Finding a family

Holly Cormack grew up in foster care, but it was at The Salvation Army that she found her true family.

I recall my childhood as a difficult time. My father was violent and an alcoholic. My mother was addicted to gambling and completely disengaged. I have memories of being left all day or night when I was six, looking after my brother. We never had any food in our house.

My first experience of The Salvation Army was when I was seven, and my mother sent me to stay with my dad, who was at a Salvation Army half-way house in Upper Hutt. The person in charge there offered to take us to church. So we went along, and I just loved it. It was fun, inviting, and the people were so kind. I went back to live with my mum, but kept going to Sunday School.

When I was 11, I remember Child, Youth and Family coming to our house with the Police. It was really scary, and right then and there they uplifted me and my brother. A neighbour had alerted them, after seeing the state of our house, and us being left alone there.

I remember sitting in a meeting with my mother, the police, the principal of my school, and my CYF social worker. The social worker asked me, ‘Do you want to go back to your mother?’ It was really hard, but with my mother right there I said, ‘No’.

I had a friend, whose family was at The Salvation Army, and they took me in. My foster parents were wonderful and they did their best, but I was very angry and difficult to deal with. It culminated when I was 15 and I ‘ran away from home’.

So by 16, I was on my own, on the Unsupported Youth Benefit. Again, through my Salvation Army family, some friends’ parents offered me board. They were lovely and gracious towards me, but I was still out of control. At 17, I fell pregnant. That catapulted me into the adult world—I moved in with my daughter Gabby’s father and we tried to make a go of it. Of course, it all fell to pieces.

I was still wanting to go out and party, and would leave Gabby with my friend Alana, who I met at church when I was 12 and who stuck with me through thick and thin. But she confronted me, and said that I had to change my life. That was a turning point for me.

I moved to Napier and was determined to make a fresh start, so I started going to the Salvation Army corps there. That’s when I really started to grow my relationship with God and let him change me. Since then he has just continued to build me up. In 2009, I met my husband Che and we now have two children, Braxton and Indi. We moved back to Upper Hutt to put down our roots, and Che now works as manager of the Petone Family Store.

I still struggle with day-to-day life sometimes, because I never had a mother who taught me the simple things like eating well, housework or how to parent. But through the amazing people God has surrounded me with, I have many spiritual mothers and fathers.

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By Holly Cormack (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 28 May 2016, pp 9
You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.