Throughout my whole teenage era, I always felt like I was missing something, so I tried to find it in boys, friends, or in the numbness that alcohol would provide when partying with friends. In my mind, I thought that all this would fulfill the void inside of me, but it definitely did not.

At the age of 15, I met the father of my kids. I was with him for eight years, and now I have three handsome boys with him. This was an abusive relationship. He was dependent on me for everything and his jealousy was out of control. Even in this relationship with him, I still knew I was missing something but didn’t know what it was yet. By the age of 20, the doctor prescribed Gabapentin to help with the migraines caused by abuse and head trauma. After a while, I realized that taking more than prescribed actually gave me energy. Not realizing at the moment, I had become addicted to a drug. For eight years, I watched him get high every day and I provided for it most of the time. For eight years, I was also against drugs, or anyone that used them, because of the person they caused him to be.

By the time I was 21, I was working two jobs and taking care of not only three kids, but also a drug-addicted boyfriend, which caused me to feel crazy. I felt empty and trapped inside. All I knew was that I wanted freedom or a way out of this relationship, so finally, after eight years, I did something I never had the strength to do: I made the father of my kids leave.

Throughout the whole relationship with him, I was only allowed to go to work and come home to take care of the kids and him. So leaving him allowed me to do whatever I wanted, which I was not used to, so a little taste of what I thought was freedom caused me to lose everyone and everything. After leaving the father of my kids, I started hanging out with his friends, which obviously was a bad idea considering if he was using, more than likely they were too. Feeling empty inside and seeking something to numb the pain and try my best not to return to the abusive relationship I just got out of, I turned to drugs.

After feeling the first effect of the numbness that drugs caused, it made me forget everything: the pain, the loneliness, and everything that I had bottled up. So I was hooked. After the first year of my life spiraling out of control, I dropped my kids off at my parents’ house because I got to the point where my life revolved around my next fix. I was in and out of jail and staying from place to place. In 2018, my dad passed away, which caused me to sink deeper into my addiction. I know the one thing that he wanted was to see me getting my life back on the right path and to be the mom I was before drugs took over, and I failed to give that to him. In 2018, two months after my dad passed away, my mom called me and told me that she could not mentally, physically, or financially take care of my kids anymore, so she was going to call the DCBS office to come get them. So after my youngest son turned 4, the state found a foster family to take all three of my kids. Boy, did this send me deeper into my addiction. I felt like I lost my whole world in two months and did not know a way out.

By December of 2018, I worked up the nerve to go see my kids for a visit at the DCBS office. As low as I was at that moment in my life, I was an hour late to the visit because I thought I had to have a fix before seeing them. During the visit, even though I was out of my mind, I promised them that I was going to get help, and when my (at the time) six-year-old looked at me and told me that I could have them back if I went to rehab within 6 to 8 months, it broke my heart that my little boy had to even say those words.

So on December 18, 2018, I found a rehab in Casey County, Kentucky. While being there, my social worker told me that if I left, I would never have a chance to get custody back of my kids. You would think that would hold me there, but it didn’t. While being there, I cried out to a God that I didn’t even know and told Him that there was no way that I could get out of the mess that I was in myself, that He had to help me and that I needed a locked facility. In my mind, I was thinking a locked rehab, but He knew exactly what I needed. On January 18, 2019, which was my oldest son’s birthday, I used the excuse that I wanted to see him and left rehab. Knowing that I couldn’t see him because they were in foster care, I still left. Looking back now, I know God was with me. I was two hours from home when I left the rehab and made it back to Barbourville without walking more than a mile throughout the whole hitchhiked trip home.

On February 4th, 2019, I got arrested. I didn’t make it two weeks on the streets before I got locked up on a warrant I had on me for possession. Also, going in, I caught a contraband charge so all together I had 3 years to pull. I ended up doing 15 months in Leslie County Detention Center. After about seven months of being in jail, Hope City came to tell us about how God saved their lives and delivered them from their addictions. I made a promise to God that if He took every desire out of me to get high and gave me my children back, that I would never touch drugs again. And He did just that.

On April 6, 2020, I came to Hope City, not knowing if I would ever see my kids again or if I would have custody of them at least. According to the social worker, there was already a petition to adopt my kids out to the foster dad that had them, so if I didn’t come to Hope City, then I wouldn’t have my kids today. But knowing now that it was God, they gave me one last shot to get my life straight. After three months of being at Hope City, I got my first visit with my kids, which kept me pushing toward my goal to be a mom again. My youngest son looked at me and said, “Mom, they told us you would never come back but I knew you would and I prayed for you!” That broke my heart and gave me every bit of encouragement I needed to move forward.

I got my kids back the day before I graduated rehab and with the Lord’s help, I am raising them to never know the life that I lived and to always put God first in everything they do. It has been five years since I’ve had the desire to get high, and I know with the strength that I get