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Meet ADRIENE CALDWELL: “We’ve been Zooming for a few weeks.Getting acquainted. I’ve been around as an octogenarian. Heard a lot ofstories. On a lot of things. Then Adriene. Her journey to today. I mentionedseveral times. Her life is a future movie. Resilience. Unspeakable abuse.Determination. Survival. Brilliance. Born into a military family. A mother withschizophrenia. Horrors of an abusive foster mother. Sadism. Books and learning.Honors student. Child Protective Services. Adriene is charming, passionate,eloquent, and honest beyond. She recently wrote ‘Unbroken: Life Outside theLines.’ It’s a must-read to learn, experience, grasp, and emote. This is a mustinterview. As I like doing, here are some brief words and thoughts. Myinterview notes. A powerful disbelief family discovery. Hope. Surviving tothriving. Radical honesty. Breaking the silence by writing a book. But I wascruel to my mom. Duke University. Studied in Germany. What a family is supposedto be. Positive.  Fav movies. GirlInterrupted. Pulp Fiction. And of course, we discovered some synchronicity.Marilyn (Monroe). Enough said.”  Calvin

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ADRIENE CALDWELL; Author, ‘Unbroken; Life Outside theLines;’ Childhood abuse; Resilience; Mental Health; (Part One Interview) LIVEfrom Houston.

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BIO: Born into a military family bound by loyalty andsilence, Adriene grows up beneath the shadow of her mother's untreatedschizophrenia and violent instability. Her early years in Houston are marked byphysical, emotional, and sexual abuse, as well as deep poverty and neglect.Through a child's eyes, the world becomes a labyrinth of danger and yearning -a place where love and terror are indistinguishable and where survival dependson invisibility.

As her mother's delusions intensify, Adriene and her youngerbrother are swept into a cycle of instability: temporary relatives' homes,decrepit apartments, shelters, and the bureaucratic indifference of ChildProtective Services. Her life becomes a study in adaptation. Teachers, socialworkers, and therapists appear as both saviors and spectators, theirwell-meaning interventions undercut by a system that cannot see the full truth.

Amid this chaos, Adriene discovers a sanctuary in learning.Books become her escape and her mirror, a means of constructing identity fromfragments. Her intelligence and resilience earn her entry into gifted programsand, later, a transformative scholarship through the Duke University TalentIdentification Program's ADVANCE Camp - a rare space of belonging andrecognition. Yet even moments of promise are shadowed by trauma's lingeringgrasp; her mind remains both brilliant and haunted.

Foster care, meant to save her, instead subjects Adriene tonew forms of cruelty. The "Bitch from Hell," her abusive fostermother, wields authority with sadism cloaked in righteousness. Still, Adriene'sintellect and adaptability allow her to navigate this world - and, in smallacts of defiance, reclaim pieces of her agency.

College becomes both a milestone and a reckoning. Havingsurvived the unimaginable, Adriene graduates with honors in InternationalBusiness, only to find herself unprepared for the invisible toll of trauma inadulthood. Depression, self-sabotage, and a string of hollow relationshipsbring her to the brink of despair once more. The memoir crescendos with a rawconfrontation of suicidality - and the awakening that follows.

.LINKS: www.UnbrokenCaldwell.com

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