A happy moment: One of the happiest moments of my life was when my daughter was born. I was looking forward to my new life with my daughter, but that was overshadowed by her father’s cheating on me with a mutual acquaintance (she was one to me, but not him, obviously). Everyone in our friend group knew, but no one wanted to tell me. That was the lowest blow of all. Not long after, I realized something was wrong with my daughter. She wouldn’t wake up to nurse. Newborns don’t sleep for 8 to 10 hours at a time. I would wake her to nurse because it hurt me. I took her to the doctor. They couldn’t find anything wrong and accused me of starving her because she had lost weight. 

A few days after that, I was at home alone with her. Her father had moved out and was petty enough to take the telephone (this was back before cell phones). I had phone service with no device and no money to buy one. I bought and paid for his car, but since it was in his name (I didn’t have a license), he took it, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. During all this, my four-week-old baby turned completely blue while awake in her car seat. I started screaming and tapping her feet to get her breath. It worked, startling her into taking a breath. I ran to my neighbor’s front door and pounded on it. It was six feet from my own (gotta love big old houses they turn into apartments). She didn’t have a phone, so she agreed to stay with my daughter, tapping her feet until I got help. 

Thankfully, I lived in the middle of downtown, and it was nighttime when all my friends would drive the circuit. We were all late teens and early twenties. I found a friend, and he drove us immediately to the hospital. 

Unbeknownst to me, once at the hospital, he called my daughter’s father, criticizing him for taking the phone and telling him what was going on. The doctors didn’t understand it and put my daughter on oxygen right away before calling another hospital to send her to where they could figure out what was happening. 

This was the beginning of my life’s worst days, but probably the worst situation. Not knowing what was happening and even if my daughter would survive was heartbreaking.  

This is just one example of the pain and mental distress a person can go through. How did I get through it? I let myself feel. It was unfair. I was angry at nearly every one. The crappy ex, the doctor who went from accusing me of starving my daughter to shaking her and causing this, and social workers who jumped on the doctors’ bandwagon. My mother and that worthless drunk of a man-thing that dictated her life. The child protection system let me down and ultimately decided they knew what was best. 

After letting myself feel my feelings, considering how they were trying to villainize me, it took some time. Their test to prove me as an abuser backfired when they tested my daughter. Then they changed tactics, telling me I wasn’t fit to care for her because I was (gasp) a single mom.

I let myself have my feelings as I stayed at the Ronald McDonald House for six months and then another six working as I jumped through every hoop to get my daughter back. The final straw was when my social worker told me if I worked, I couldn’t have my daughter because she needed round-the-clock care, and it’s simple economics to know that if I didn’t work, I couldn’t afford rent. Oddly enough, the state would pay some foster family to house and care for my daughter, but not me.

As you can tell, it still makes me angry sometimes, and that’s okay. I agreed to an adoption. Rather than have my child bounced from foster to foster. I’m sad I didn’t get to raise my little girl, but I’m glad she’s still alive and now has her own family. We’ll never know what could have been or what kind of life/relationship we could have had because that was taken away from us. 

So how do you get through something so traumatic? You let yourself have the feelings. Emotions are natural, but you can’t stay there. Emotions are supposed to be processed. Sometimes it takes longer to recover and move forward, which is okay if you know you will eventually move. 

I have a saying for people who stay stuck in one place emotionally because of trauma. They can’t move back or forward. It’s called stuck on the steps. I admit sometimes it happens to me too. For me, it happens for one or two reasons. It’s because I don’t want to deal with the emotion, or I want to wallow in it. That’s when I call in outside help, a therapist, a friend, or whatever I need to work through my feelings and move forward.