The struggles in adolescence

I’ve given Chapter Four of ‘Beyond the Red Door’ the title of Invisible Scars. In this chapter, I describe my struggles with that difficult time we all go through - adolescence.
Just being a teenager is hard enough to survive with the emphasis on fitting in, looking good, and knowing yourself. Add to that the extra pressures of having a disability, which immediately sets you apart from the rest, and being adopted and without a solid foundation to fall back on.
These were the issues I had to deal with as a teenager going through high school. In my transition to high school, I lost the strong and confident qualities I had as a child. It was as though they had been sucked away from me. I was left with low self-esteem, no confidence and no idea of who I really was. My adoption issues came to the fore without any prompting, making me feel different because I didn’t know anything about my past. And this was on top of feeling different because I was vision impaired.
At this time, too, the long term effects of the radiotherapy I had as a baby started to show themselves. This meant frightening vision changes, many treatments and surgery with an uncertain result.
How do kids ride the rough times in adolescence? The answer to this depends on a lot of things. Read how I survived the bullying and teasing and depression I suffered in my teenage years.
Looking back now, I can see how I built my resilience. With this knowledge, I hope to help teenagers today to build their own resilience and survive adolescence.

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