- April 19, 2024
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Guenivere recently performed her song “Free” at the Stewart Marchman Annual Dinner.
Up until she was 11 years old, Guenivere* called her mom Aunt Brooke.
Adopted when she was just a baby, Guenivere, 17, grew up thinking her mom was just her aunt. But a gut feeling and a secret exchanged in a tree house led her to the truth.
“I think every adopted kid will have an instinct,” Guenivere said. “That’s what I had. My best friend and I were hanging out in her treehouse and I asked her ‘Is Aunt Brooke my mom?’ She made me middle finger swear that I would never tell that she told me.”
She let her adopted parents know that she was in on secret and they cut off all contact between her and real mother, Brooke. Still, that didn’t stop Guenivere.
“I would sneak on the computer to talk to her,” she said. “I had to make a fake Facebook and everything. My relationship with my parents is tense right now because they say my real parents are a bad influence on me.”
However, Guenivere does understand where her adoptive parents are coming from. When they were living in Maine, she ran away with her biological mother four times to avoid moving to Florida. She didn’t have any contact with her biological father until this past December when she found him on Facebook.
“I was searching forever,” She chuckled. “You have no idea how many people have the same name as him on Facebook. He lives in Arizona, and I’m going to try to visit him someday.”
Her contact with her biological parents created a wedge her relationship with her adoptive parents that eventually led to her not being allowed to have any electronic devices.
“We have a huge trust and communication problem,” Guenivere said. “Hopefully one day that will all get fixed.”
All of the issues between her and her family inspired Guenivere to write a song about her struggle with self-discovery.
“I came up with some lyrics,” she said. “I didn’t know how to sing it or what I was going to play it to. I was at Beach House, which is a behavioral treatment center, and one of the staff had a guitar. So I put something with it.”
She only had one verse written before she played with the guitar at Beach House, but since then it has been written, recorded and performed at the Stewart Marchman Annual Dinner. Her song is titled “Free.”
“The message is that you can make it,” she said. “Free from destruction, free from corruption. You may be struggling right now but you’re going to make it. I wrote it for me, but I’ve had someone tell me that they had a substance problem, and hearing that song made them feel good. It’s relating to them. I didn’t purposely make it that way but it makes me feel good that it did.”
Though she’s not sure how much music will influence her future career, she does plan to do something in the medical field after she graduates PACE this spring.
“I really want to help others,” Guenivere said. “If the music thing does happen for me, it will be Christian or country music. I want to write songs that can put you in a positive mood.”
Guenivere will perform her song “Free” at PACE’s “Positive Passion Night” Nov. 20, where all students will perform poems, songs and skits that promote positivity.
*PACE Center for Girls does not identify students to comply with its Florida Department of Juvenile Justice mandates.
