Zulema Andino

I grew up in the shadow of addiction, born into a home where chaos was familiar and stability was not. My childhood was spent in the foster care system, moving through spaces that could not hold the weight of what I carried inside. That early loss of safety shaped everything that followed, leading me into a long cycle of survival, pain, and eventually incarceration. I lived many years caught between trauma and addiction, using drugs as a way to quiet what I could not yet face. Along the way, I lost years to incarceration, to violence, and to the grip of substances that became both escape and prison. I made heartbreaking choices, including placing my children for adoption, knowing I could not be the mother they needed in the life I was living. I endured domestic violence and lived in a constant state of fighting to survive outside and within myself. Today, I live in a different kind of breath. I have been free from drugs and alcohol for over twelve years, but more than that, I am free from the internal prison I once believed I could never escape. I am no longer defined by what broke me, but by what I have rebuilt. I am healing, I am grounded, and I am finally living a life that feels like mine.