Breaking her bonds

Counseling Office Secretary Jaime Bonds’ desire to pursue counseling is fueled by her drive to help students. “I know that the passion that she has for the work she’s doing, for counseling, it comes from her upbringing and not the things that she had, but the things that she didn’t have,” Bonds’ close friend Kela Griffith said.

 

By LOUISE PLATTER – Editor-in-Chief (ODYSSEY Newsmagazine)

Counseling Office Secretary Jaime Bonds was 14 when her mother shook her awake at 2 a.m.

“Where’s your key?”
“It’s on the dresser!”
“Get out.”

After this, Bonds was alone on the frozen Philadelphia streets.

Bonds’ childhood was marked by uncertainty. She grew up in various foster homes until she was 18 years old and the only constant in her life was instability.

“I was the product of an affair, so I was always a secret. My dad’s wife never knew anything about me,” Bonds said. “He’s an attorney with kids and they lived a great life while I was out here by myself, alone and struggling.”

Bonds was born in Philadelphia, along with two other siblings. When she was two years old, she was sent to Athens, Ga., to live with her cousin. However, 10 years later Bonds’ cousin could no longer take care of her.

“I went to stay with my younger sister’s adopted mom, but she wasn’t prepared because I was actually just going to visit,” Bonds said. “Then the day that I was supposed to go home (my cousin) called and said, ‘She can’t come back because I can’t take care of her no more.’”

After briefly staying with her sister’s family, Bonds was sent to live with her biological mother for several years, despite their strained and difficult relationship.

“My mom and I didn’t have a relationship because she was kind of hurt over some things that my dad had done. Since I was the product of an affair, when she looked at me, I reminded her of him,” Bonds said.

Bonds left her mother and was placed in a foster care institution when she was 14. From there, her eighth grade teacher took her in. Bonds stayed with her for nearly a year and a half, but the living situation became unsustainable due to Bonds’ rebellious behavior.

“I had a lot of issues. I was dealing with a lot of hurt. I don’t think that she was prepared for that. I was a good girl from what she saw in school, but behind the scenes there was a lot of pain,” Bonds said. “She did the best that she could, but I did a lot of rebelling because I thought that she was another person who would reject me.”

Bonds’ behavior spiralled out of control. She was depressed and began drinking alcohol frequently with friends.

“There were times when I tried to commit suicide and there were periods where I did a lot of drinking,” Bonds said. “I was pretty much an alcoholic at 14. It was a way to forget about what I was going through.”

Because of her misbehavior, Bonds left her eighth grade teacher and moved for the fifth time to live with a foster family in Camden, N.J. After facing abandonment repeatedly she began searching for a way to gain a constant figure in her life.

“When people come into your life and say, ‘I’m going to be here for you,’ and then they aren’t, it gets to the point where you don’t trust anyone. You don’t think that anyone’s going to be there for you, and so my 16-year-old mind thought, ‘Maybe I should have a baby; my baby’s not going to leave,’” Bonds said.

Bonds had her first child when she was 17 years old and her foster mother allowed her to move into an apartment with the child’s father. The young couple worked multiple jobs and paid their own bills while struggling to graduate from Camden High School.

“For him, it was a lot. He was completely responsible for me and we were struggling. He decided that he was going to join the military and I thought, ‘He’s gonna go to bootcamp and come back and we’re gonna have a wonderful life,’” Bonds said. “So, he went to boot camp and stayed in touch, but he finally felt a sense of freedom. He was finally able to breathe without this responsibility, so our relationship ended.”

After the relationship ended, when Bonds was 18 years old, she and her child had nowhere to go. The child’s father no longer cared for them and she could not return to her foster home because she was no longer a child. Bonds and her daughter stayed in a hotel for three weeks using the money that Bonds had saved, however, as the funds dwindled she was forced to make a decision hat was best for herself and her child.

“I decided to move back to Athens. I got on a plane and I had a bottle, three diapers, and $100, but I was determined that I was going to make it,” Bonds said.

Bonds and her young daughter moved into public housing. Despite being without work, Bonds was determined that public housing would be temporary for her.

“I’ll never forget, a lady was asking me some questions and I was telling her, ‘This is only temporary for me, until I can do better,’ and she just gave me this look like, ‘Yeah, right, that’s what they all say,’” Bonds said.

Bonds realized that she could not look for a job without a place for her daughter to go. She was then living alone and didn’t know anyone in town or have any money. Bonds managed to work out a deal with a daycare provider that gave her free childcare for two weeks while she searched for a job. After the two weeks were up, she would need to pay them back.

