DESCRIPTION:
Deanna Pino: You Left Me Standing
I was seven traveling from Cologne, Germany to destination unknown. I had been kidnapped by my dad and on the run for a little over a year. Back then amber alerts and milk cartons with faces of missing children didn't exist. Tired from dragging my yellow suitcase across the platform of the train station, I stood frozen from exhaustion. My father was somewhere past the crowd as I disappeared quickly into the flurry of people brushing past me. Losing my bearings, I started to panic. It felt like eternity before my father finally found me. I fell asleep waiting patiently inside the conductors office. Waking up from my dream state mind, my father shook me awake, realizing he had come back to get me. Crying in hysterics and sniffling through my tears I bravely blurted out, "You left me standing, why did you do that?"

The significance of this story of abandonment went much deeper than just being left at a train station or as many parents in an innocent mistake have lost their child in a public place. It's the re-traumazing of being kidnapped, taken away from one parent and being left in the middle of no where with no parents in Europe or having the ability to communicate at that age, that I was actually a hostage of a fugitive who happened to my father.

Please visit:
www.takeroot.org
www.missingkids.com/home
www.facebook.com/deannapinomusic

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