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Self’s life, however, took a darker path. She achieved her own American dream aided by caring relatives. Coulam is now one of the city’s top niche real estate agents, specializing in much-in-demand vintage properties. 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. 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. 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. 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. With Utah the fastest-growing state in the nation, the city is working on rehabilitating areas of blight to absorb some of that growth. Now the downtown Salt Lake City skyline is a jungle of cranes and shiny new apartment buildings. 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.
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Tandy’s Leather store is still on the corner, where Monique Coulam would buy a few dollars-worth of craft supplies. Trees still provide a heavy canopy over the bungalows that line Harvard Avenue. The neighborhood where Monique Coulam and Brooke Self once lived has hardly changed from when they were kids. 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. Monique Coulam became a stoic, driven professional, successful in the world of real estate, even if her childhood haunted her throughout her adult life. That pact would remain an invisible thread through their lives, long forgotten until tragedy brought it painfully to the surface decades later. “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. “I promise we are not going to be like our mom and Curtis,” Monique told her sister. Their home life had been a chaos of anxiety, violence and poverty under the dark shadows of their parents’ addictions. They had grown up on a side street off a blight and crime-ridden State Street. That afternoon in 1994, the girls were united in one thing: not wanting to become their parents. She had given them both up to others to raise, as she pursued men, alcohol and drugs. What had also fueled her descent was her guilt over the two children now discussing their future.
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#THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY TV SERIES SERIES#
After she and Brooke Self’s father, mechanic and drug dealer Curtis Self, split up, she had fallen apart, culminating in a recent series of suicide attempts. Coulam had battled depression and addiction for years. They were visiting their mother, Christina Coulam, who shared an apartment at the complex with her new boyfriend. Straight-backed 14-year-old Monique Coulam was introverted, serious and rarely smiled, while 8-year-old Brooke Self was a free-spirited chatterer, needy for attention and love. There were six years between the stepsisters, but that wasn’t the only distinction.
#THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY TV SERIES PATCH#
They found a patch of grass and sat down to talk while ducks and geese bickered on the dark waters. The two girls walked round the small, human-made lake, behind the white vinyl and yellow stucco apartment complex on the fringes of South Salt Lake. The divergent fates of two stepsisters underscore the polarities of contemporary Salt Lake City: booming house prices and the impoverished on its margins It’s been 30 years since Higginson left a home life that was a chaos of anxiety, violence and poverty under the dark shadows of her parents’ addictions.
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Monique Higginson stands on the street she grew up on in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Jan.