⚠⚠⚠ TRIGGER WARNING ⚠⚠⚠ This is very descriptive.  Detailed drug use and sex. 🔹🔹🔹 Reminder: These are my thoughts and feelings from ten years ago. My intentions are to explain the transition in my brain from trauma to addiction. 🔹🔹🔹 I had been oppressed for over seven years, victimized, assaulted, sexually assaulted, brutalized,  and emotionally abused.  And then I suddenly wasn't any of those things. I was safe.  The price? My daughters life.  That price was too high.  One daughters life and two daughters horror.  To live with that was going to take guts.  What I didn't realize was that, yes, I was safe from Damion, but I was not  safe from myself.  I developed a racing mind.   Too many thoughts per second.   My shoulders were always up to my ears and I was always looking over them.  I had panic attacks if I didn't know where my girls were every second.   If they were with a friend I needed to know when th...

⚠⚠⚠⚠TRIGGER WARNING ⚠⚠⚠⚠ Graphic drug use. Life without Poppy........it's impossible to describe this time in my life.  The feelings and emotions were way off of any measurable research chart. I was what I can only describe as a living dead girl.  I was there, I was going through motions, but I was no where near standing on the ground like everyone else. My heart was broken beyond any feeling I had ever known.  I was completely defeated. I couldn't even comprehend what all this meant.  None of it felt real, but it was all too real.  The pain that I knew Collette and Holly were feeling pushed me away from them instead of brought me closer. I had failed them completely and truly. I waited until a crisis happened to take them away from the abusive household.   The one little person that brought them joy and happiness....and hope was gone.  Because of me. They didn't get their happy ending.  They didn't get to watch their mother be strong and re...

Dear readers, Usually I sit down to write my next blog and the words flow easily.  I am writing what happened in my life, so it's easy to keep going as I am writing things I have lived and remember.  However, this time I am at a loss.  I have been looking at a blank page for a few days now. I don't know how to write this one. I don't know where to start. I have had years of processing and healing but writing my last blog has sent me spinning.  I miss my daughter.  I miss her so deeply and I don't know what to do. I can't have her back.  I will never see her again...I will never hear her sweet little voice again.  That panic has come back to me.  I am having night terrors again.  I knew there would be times of struggle while writing my story, but I am grieving again.  I can't stop picturing things I don't want to picture.   This is nothing easy for my girls either.  This is a very difficult process for all 3 of us.  I ...

My life was really changing.  I was really changing.  I had started gaining understanding of things that most people learned in their younger years.  My brain had been sober for longer than it ever had been since I was 11 years old.  No alcohol or substance of any kind for four months straight.  My brain was healing.....it was no longer confused and looking for something to balance it out.   I was healing. I was growing up.  I had a new found confidence.....something that had never existed before.   A confidence in myself....not in who I was fucking or who wanted to fuck me.  I did, however, start talking with a guy (another client) and pushing things a little far.   Other than that, though, I was starting to make good decisions for myself. I was able to not be swayed in the wrong direction by other clients.  I was able to say no.  I remember one evening some girls and I were painting our nails and we got to talking and being s...

💜Me at the airport waiting for my girls to get off plane💜 it was nearing Christmas and I had been in rehab for nearly three months. Depression was something all of us clients were feeling heavily with the upcoming season. We decorated the facility and made Christmas ornaments for the tree. They made it as nice and fun as they possibly could for us, but we were all very lonely and wanting our homes and families. Collette and Holly were trying to come visit for Christmas and my mom and my counselor and I tried to arrange something.  It had been a month since I saw them during Thanksgiving.  And though we went much longer in between seeing each other before this, this four weeks felt like an eternity. When all was arranged, my counselor gave me a day pass to be picked up by my mom and drive up to the airport, (an hour away) pick up the girls, and spend the day with them. It was such an amazing time! We had a blast!!! We spent the whole day just laughing and being s...

****TRIGGER WARNING**** DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ABORTION Most conversations I had with my girls over the phone involved tears.  Whether happy tears or sad tears....they were usually involved. We missed each other so much. I was missing things....important things.   I had been missing them for years but until I got sober I didn't realize it.  At first the high was distracting ....the rush....but after my body got used to the heroin coursing through my veins it was the numbness I tried to accomplish day in and day out.   Load after load after load.......til I would nod out, pass out, or get close to death. (Or I had hoped) But now that I knew I was missing out on the girls' lives it completely paniced me.  Sweet 16s, drivers permits and licences, periods, and boyfriends.  Things mom's should be a part of.  Not only did their lives get turned upside down from me turning into a junkie, but now they were in another state at a school that was 100 times bigg...