“I went to every business on Hawthorne Avenue. Finally, I went into Athens Heritage Nursing Home and it turned out that they were hiring,” Bonds said. “Their schedule was 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. so I told him that if he could allow me to come in at 7:30 a.m, I’d clock out at 2 p.m. and then work until 4:30 p.m. for free. He ended up hiring me.”

Bonds worked at the nursing home for about a year, during which she was able to save enough money to buy a car. Because of this, she was able to look for jobs outside of her immediate area. She took a position at Pilgrim’s Pride, a chicken plant, where she worked for 12 years. It was during this time Bonds began to recover from her turbulent past.

“The turning point for me was when I was 26 years old. I went to a concert and there was a performer there called Kurt Franklin. He had a song called Imagine Me and in the song the lyrics were, “Imagine me being over what my momma did, and being over what my daddy did. Depression is gone, and low self esteem is gone,’” Bonds said, “What he was saying was all of the stuff in my life that I lived and I had experienced.”

The song inspired Bonds to let go of her haunting past and begin to move forward in her life.

“It was like I had been carrying baggage and that day it was as if I was dropping the bags and letting it go. I said, ‘I’ve been depressed for 26 years, but I refuse to live another day like that.’ So that’s my philosophy in life. I’m not going to let anything get me down,” Bonds said. “People say, ‘You’re always happy, you’re always smiling.’ Well, I’ve lived 26 years in my own hell and I refuse to go back there.”

After her epiphany, Bonds decided to pursue counseling in order to help teenagers who are going through problems similar to her own. Bonds had always been interested in the field but she had not believed that it was an option for her.

“I think it was meant to be for her. It goes back her whole life and I think she just wants to give back and make sure teenagers know that there’s other options, and things that happen to you in life that are bad don’t have to define the adult that you’re going to become,” Bond’s close friend Kela Griffith said.

Bonds is successful in reaching out to teenagers, despite the fact that she is not one of the four counselors.

“The counselors call her the fifth counselor because people always come in to see her throughout the day. People don’t even come in to see their counselor, they want to talk to her. She’s a very good resource for them,” Class of 2013 graduate Jackie Gordon said.

CCHS students are not the only ones who are appreciative of Bonds’ position in the counseling office. Monique Douglas, a close friend of Bonds whom she met when she worked at Pilgrim’s Pride, believes that Bonds has found the right place.

“That’s what she wanted to do; she wanted to counsel young people and be in a place where she could talk to kids, encourage them and help them with some of the things that they face. She wanted to encourage them that they can do it,” Douglas said.

According to Bonds, counseling is right for her because she can empathize with teenagers who are facing similar issues to the ones that she did.

“I love being able to interact with teenagers. I like to work with kids and try to understand the struggles that they’re going through because I’ve been through it. I feel like I can relate in that sense,” Bonds said.

Douglas also believes that students have a substantial amount that they can learn from Bonds.
“You can learn from her that you can do anything you want if you’re patient, that your dreams will come to you and that you should never give up on your dreams because they’re all you’ve got,” Douglas said.

Gordon is grateful that she met Bonds due to the guidance and teaching that Bonds had provided her.

“(Bonds) taught me that if I want it, I can do it. Whatever it is that I need, I can get it as long as I know that I have to work for it. If I know that, I can get past anything,” Gordon said.

According to Griffith, Bonds helps students break out of the situations that they are born into.

“She lets the kids know that there’s a whole world out there despite what’s going on in their personal lives. She tells them that there’s a whole world out there to explore and they can do anything that they want to do,” Griffith said.

In the future, Bonds hopes to go into counseling and, ultimately, open a shelter for people who do not have a place to live or to learn basic life skills.

“I want the shelter to teach things that they don’t get, being raised in foster care, like how to cook, clean, wash clothes, how to dress for an interview or going to college. I would like to have a live-in facility so that they have the opportunity to learn those things, not just a typical shelter where you just stay,” Bonds said.

According to Douglas, Bonds’ fortitude and strength is exceptional.

“Most people would have given up, most people would have had a pity party and said, ‘Nobody loves me, I’m not gonna make it, nobody cares.’ But she did it,” Douglas said.

For now, Bonds wants to continue to share her story in hopes of inspiring teenagers who feel that their futures are uncertain.

“I want to be living proof that you can come out of it and that you can be okay. It’s hard when you don’t have a parent at all but you can do it. That’s what I want to let people know,” Bonds said. “You can do it, you can make it, you don’t have to settle for less. I’m not ashamed of where I came from because it’s who I am. If I never went through anything I wouldn’t be able to help somebody else.”

More from Louise Platter