For most high school students, graduation is a joyful time when they look to the future ahead of them with excitement.
But for some teenagers, turning 18 marks the start of an unstable adulthood, as they no longer have a place to call home.
A teen’s mom simply walked into her room and kicked her out of the house 2 months after graduating high school.
Cherish Smith posted a tearful plea for help on TikTok, announcing, “My mom just came in my room and casually kicked me out. I graduated 2 months ago.”
She asked for suggestions on where to turn next, and several people in the comments shared that they’ve been in similar situations.
“Calm your mind and focus on priorities: somewhere to sleep tonight, then from tomorrow on,” one woman said.
“The best thing you can do is start reaching out to people who you may be able to live with temporarily and start looking for a job if you don’t have one to help pay rent,” someone else said, offering their apologies that the young woman was in such a hard place.
The teen responded, “That’s what I’m doing now.”
Diego Cervo / Shutterstock
Hopefully, she has some sort of safety net or chosen family she can rely on since her biological mother seems to be cutting ties.
Up to 4.2 million young people experience homelessness in the U.S. each year. Approximately 1 in 30 teenagers between 13 and 17 and one in 10 young adults between 18 and 25 are homeless.
Teens often have an increased risk of becoming homeless due to neglect, abandonment, and severe family conflicts.
Only Smith and her mom know the full intricacies of their family situation. Smith has no obligation to share those details with strangers on the internet, although she did make a brief update after her initial post gained traction.
“I really wasn’t expecting that video to get 400,000 views,” she said. “As you guys can probably infer, there’s a lot going on right now, so I cannot give y’all a full storytime right now.”
“I will let y’all know that I am safe and I’m okay and I know where I’m going,” she said, which is the most important part of her situation.
She shared that she had to cancel a flight she had to North Carolina to visit her father, “because of all this.”
“It very much is real,” she continued. “A lot of people said it’s not real or that they don’t think that it’s real. It very much is real, so please, be respectful.”
Jochen Schoenfeld / Shutterstock
That people so freely cast doubt on her story without actually knowing her says something profound about how cynical online culture can be.
Some might question the teenager’s reasoning for sharing such intimate and complicated information about her life online, yet most 18-year-olds do so.
It’s possible that posting about getting kicked out of the house gave the teen resources she wouldn’t have had access to otherwise.
Safe Place, a national youth outreach and prevention program, is one such resource for homeless youth who are in need of immediate safety.
Safe Place reassured teens that being homeless is nothing to feel shame about, noting that they are not to blame for the difficult situation they’re in.
Hopefully, all teens in this undeniably tough position have at least one trusted adult they can turn to who can help them find their way.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango’s news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.
