A 26-year-old college student wants to rent a loving family for the holidays. Jackie Turner, from Rocklin Calif., posted a heart-breaking ad on Craigslist asking families if they would take her in.
"I am looking to rent a mom and dad who can give me attention and make me feel like the light of their life just for a couple days because I really need it," she posted, which has since been deleted.
Turner, who was willing to pay the potential family $8 an hour, told News10 that she immediately started receiving messages from people willing to give her a home for Christmas free of charge. She explained to the news station that she is estranged from her biological parents and was sexually molested and beaten as a child.
She was able to escape her troubling childhood but said her life has not been easy.
"I was in gang life, on the streets, fighting, doing drugs, just making a mess of my life," she told News10.
Turner was arrested and sentenced to a year in prison for grand theft. After her release in 2010, Turner said she was ready to turn her life around and started attending a Christian camp for troubled young adults. She also got a college scholarship and enrolled at William Jessup University. The 26-year-old has thrived in school, getting straight-As and maintaining a 4.0 GPA but as the holiday season continues she realizes something is missing from her life.
"There's this void, my biological parents aren't here, and it's kept this hole inside of me," she explained. "I've never felt the touch of my mom hugging me and holding me. I don't know what it's like to look in my dad's eyes and feel love instead of hatred."
Besides dozens of families offering their homes to Turner, she said she received messages from other teens and young adults who had similar stories of traumatic childhoods.
"When you speak up, people start learning that they're not by themselves. Often we lock things inside of ourselves, like a lockbox of our secrets. But then you let one out and realize, 'I'm not by myself after all, am I?'" she said.
Because of all the support and messages she received Turner has decided not to rent one family but invite everyone who reached out to her to celebrate the holiday together.
