Post 20 ~ Part 6 - The Fight for My Sons Begins

I started to feel lonely, even though I had people around me. My family was in California, and I remember telling Bill, “I feel like I don’t have friends in Spokane. Women in recovery don’t reach out to me.”

He looked me dead in the eyes and said, “How much work have you put into those relationships?”

I mumbled, “A lot.”

He said, “What?”

And I answered honestly… “Not much at all.”

That conversation changed something in me.

I knew two things right then. One, Bill would always tell me the truth, even when I didn’t want to hear it. Two, if I wanted my life to change, I had to do the work.

We’re taught in the program to believe in a power greater than ourselves. I call mine God. But I had to learn that I couldn’t just pray and expect everything to be fixed. I had to move. I had to act. I had to listen.

I remember when Kristina told me that early on.

I thought getting clean for a year meant I deserved a perfect life. She laughed. And looking back, I needed that.

But the loneliness I felt wasn’t really about friendships.

It was about my boys.

Hunter and Karl.

In that moment, I realized something I had never fully understood before. Their feelings had to come before mine. After everything I had put them through, I didn’t get to rush their healing. I didn’t get to demand their trust back.

I had to earn it.

I told myself I wouldn’t even bring up them coming to live with me until I had at least 18 months clean.

When I saw Hunter in October of 2014, I told him, “I would love to have you with me now, but I won’t take you away from your high school experience. When you’re ready, I’ll do whatever it takes to get you.”

Around the time I hit 18 months clean, everything shifted.

Karl’s dad was released early from prison and regained custody before I could. I knew right then that would be the fight of my life. But that is a story for another day.

Then Hunter came to visit us in Washington.

From the moment he met Mathew, they were inseparable, like they were meant to be brothers from the start.

And then one day, I got the call.

“I’m ready to come live with you.”

Everything inside me stopped.

Now it was real.

We had to go through CPS. My parents still had guardianship. There were hoops, steps, and a process that didn’t care about how ready I felt.

In the summer of 2015, Bill and I went to California to start it all.

They told me I needed to stay for 30 days to work with the social worker.

What I didn’t expect… was what happened next.

The social worker believed in me.

He saw the change.

He saw the program working in my life.

He saw that I wasn’t the same person I was two years before.

For the first time, someone in that system wasn’t trying to keep my son from me.

He was trying to help bring him home.

Bill and Mathew had to go back to Washington, while I stayed. That month gave my parents and Hunter the chance to see who I had become.

Calm. Present. Different.

During that time, I also went with my sister Cari to the Celebrate Recovery Summit, where “CR” first was created. That trip changed something in me, too. It strengthened my faith. It strengthened our relationship. It gave me a bigger vision for my life.

Thirty days later, Bill and Mathew came back.

The social worker thanked me for staying and said, “This will take time. Be patient.”

And patience… was not something I was good at.

But I didn’t have a choice.

Because now everything I had worked for… everything I had become…

Was about to be tested.

And I had no idea how hard this next part was going to be.

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