DISCARDED DAUGHTER

A STORY OF STRENGTH AND DETERMINATION

Recent Posts

  • It’s Not The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

    I took a bit of a mental health break from my posts, this isn’t the easiest time of the year for me, but it’s getting easier.

    On November 1, 2023, my Husband of 20 years went into cardiac arrest in his sleep, next to me in our bed.

    I called 911 and performed CPR, but no one tells you what happens when you do all of the right things, and the person lives, but already went without oxygen for too long. The result is an Anoxic Brain Injury, and it’s devastating!

    He lived for just a couple of days over the year. I saw glimpses of him throughout, but he didn’t understand what was happening, couldn’t do anything for himself, couldn’t speak for himself, and ultimately he was so drugged up that he was mostly not him anymore.

    I fought a very long and hard battle to get him off of the antipsychotics that were making him psychotic, that turned an otherwise happy and gentle man, with a smile that lit up his whole face, and the room, into an angry man. A man who yelled and swore, who became physically abusive to the wife who he adored, when I was giving care. We couldn’t even touch him anymore.

    It wasn’t until they found a tumor on his brain almost a year later, that I was able to get the other hospital to remove the drugs, and saw him for a little while, while he passed away. He was my life and my world. He was our Child’s Daddy, and he was a great Daddy.

    I spent 20 years of my life keeping that man alive, until I couldn’t anymore. I loved him more than anything, I never judged him, and I ran myself ragged keeping his secrets.

    It’s really hard to be a constant caregiver for someone who you love, when they refuse to help themselves. At the end of his days, I pleaded with him to look after himself better, because we were counting on him to be here for us.

    I found out just recently that things were worse than I had imagined, when I finally read the texts on his phone. I know that I couldn’t have changed anything, I always did my best. It was ultimately his choice to get help, and he wouldn’t. I look at that as less of a reflection on how he felt about us, and more of a reflection of how he felt about himself.

    I knew that he was in physical pain everyday, but I also knew that he never properly processed the death of his father, when he was so young. This is something that I made sure that I did properly with my own child, when she lost him. I’m not one to want to repeat cycles. I don’t think that his own mother went out of her way to bother with making sure that he was ok.

    It’s been three years since his cardiac arrest, and on the 3rd of this month, it’ll be two years since he passed. I don’t think that I’ll ever forget the events of either of those nights. I watched him die twice, and it was horrific. I never thought that I could ever find a person who I could love so wholly again, but I did.

    I will never forget him, he gave me so many great things to remember. I’ll always love him, because he gave me so much to love about him. I will always talk about him, because there are so many things to say.

    I know that he always looks over our daughter and me, and that he’s happy that I found my person, a gentle, loving man, who looks after me and our daughter.

  • Starting Again

    It’s coming on that time of the year. The time when I remember just how everything unfolded with one of the biggest and traumatic losses of my life.

    Waking up and being told that my husband wasn’t feeling well, and wasn’t able to stand up without feeling like he was going to pass out. A little over a year to when he had his heart attack. I thought that we had so much more life to live.

    I called an ambulance, because upon checking his blood pressure, he was on the very low side of normal, and that was not good for a STEMI patient. I knew that something was wrong, and he needed to be seen. It turned out that he had been bleeding internally for months. He had several severe bleeds in his stomach. They fixed them surgically, and transfused him several times. He was weak, and couldn’t walk. He was kept in the hospital for a week, where I gave him daily sponge baths, we talked about life, and we talked about family. I knew exactly where he stood on all things, I also knew what his expectations were of me.

    He was discharged on Halloween morning, and woke up the following morning at about 4:15am, in full cardiac arrest. I called 911 and gave him CPR until first responders arrived. No one tells you what happens when you can keep someone alive, but their brain already went without oxygen for too long.

    He lived for a year with a severe anoxic brain injury. The worst part was fighting to keep him off of all of the antipsychotics, that were turning him into a monster, and his family who took full advantage of the fact that he couldn’t stand up for me.

    After living 20 years of my life with my best friend, I was alone. Not the kind of alone that you choose, where you are living in solitude. The kind of alone where the silence is so loud that it’s deafening. I was suddenly a single mother, where most of my peers were either happily married with children, or even grandchildren. I was learning to live my life all over again, and people had their noses in my business, where it didn’t belong.

    I learned that the whole dating scene is a mess. Mostly broken people who aren’t there with the best intentions, or have no business dating because they are just going to hurt people. I didn’t date much, I talked to some, and very quickly I was ready to throw in the towel. I was healing, and I had a young child to raise, and wanted to be a good example.

    Then I met Him…

    I had no clue what was going to happen, but he wasn’t like the rest. He wasn’t talking to me with one thing on his mind, there was a comfort in our conversations. We spoke online for about a week, and then decided to meet casually.

