What had also fueled her descent was her guilt over the two children now discussing their future. She had given them both up to others to raise, as she pursued men, alcohol and drugs. That afternoon in 1994, the girls were united in one thing: not wanting to become their parents. They had grown up on a side street off a blight and crime-ridden State Street. Their home life had been a chaos of anxiety, violence and poverty under the dark shadows of their parents’ addictions. “I promise we are not going to be like our mom and Curtis,” Monique told her sister. “We will never turn out like them.” Monique Higginson, family photo Brooke Self, 4, left, is pictured with her father, Curtis, and stepsister Monique Coulam, 10. That pact would remain an invisible thread through their lives, long forgotten until tragedy brought it painfully to the surface decades later. Monique Coulam became a stoic, driven professional, successful in the world of real estate, even if her childhood haunted her throughout her adult life. But her younger stepsister struggled as she grew older, finding love in places that weren’t healthy, and in drugs and alcohol a self-destructive escape from her pain. The neighborhood where Monique Coulam and Brooke Self once lived has hardly changed from when they were kids. Trees still provide a heavy canopy over the bungalows that line Harvard Avenue. Tandy’s Leather store is still on the corner, where Monique Coulam would buy a few dollars-worth of craft supplies. The ugly frontage of her family’s former home is still subsiding, still sinking into the ground.īut if the world of their childhood hasn’t changed much, the city that surrounds it has. Now the downtown Salt Lake City skyline is a jungle of cranes and shiny new apartment buildings. With Utah the fastest-growing state in the nation, the city is working on rehabilitating areas of blight to absorb some of that growth. In early 2022 it will be State Street’s turn as construction postponed from 2021 will begin on the “Life on State” vision between 600 South and 800 South, widening sidewalks, putting in midblock crosswalks and rows of trees offering the potential of shade for al fresco dining. If funding is found, city officials said in summer 2021, the 800 to 900 South State block will then be finished and, further down the road, 1300 South State and the Ballpark area. The world Monique Coulam and Brooke Self grew up in, where they faced trauma day after day without adult support, is incrementally being paved over. Lagging ever further behind the explosive growth in housing prices in Salt Lake City, the homeless and the destitute, many burdened with histories of trauma and substance abuse, struggle on the fringes of the city, in tents and makeshift encampments.Ĭoulam and Self’s stories straddle this divide. Coulam is now one of the city’s top niche real estate agents, specializing in much-in-demand vintage properties. She achieved her own American dream aided by caring relatives. Self’s life, however, took a darker path. #THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY TV SERIES SERIES#.#THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY TV SERIES PATCH#.
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