Native shares life’s hardships, helps others
Published 1:59 am Saturday, February 27, 2016
Savannah Odom has lived a rough life, but at 30, she’s working to use her trials to let other girls know they can get through their tribulations, too.
Odom was molested by a family member beginning at age 3 until she was 11 or 12.
She said her family member encouraged her to perform sexual acts with her cousin, who was just a little older than her.
“It happened over and over again,” she said. “I thought it was OK because it happened when I was small. I thought sex was the right thing to do.”
Eventually, Odom said, she was able to get out of that situation.
But, at 12 or 13, she began stripping.
Then, she met an older guy named Rob, whom she calls her first love.
“He was teaching me how to live right,” she said.
Rob was killed in a car accident.
“He had talked to my mom a few weeks before he died and let her know how much he cared about me,” Odom said. “Before he died, though, we had snuck off and I got pregnant. I didn’t get to tell him I was pregnant before he died.”
Odom said she was able to pay someone to take her to Opp, where she sought out Rob’s family.
“I found his sister, and I told her about the baby,” she said. “She knew I had a rough life. She took me under her wing and protected me. I stayed with her the rest of the summer.”
Odom wound up losing the baby.
“After I lost the baby, I tried to commit suicide, and I turned rebellious and I didn’t want to listen to anyone. I was hurting I had lost the first real love I had known in my life and then my baby.”
She turned to alcohol, and wound up being sent to a North Alabama boot camp.
“In boot camp, the girls looked up to me as their role model,” she said. “I spent 90 days there. After boot camp, I decided I was going to come home and change my life.”
She started working, going to church and she graduated from high school.
After high school she got married and had a son 10 weeks premature. Her marriage ended in divorce.
“After I got my divorce, I started to talking to a guy and it wound up being an abusive relationship,” she said. “But I got pregnant and had a little boy.”
But she lost this child, too, as a result, she believes, of a prescription drug she used during her pregnancy.
“He was born with his brain outside his body,” she said. “We named him Isaiah.”
After that, Odom moved to Troy to start again.
“My mom passed away unexpectedly,” she said. “And then my grandma had a stroke and died last January.”
Odom said she’s spent her life lusting for men and sex because of the abuse she endured as a child.
“I finally prayed and told God if he had a purpose for my life to please show me,” she said. “I started writing this book under a pen name, Authoress Living Moments, and putting it on Facebook.”
Her book is called “Temptation: The Untold Chronicles of V.”
It’s a tell-all about her life and has graphic descriptions of the abuse and the life she endured.
She released the text of the book first on Facebook, where she said her inbox was inundated by at least 100 girls who reached out and thanked her for telling her story.
“They tell me that they see that I got through it,” she said.
Some of them, Odom has helped get on their feet by giving financially to them.
Her book is available on Amazon on Kindle for $2.99 and in paperback for $15.
“Every penny I receive from this book will go to help those girls who are going through similar situations,” she said. “My vision is to one day have a place for these girls to stay to help get back on their feet. Some of them have no way to get out on their own because they don’t have anywhere to go or they don’t have anyone to keep their child.
“I have a dream of a community where they can live and they would plant fruits and vegetables and have animals,” she said.
Odom said it’s her vision to help girls fight the need to become stereotyped Section 8- dependent women.
“I’ve never been on Section 8,” she said.
Odom said one girl reached out to her that her husband was beating her.
Another told her she didn’t know how to pray.
“I taught her how to pray and I gave her a prayer hotline to call,” Odom said. “She no longer wants to commit suicide and was able to get her first job.”
She was able to help a 19-year-old get into the job corps.
“If I can help one person through this, I’ll be happy,” she said. “But I want to make a difference in the lives of girls who are going through the same struggles I went through.”
Odom will hold a book signing on April 16 from noon until 5 p.m., at Bright Beginnings.
Her book will be on sale for $10 that day.