Beginnings of Addiction
People who meet me today often struggle to picture the person I once was. If you were to step into my home right now, you’d likely be greeted by my energetic puppy racing to the door, the sound of my four children laughing in the background, and the comforting aroma of coffee mixed with lavender incense.
Music usually drifts through the air on this day, an old acoustic record spins as laundry waits to be folded beside me. From the outside, I was enjoying my life and was glad to have such a beautiful life and it looks peaceful and ordinary. But beneath that calm surface lies a past shaped by hardship, survival, and transformation. I was not ready for a major depressing turn in my life which have change everything in my life, shocked to much.
My relationship with substances began when I was sixteen. What started casually quickly became consuming. By eighteen, I start gathering in bad company like drinking smoking even cocaine was part of my daily life, and by twenty-one, I had turned to intravenous heroin. For me, heroin provided an escape a numbing from feelings I didn’t know how to handle. But what seemed like relief at first spiraled into a lifestyle marked by instability, homelessness, and the painful compromises of survival. I was broken but that thing were only gives me mental stress relief just for while rather giving me a good health it was destroying me inside
Those years carried trauma I will always work through, and the deeper I fell, the further hope seemed to drift away. During this time, I also became a mother. Many assume having children can end addiction, but the truth is far more complicated. My use continued through pregnancies, and the result was devastating.
On Christmas Day in 2013, my life shattered. I was arrested on charges of child endangerment for exposing my children to my drug use. That same day, they were removed from my care, while I was taken into custody. Christmas meant to be about joy and family became the day my life was stripped bare. Today, I call it my sobriety date.I spent seven months in jail. The walls were confining, but in that space I made a choice: I would fight to get my children back and raise them in a sober home. Few people believed I could do it. To be honest, I understood their doubt.
My past didn’t make me look reliable. Yet deep inside, something had shifted. I was determined to prove everyone wrong not through words, but through actions.After 569 days apart, my children finally came home on July 17, 2015. The reunion was overwhelming. I cannot fully explain what it feels like to have your children returned after so long, knowing how fragile that chance was. The system doesn’t often favor reunification, and yet, against the odds, we became one of the rare families to rebuild.
By then, I was only in my mid-twenties, a mother to four my eldest and a set of triplets I had given birth to while in active addiction. The challenges were enormous: diapers, daycare, learning how to parent while staying grounded in recovery. Those years brought a lot of setbacks, but also with small victories that built into a life I never believed I’d have.
Sobriety opened doors. I returned to school, changed careers, and eventually bought my first home. The years carried graduations, birthdays, bedtime stories, and the chaos of everyday parenting. Along the way, I learned that while motherhood is my greatest joy, it can also be exhausting. Society often forgets mothers themselves need care space, support, and recognition that burnout is real. For years, I neglected my own needs, but recovery taught me that caring for myself is just as essential as caring for my children.
Life kept moving forward. After years in a marriage filled with betrayal, I eventually divorced, and eventually embraced my identity as a queer woman. Moving to Detroit allowed me to focus on harm reduction work, a career that lets me help others navigating the same struggles I once faced. For the first time, I learned to prioritize my well-being exploring new relationships, building friendships, and rediscovering passions outside of motherhood.
These days, sobriety keeps me grounded. My kids finally have a home that feels safe and steady. I juggle work, school events, and the messy realities of parenting, but I no longer escape through drugs or alcohol. Instead, I embrace authenticity loving who I am, seeking connections that matter, and teaching my children resilience by example.Looking back, I wish I could show my twenty-four-year-old self glimpses of the life waiting ahead. Maybe it would have soothed her fears. Or maybe she needed the fight to reach this place. Either way, I know this: I survived, I stayed sober, and I became the mother I always wanted to be.
