November 2004 URI Press Release features Talent Development Student Destiny Woodbury.
Destiny Woodbury has seen a lot of life. As a child, the University of Rhode Island junior witnessed poverty, drug addiction, and death and made a life-changing choice.
“Before I turned 6, I had to take care of my younger brother, sister and myself because my mother was not stable enough to care for us,” says Woodbury who only saw her father twice. “I had to make sure we ate and were clean every day.
Some days we went without food because my mother would use her money to buy drugs.”
Deciding that she and her siblings didn’t have to live life that way, she asked her grandmother if they could come live with her. Two days later, DCYF stepped in and took the children from the mother. Woodbury always hoped that her mother would get help, but although her mother repeatedly tried, she always returned to her old lifestyle. When Woodbury was a teenager, her mother died from an overdose of cocaine. “This was the hardest thing I had to deal with in life. To experience holidays and special moments in my life without her,” she says. “But I realize that I had to be stronger now for my family.”