Two States Near Plans to Terminate Parental Rights at Birth in Some Drug Cases [chronicleofsocialchange.org]

Jane! Thank you for the strength and calm you bring me. I’m so grateful for your leadership here. 

Thank you for your comment, Rebecca, and for relating your story. I don't think this artilce shows that this is a victory; I think it shows that we haven't yet integrated understanding of ACEs science into trauma-informed and resilience-building practices for people who have opioid addictions. To me, this is another indication of the system failing families who need help.

Oh my... this article makes me sad at so many levels. I have an ACE score of 8 and that was accumulated before I spent 13 years in a marriage to what I later found out was a text book sociopath. So, we will not even go into to all those details. I got high for the first time when I was fifteen, and worked incredibly hard to stay that way for years. Out of pain. And as many of you know the solution, just brought more pain.

I have an incredible story of overcoming so much because a community wrapped support around me when I was 37 years old and both helped me heal my trauma and lift me and my three kids out of generational poverty.

I was addicted from the time I was 15 to age 37.

My kids had a hard start.

I wanted to be better. I got down on my hands and knees every night and begged God... "Make me and good mom, make me a good mom, make me a good mom... and please don't let anyone take my kids until I get this figured out." I pled this prayer every night from 2006 until 2011 when He lifted my addiction off of me all in one moment. (That is a miracle for another post).

By the grace of God, I now have a healthy marriage and three amazing kids who have incredible childhoods full of THEIR own stuff and not my stuff. 

I work with around 50 families who live in extreme poverty and have watched the system do some awful things to them. The most recent is, two families in 2 different counties, that do not know each other, have both been told by their family workers, that is they bring advocates to the table to help them walk through the process of getting their kids back, they would NEVER see their children again. It is awful. I do not even know how to respond because the risk is to high...

There are no easy fixes to this, but I get sad when we share articles like this as a victory. Chances are the parents who are losing these children have HIGH ACE scores. They have pain. They are absent community.

And so often if you dig into these stories, you will find an incredibly high number of these parents were foster kids themselves!

And if this work has taught me anything about the human condition, it is that it is not about CHOICES. It is about brokenness. And if ripping kids away and putting them in broken foster care systems is something we are celebrating, then perhaps we have a great deal farther to go then we think...