Ramona's Story

BROKEN

Ramona was a beautiful child and always had the ability to light up a room with her smile showing her dimpled cheeks. She bought joy to everyone’s life that she touched. Growing up Ramona always filled our home with friends. She was quite popular.  Ramona was everyone’s best friend. She was someone everyone depended on and could count on no matter what. She had the best laugh in the world! Ramona had the kind of laugh that would start from her stomach up to her throat and emerge from her vocal cords so big and hearty that she would throw her head back while doing so.

On January 14, 2014, the laughter seized with a call that came in the early hours of the morning.  Six hours after that call, my husband, my youngest sister, and I were in California, heading straight to the hospital. My beautiful daughter, who just six months earlier with her two youngest children, spent a wonderful month reconnecting with all of her East Coast family, was now on life support; she would never open her eyes again. It was during that wonderful month long vacation in the summer of 2013, that she revealed the heartbreak of enduring years of abuse in her marriage.

When Ramona became a wife and mother, she was loyal, nurturing, and loving both to her husband and her children. Also, she was vibrant, loyal, and family oriented. Somehow, even with all her wonderful attributes, life began to become difficult during the course of her married life. It wasn’t until months prior to her passing away that she revealed just how troubled and broken hearted she had been for many years. Ramona shared with her father and I that the very one she loved and gave her loyalty and devotion to used that same love and devotion to abuse and take advantage of her...

My daughter passed away with a broken heart from silently holding onto a marriage that was full of broken promises, disappointments, unfaithfulness, abuse and neglect. She silently suffered as a way of protecting everyone EXCEPT herself.

I, Candace Brown, Ramona’s mom, am a married retired foster parent of 36 children, six of which were adopted into my family, and three biological children. However, with my daughter being just ONE, I could not, could not save my birth child, she died in spite of it all, and, it became reality that it was not God’s idea for me to save her.

God called my beautiful Ramona, my hero, home to be with Him so her story could be told....

Ramona never realized her dream of becoming a voice for domestic violence prior to her death. As a result of her passing, my husband and I became involved with organizations that focused on community and domestic violence in families. It is our hope and prayer to possibly help save other daughters from the horrible woes of domestic violence. And, it is our hope and prayer to help save parents from the devastating pain of burying their child. We became her voice.....

SO OTHER’S MAY LIVE!

Ramona (Daughter of Candace Brown)

“THE PUZZLE”

We decided to use Ramona’s picture as a puzzle to represent her brokenness.   It symbolizes the pain and trauma that many women carry without notice. People see your beauty but they do not see the Broken Pieces or the Bleeding going on inside.  The puzzle represents Ramona’s hidden pain.