Chapter 17: LOVE & HATE

Chapter 17: LOVE & HATE

It was April 2016, and I’d spent the past three months trying to find a home in Minnesota for my son Tim. It was not going well. Tim, now age 13, seemed despondent. He’d spent the past 2 and a half years in a slew of foster and group homes in Washington,...
Chapter 16: TASTE AND SEE

Chapter 16: TASTE AND SEE

A battle was on the horizon, one I hoped to avoid. In January 2016 I’d received news about my youngest son, Tim, who had been in foster care for 3 years. Social Services was seeking to terminate our parental rights to make Tim more desirable as a potential...
Chapter 15: BREAKING BIAS

Chapter 15: BREAKING BIAS

February 2016 and another birthday in prison. When I first arrived to prison it had been March. I’d had an entire year before my first birthday there and I had watched all year, interested as other women celebrated birthdays and tried to make them special....
Chapter 14: SURPRISED BY JOY

Chapter 14: SURPRISED BY JOY

I think of this as the beginning. I was asleep, maybe dead all my life, before 2016. I was 40 years old. “Mom, I’m not sure I believe in God anymore,” my oldest son Noel explained on the phone. It was October 2015, and Noel had just turned 21. Trying...