. She was trying to move us to San Francisco. And I knew that my family, my aunts and uncles, couldn't do much. But I knew that being in a different city without, any support, without any intervention, because my aunts and uncles were the ones that when I would get beaten with a, dog leash, or shoes or anything. They would try to talk to her and tell her that's not the way to discipline. So fast forward a week. It's the last day of school. I am, on the pay phone in front of the convenience store, which was right in front of the Haverstock Hill apartments. And I was calling my aunt, and my mother reached over my shoulder and just clicked the dial. She just hung up the phone call. And nobody came to check on me to make sure that I was all right. And, my mother took me that. That last day of school. She said she wanted to show me something. And she took me into her bedroom closet, which I thought was weird. I was starting to get scared. And she me put my arms up on the wall and spread my legs. And she was beating me with a belt. And I crumbled. And I knocked my head against the wooden dowel rods. Do you know the things. The wooden rods that you hang your clothes on? My head had knocked it loose, and she picked that up instead and continued beating me.


My mother beat me until I had bruises across my face and head

it was essentially like taking a, beating from a baseball bat. And, at one point, the pain was so intense that I lunged at her. Now, I've always been petite. She was larger woman, much stronger. But just the sheer pain just drove me to try to attack her, to try to stop. And she just shoved me on the ground. I was on my back, and she kept hitting me. She didn't care where the blows landed. And I was on the floor with my knees pulled up to my abdomen, trying to protect my stomach. And my arms were like this over. Across my face and across my head. And when they finally took pictures, you could see the bruises all down here, where. If I had not protected my, my skull, then who knows how bad it could be? And at the end of the beating, my mother told me that if I got my brother taken away from her, that she would kill me. Those were her words. I will kill you if you get blank. His name taken away from me. And I asked, I said, would you really kill your own daughter? And she said, well, if I bash your head into the concrete and you die, it is not my fault. So next day, or later that day, we got back on a bus. We went back to the Greyhound bus station. And we're, supposed to go live in a homeless shelter in San Francisco that my mother had found out about. When she called them, she found out that they were closed for renovations. So we ended up spending that night on the benches in the bus station. We had nowhere to go. And I struggled. I knew I had to get away. But leaving my brother, I went back and forth. He was three or four years old. And I was just terrified that if I woke him up, that it would wake my mother up. And she was not joking about killing me. So I ran away. And this friend at the time, her dad flew to San Francisco to pick me up. Well, actually. So I ran away from the bus station. It was like three in the morning. This guy pulled up, he said, hey, do you need a ride? He could see I'd been crying. So I got in and we were in the car for a few stoplights. And then he put his right hand on my thumb. And at the next stoplight, I got out and I ran into this hotel. And they had a phone bank of payphones. That's how old I am. I remember payphones. And so I called my best friend's dad and he came out and I actually had to hide in the restroom in the hotel. Like, I put my feet up on the seat so that if anyone tried to look under the stall that they wouldn't find me. I was terrified of my mother finding. And a friend of the families and my best friend's family, they came and got me after a few hours. And then Jerry arrived and he took me back to Houston on an airplane. The police were with my mother when she was at the bus station reporting me missing. They realized that she didn't have any place to go, any place for David, and that she was not well, that there was something very wrong with her. And they ended up taking my brother into custody. And a week later he was sent back to Houston. So we, we escaped. Our mother.

>> Tiffanie: What did they do with her? Did she go into like a ward or something?

>> Adriene Caldwell : My mother?

>> Tiffanie: Yeah, for her schizophrenia. like, did they put her in a, like a psych ward?

>> Adriene Caldwell : No. So my mother relinquished her parental rights when I was 13 years old. So she had no more claim to us as her children. The plan was for my best friend's family to raise both dad and myself. And, it didn't work that way. I was a 13 year old who had gone through multiple abandonment, severe emotional and physical abuse. I just, I did not fit in with their upper middle class lifestyle. I have never gone to a restaurant where a waiter or a waitress comes and takes your order. So, my brother ended up staying and they asked me to leave. They asked me to go live with my aunt and my uncle. And I did.

>> Tiffanie: I mean, you poor thing, you really been through it, but you should Be so proud of yourself where you are now. Did you seek, like, any therapy? How did you overcome all this?

>> Adriene Caldwell : Okay, let's talk about that.