    That coffee date changed the rest of my life. He felt like home, we talked like we knew each other forever. Neither of us wanted to leave, and when we parted ways, he kissed me on the cheek.

    We quickly scheduled another date for that evening. We were both single parents, so we met up for dinner with our children. They played, we got to know each other more. We spent everyday together, and fell in love very quickly. It wasn’t a rushed desperate thing, it was real and we felt like home to each other.

    I never knew that I could love someone the way that I love him. We have brought our families together and I am so very happy again. I look forward to each day and what it will bring. I feel young and vibrant with him. I laugh so much when we are together. I feel safe with him, I have no walls up.

    This past Spring we bought our home together, and this Summer we got engaged, with the intention of getting married on our dating anniversary.

    I am loving life again!

  • It Ain’t All Bad

    I will have a lot of my trauma to share, I had a really difficult upbringing, but when you look at the pictures of my childhood you would never know it. In fact if you spoke with me casually today, you may not pick it up

    I was a cheerful child, I laughed, I played, I fought with my siblings. For all intents and purposes, I seemed like a normal child. We were fed, we weren’t dirty, we lived in a decent house which was clean and looked after. I’ve met children through my life whose outer appearance and mannerisms just screamed the deficits in their lives. Most people never would have known mine, unless they were told.

    I had Grandparents who picked up the slack, and tried to relieve us as much as they could, but there were some things that we just couldn’t be relieved of. Growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s, there were some things that were more common and accepted than others. There were things that you did not talk about, and people didn’t speak up and interfere when things were wrong, like they do in today’s society. The whole, a man’s home is his castle and children being seen and not heard, was alive and well in those days.

    No matter what was going on in our home, when Christmas time came, we were back to good. When my parents were together the holidays were magical. Everyone got along, we visited all of the family, we were all happy, and there was Neil Diamond playing on the stereo.

    When we were with our Grandparents, things felt normal. We went to camp, had family dinners, went to church on Sunday, it was all good.

    Until we went home and it wasn’t.

    I used to have nightmares when I was little, like four years old. There was always construction equipment chasing me. I spent nights just running and running in those dreams. I was jumping into trunks of cars to get away from the machines.

    It was loud in our home, there was always fighting, my parents had me running back and forth with messages. You tell your Dad that he’s an asshole. You tell your mother that she’s a bitch. I remember her sticking knives in the door crack, to keep him out after work. I remember that he had a gun. She told me that she tried to leave him when she was pregnant with me, and he held his gun to her belly and told her that she could leave but she wasn’t taking his kid.

    Back at my grandparent’s, it was quiet. It was a whole different world. I didn’t have nightmares when I was there. We went visiting to relatives houses, I played with my cousins.

    Back at my parents he was losing his shit and beating her and my little brother. I stayed in the shadows when that happened, to stay under the radar. I never forgot the sound of his leather belt coming out of his belt loops, and the jingle of the buckle. I never forgot the sound of my little brother screaming as the belt slapped his little bottom. He was just little. We were all just little. I was only about 7 when they finally split up.

    It’s funny, because I used to always see the TV shows where the kids were always trying to get their parents together. That wasn’t me. It was finally quiet, we didn’t want the war zone back.

    We stayed with our grandparents for awhile after that. She wasn’t doing so good. On more than one occasion the principal had popped by, because we weren’t attending school. Our grandparents gave us stability when things were falling apart. Living there was probably one of the best times in school. I was the happiest when I was there.

    I guess that it wasn’t all bad…

  • Truth and Reconciliation???

    It’s Truth and Reconciliation Day. A day where we recognize the children who were taken from their parents and homes, and sent to residential schools where many never returned from.

    A day where we acknowledge that the government committed cultural genocide, where it’s mainly government employees who get a day off of work with pay and children are still being stolen daily, by Indigenous child welfare societies. Strange…

    Bill C-92 was passed to law, which is now An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families. This is because Indigenous children are still being taken. Yes, granted many with cause, also many who could remain with their families with some sort of supports in place. Right now, let’s talk about the ones who can’t go home.

    Child welfare societies are supposed to operate under the pretense that they are there to support the healthy well being of children and families. Indigenous children already have the history of the damage done to families members in the past which keeps cycling forward perpetually, because if nothing changes, it all stays the same.

    So, in some strike of brilliance, someone decided that it would be in the best interest of FNIM children, that their supports be carried out by their own dedicated child welfare society. I suppose that in theory, that may have seemed like a good idea. That was just a theory obviously. Then down the line, when that wasn’t working so well, as Bill-C92 was being developed someone thought that it would be better for bands to manage their own child welfare files. There is that theory again…

    No one stopped to realize that the smaller and tighter the circle of care got, the less oversight there is. You can’t direct the wellbeing of children and families when there is bias, and conflict of interest. There are people out there right now, who are claiming to know what is best for a child, based on the fact that their great grandparent was born on a reserve. They’ve never met the child, they don’t know anything about them except for what a file says, that file has been copy and pasted with the same updates year after year. Many times showing that the child hasn’t changed since they were two years old, although they may now be six.