Bud Light says his mother was homeless and put on medication

Oh, and back to my mother. She didn't get the help she needed for about 10 years. She finally settled in El Paso. She got a social worker, she obtained an apartment. They put her on medication and want to ruin the story, but I was able to see her a decade later. And that's a remarkable story. She had been staying at this homeless shelter in El Paso, and she would take the bus up and work at the chicken farms or the meat processing plants. And I got curious about my mother. And this is still very early Internet, like 98, 99. And I did a white pages search and I found an address and a phone number for a homeless elsewhere in El Paso. And I, asked, you know, if she comes back, can you please let me know? And the woman kept my information on her desk for a year. A year. And then she called me. As soon as my mother returned. I was the only person that got to see my mother doing well. Her brothers and sister were mad at her for giving David and me. They thought we should go to them. My mom saw the lifestyle, how they lived, and she wanted that for us. And as a mother myself, I know that the hardest thing you could possibly do would be to let go of your children. That's something that's taken me years to realize. But she made that self sacrifice for us to give us a better chance. My brother and I stayed with the family until they decided I need to go. So I have two sets of aunts and uncles, ones white trash, that's as nice as I can put it. The other one, they're blue collar, hard workers. My aunt, she would always try to intercede on my back.

>> Tiffanie: At least you had somebody rooting for you. You know, you need that. You need cheerleaders in your life at some point. You do?

>> Adriene Caldwell : Absolutely. When we were in the projects, I went from our apartment to the bus stop to the apartment. I never socialized with anyone. Never. In fact, there was this one time, somebody at the bus station, which was right by the convenience store, was picking on me. And the largest eighth grader you've ever seen in your life, he walked up to the guy and he told him to leave me alone. So, I mean, yeah, when my mother passed, I was the only one that had a chance to go see her. I had visited, El Paso, and we had a great time. I didn't need her to be a mother to me anymore. My aunt had fulfilled that role. I had lived with my aunt and uncle in fourth grade, eighth grade, 12th grade. And I always felt like I had to earn my place. They never said that, but I did the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry. On the laundry, if I found any money in the pockets, I get to keep it. Yeah.

>> Tiffanie: Hell yeah.

>> Adriene Caldwell : I have resolution with my mother. And she knew that I didn't need that relationship with her anymore. We wrote a few times back and forth. I was supposed to write next, but, she was found in her apartment about two weeks after she had passed. I wish the rest of my family could have seen how well she was doing.

>> Tiffanie: Meds can make the whole world of a difference. And it's so important for people to realize, like, when the meds are working, that's especially when people want to get off of them. Because I feel great. Yeah, because you're taking your meds the minute you get off them. you're not going to be who you are right now again. And people need to understand that and just stay on what's working. If it's working, don't mess with it. If you broke, don't fix it.

>> Adriene Caldwell : I could not agree more. She had this pillowcase on her dining room table, and it had all of her meds for every day. And it was like she was a new person. We actually bought a 12 case of bud Light from the corner store, and we got a little tipsy together. So that's one of my fun memories of her. But when she went to relinquish rights with cps, they asked me. They almost begged me to go say goodbye to my mother. And I was so angry at her for beating me the way that she did, for everything, that I refused to say goodbye. I said, I do not want to see her.

>> Tiffanie: I'm glad your last memory of her is a happy one.

>> Adriene Caldwell : Me too. Me too. She got the help she needed. And in my family, they're. They're very old school. They don't believe in mental illness, they don't believe in medication. It's crazy to me. I've been on antidepressants since I was 16 years old, and I'm never getting off of. But it was a shame she didn't get the help she needed sooner. And her brothers and her sister basically ganged up on her, saying, you could have given the kids to us and you could have gone off. But she thought she was giving us a chance for a better life. And for my brother, she did. The family that adopted him, he was severely delayed he was 4 years old and had a vocabulary of about 10 words. And the wife took my brother to speech therapy, worked with him, spent a lot of time, a lot of effort. And I feel that he would not be where he is today were it not for her. I ended up leaving my aunt and uncles because I was in no place to be around a family. They had a two year old toddler that would just hit me over and over and I just, I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle it. So I asked to be put in a foster home. So when we had just gotten back from San Francisco, my best friend's dad didn't want to let us go. The only reason he let us go with CPS is because he was on his phone with his lawyer and the lawyer said, you have to let them go. I stayed in a girl's shelter and then, the adoptive family, they knew a family from their church that did foster care. So they got us placed with them until we could go live with my best friend's family.

>> Tiffanie: I know you said you're taking, taking antidepressants. Did you ever seek out therapy? How did you overcome all this?

>> Adriene Caldwell : So when I wanted to change and go to a foster home, I was envisioning it being the same as the other one.


One of your biggest mistakes of your life was leaving your aunt and uncle

The church family, the foster kids. I could not have been more wrong. One of my biggest mistakes of my life was leaving my aunt and uncle and going to there. So there weren't any regular foster homes for us. And my caseworker explained that the only way for me to get a home instead of a girls shelter was for me to be placed in a higher needs category. a therapeutic foster care program. And it was anything but. But I did have a counselor come out twice a week. No, every two weeks. And we would talk. So my mother was schizophrenic and, beat me nearly to death. And I have never had a nightmare about my mom, the foster parent, the woman that took me in. I've had nightmares about her up until the last two years. And living with her, we were less than human. There's only one full bath in the house and the last foster child to use the shower had to clean the tub out with Comet. The foster parents family would not use the tub with them. That I had to put bleach in their dishes when I was washing them. We had separate food. We weren't allowed to sit on the couches or in chairs. We had to sit on the floor, even separate dishes and silverware. My name for her is the bitch from hell. Tbfh. and I was there for three years, and then I received a congressional scholarship to do a, one year foreign exchange to Germany. So that was my way out. I would rather go to a foreign country where I do not speak the language than to stay with her anymore.

>> Tiffanie: Hi. I'm right there with you. That is ridiculous. Why even take in foster kids if you're. You're going to treat them like they're trash? Did you ever tell your social worker what's going on?

>> Adriene Caldwell : Yeah, yeah, way dead.

>> Tiffanie: But they give you food, so, you.

>> Adriene Caldwell : Know, like, my aunt even went and made complaints. So Mentor Youth was contracted with the state of Texas. So, they weren't actually. They were just contractors. My aunt made waves, like the time the foster mom made me clean the bathroom with a toothbrush. We were not allowed to use their toilet. There were between four and six girls, usually foster girls, and we had a half bath connected to the master, and that was the only toilet we were allowed to use. We could not use the foster family's toilet. So completely degrading. I went in with a service plan to focus on depression, anxiety, and obsessive compulsiveness. I think I made progress on those areas. But the damage that she did, she made us feel like we were sub human. Like we. We were in no way equals. And she even had an alarm on our door at night, so if anybody wanted to get out, it would sound. And door neighbor, a lady named Helen, she worked in the prison system for 30 years. And, there's a police report that I found where it says that she said prisoners are treated better than how that woman treats those girls.

>> Tiffanie: Wow. That's eye opening.

>> Adriene Caldwell : Yes. So one of the reasons I'm writing my book is I know people know, about the corruption. And she was. This woman was a foster parent because she didn't have any other employable skills. We were her income. That's what they did to survive. And it was cruel. And like I said, I. I've had nightmares for the last 35 years, so.

>> Tiffanie: So is your book like a memoir? Do you kind of take people down your whole life?

>> Adriene Caldwell : Correct. From early childhood to early 20s. And going back to the statistics you mentioned, I've read those as well. I am One of the 3% that graduated college in the state of Texas. If you're a ward of the state, you can go to any public state university, and you do not have to pay any tuition or fees. I still had to handle housing arrangements and books and Food and all that. But my college itself was paid for. So that's one thing that had I not been in care, I wouldn't have been able to receive. I have had many blessings in my life. I've had teachers who were involved in care. When my mom and I and my brother were in Haverstock Hill apartments, we could not afford to do laundry in the laundromat. we had to wash our clothes with dish soap and hang them to dry. We couldn't afford toilet paper. We used hand rags, the small face towels and, we would use to wipe with. We didn't have toothpaste. We used baking soap. By the time I did go live with the family that ended up taking my brother, we were malnourished. So the term now is food desert. We didn't have that term when I was going through this. But it would take hours of bus rides to get to a grocery store. And it was, we had the convenience store and then there was a store along the other way where my mother would sell some of her food stamps. So that meant we never got meat. We ate a lot of peanut butter, a lot of eggs. Pretty malnourished when we came. It was a lot. But I am so grateful that I had a chance to say goodbye to my mother. And that's something that, the rest of my family just didn't have that opportunity.


Your book aims to give hope to people struggling with childhood trauma

>> Tiffanie: So if there's someone else out there who's listening that is just having a really rough life. Kind of like what you've gone through, what kind of words of encouragement or what would you say to that person.

>> Adriene Caldwell : There are a couple of things that they're not all my sayings, but I've adopted them. Some of them are mine. The first one, this is how I try to live and how I try to engage with people. Always assume positive intent. You know, if there's a disagreement, don't think the other person's coming into it, trying to screw you over. Assume that they came in with good intentions. Another one that I believe is people make the best decisions they can with the information that they have at the time. Another one is be easily pleased. Just enjoy the small things. You don't need a 10 carat ring, you know, you're fine with a carrot ring. And another thing is to apologize. I was working, I became, a certified financial planner. I was talking to my daughter on the phone and I told my daughter, I'm sorry. And after we hung up, one of my co workers popped up over the cubicle and he Said, did you just apologize to your daughter? And I was like, yes, I absolutely did. And he was like, I would never apologize to my children. And I said, I don't want her growing up thinking that I'm perfect. I'm not. I don't want to have that pressure or that expectation, you know, when I'm in the wrong, she deserves an apology. And that just blew his mind.

>> Tiffanie: So what in the hell wrong with him?

>> Adriene Caldwell : His dad was a general. That's what was wrong with him.

>> Tiffanie: Got ya. Yeah, I think that's good advice. If anyone wanted to get ahold of you, what's the best way I'm gonna have the link to your book in the show notes, but is there any other platform that you talk with people?

>> Adriene Caldwell : Oh, I have a website. It's not live yet. It should be live by next week. And it's unbroken, called C A L D W E L L. And, anyone who goes, they can sign up and they're going to get a bonus chapter. All I need is their name and email. And I swear, no spam. I hate it myself. But they'll get the bonus chapter, and then we'll use their email to notify them when the book is available for purchase. So, yes, I do have that in place now. I'm excited, a lot scared, but I really hope. I actually have two reasons for this book. The first is to give hope to people who are struggling or who have struggled. My secondary audience are social workers, counselors in training, people going through these programs focused on childhood trauma. And I would like my book to be used as part of the curriculum because I don't just have my book. When I was in my early 20s, I requested every piece of paper that CPS had on me. So I have not only my perspective, I have the clinical perspective, I have the psychiatric evaluations. I have all of this information that it will be available on my website, and people can go and just check it out. I used beta readers when I was up to chapter 14, and one of the feedback messages that I got was, no one can accuse you of making this up. You've got receipts.

>> Tiffanie: So.

>> Adriene Caldwell : And I think having that documentation can give more insight into not only what the child's going through, but how to relate. And, I don't know of anybody else who's at the end of my book. I'm including my full psychiatric evaluation, at 13 years old. And it's astonishing how correct they were. And then I'm also going to have an abuse diagram. It's like a paper doll shape. And on it were all the markings from all of the bruises that I had all over me. So those two things are going to be at the end of the book.

>> Tiffanie: I, think this is good because obviously changes need to be made. They need to make stricter laws. I don't know what they're going to do because, I mean, obviously they need more workers, and people just don't seem to want to work anymore. So it's. I get that they have big caseloads, but they got to figure something out because changes need to be made.

>> Adriene Caldwell : I couldn't agree more. My psychiatrist, I sent her my manuscript, like, way back when. It was just freshly written. And she asked me. She had an intern with her, and she asked me if I'd let the intern read it. So I sent it to the intern. The intern's now a therapist focusing on childhood trauma. And, she told me that I brought to light things that she had never considered before and that my manuscript is part of the reason she decided to go into the field that she did. So I. I, feel like I can help on both fronts. The clinical as well as the humanitarian.

>> Tiffanie: Absolutely. See, you are changing lives.

>> Adriene Caldwell : I hope so. I hope so. If I make a true difference in one person's life, I will consider that a success.

>> Tiffanie: Well, I can guarantee you have.

>> Adriene Caldwell : So thank you. Thank you very much.

>> Tiffanie: And I'm being completely 100% honest.

>> Adriene Caldwell : Thank you very much. Writing the book has been nothing short of traumatic, reliving everything. But I think it's for a good cause. You know, I want my story told. My psychiatrist, once the book is printed, she's going to give it to judges, to people higher up in cps. She and, the intern, now therapist, is going to provide the book to her professors, and it'll be insanely labor intensive, but I'm going to send a book to the head of every psychology counseling program that I can possibly find.

>> Tiffanie: When will the book be published?

>> Adriene Caldwell : September.

>> Tiffanie: Okay.


Caldwell says teachers really made a difference in his life

So is there anything else you wanted to add?

>> Adriene Caldwell : Just another unbroken. Caldwell.com. please visit. They can look at pictures and documents. And, you know, the form really is as simple as your name and your email. Then you get a bonus chapter, and we let them know when the book's available, so.

>> Tiffanie: Got it. Yeah. All right. I just commend you. I do. You don't give yourself enough credit.

>> Adriene Caldwell : Thank you. Thank you. I didn't do it alone. I've had my aunt and uncle. Not the trashy ones, the nice ones. They've been in my life. And, teachers really made a difference.

>> Tiffanie: You deserve it. Just because you came from bad times doesn't make you a bad person.

>> Adriene Caldwell : No, thank you. Thank you very much.