    Biological parents are being given unlimited time to heal and get right, so that maybe they might be reunited with their children. What happens to the child who is apprehended at or close to birth, or under 2 years of age? Never really knowing their biological family, because they weren’t able to parent for one reason or another. In a good foster placement, children bond with the families who are raising them. It is absolutely wonderful if a child can thrive in a healthy placement, while their parents get well. This is assuming that while the parents are getting well, they are nurturing their children and developing bonds with them consistently, so that they can reunite as a family. But how often does that happen?

    The usual scenario outside of the families who just need some supports to get on their feet, is that the child seems to just be dumped into care and forgotten. Usually some sort of agreement is signed without any sort of legal consultation or judicial oversight, the decision making gets done by the child welfare society involved, let’s not forget that they now get to collect the funding that is attached to each one of these precious little souls. The children are now swept into the vortex of Indigenous Child Welfare, until they age out.

    Every now and again, you have a family who really wants to give the child that they have been raising permanency. They want to break the cycles, and see the child who they love really thrive and succeed. In this case, they seek legal advice, and decide that they would like to file for some sort of permanent order that takes them out of care and allows them to fully parent the child.

    You would think that this might be the happy ending that an agency would be hoping for, right? You have a child who can’t go home to their biological family, and the family who loves them wants to give them the life that they deserve. Apparently not… In that case the agency will swiftly remove them from the home, no matter how happy they were, no matter how good it was for them, they get placed “wherever”, and usually they start contacting the bio family who hadn’t had anything to do with the child, so that they can enact their parental rights.

    In one case, the filing parents were able to keep the child throughout the whole legal ordeal. The agency involved did horrific things to the child, and both the biological and the caring families.

    The band concerning the child, who knew nothing about the child, paraded through the court and meetings at the child welfare office. Touting that they knew what was best for the child. This was just a cover for the fact that the agency was paying for all of their trips, mileage, gas, accommodations and food. The same was done by the so called family who were trying to take the child from the caring family, as well. The child was subjected to visits with strangers, which had lasting negative affects, the caring family was harassed and tormented by the child welfare workers, and the bio family who were already fragile with their own issues, were manipulated and lied to.

    In the end, the bio family member was just trying to bring the child in, because they found out that they could get funding to add on to their house. They had been asked if they wanted placement of the child when they were a baby, but declined because it was too hard. They also did not want to take the child if they weren’t getting funding as a foster parent.

    The bio parents eventually disappeared again, as they usually did. Right from the beginning they were not prepared to raise any children. Before the agency broke it apart, the child would have had the ability to maintain a healthy relationship with the bio family, that would have been at their pace and abilities. At the end of it all there was none.

    Through three levels of court, the foster parents won full custody of the child. The case is being cited in many other child welfare and custody cases.

    Now, when a child welfare society even thinks that a foster parent wants to obtain permanency outside of the agency, they simply just take the child away from them. Children aren’t being able to bond and heal, the cycles perpetuate.

    I’m not really sure how the “Scoop” ever ended, or how they can say that “Every Child Matters”.

  • Saying Goodbye

    51 years and a whole lot of grief and loss. I’ve said a lot of goodbyes in my time, but none hurt as much as the ones that I didn’t get to say.

    I had a bit of sunshine in the otherwise gloominess of my family life, they were my grandparents. When my grandfather passed when I was in my early 20’s, it was a blow like no other. I knew that he was sick, but he was one of those people who I thought would live forever. My superhero.

    He passed when he was away visiting family out of town, he knew that he didn’t have long. I suppose that deep inside, I knew too. I remember that he was feeling pretty awful, and getting grumpy in his later days. When I went to their house, my only real home in my younger years, I was avoiding him. I always felt so regretful after he died. If only I had spent that time more wisely If only I had sat down and had more conversations with him. He was so wise, I loved that he didn’t sugar coat anything.

    He was the one who saved me from them. They had been lying about my behavior, and I picked up the extension and told him that they were lying. It wasn’t long after that they he told me that I could live there. I was 15 years old.

    I still remember being told that he had passed. I was on my way to my mother’s house for a visit. As I was rounding the corner almost at their street, they were driving toward me. They just stopped and told me to go to my Grandparent’s house. Wouldn’t tell me why.

    When I got there, my Grandma opened the door and gave me a hug and saying that she was sorry. I remember kind of pushing her arms off of me and standing back, asking what she was sorry for? I was in total denial of what was happening. When she told me that he was gone, I went numb. The house was already full of people, and I went to the basement. I didn’t get to say goodbye. Not a last hug, just nothing.

    For the longest time it didn’t really hit me. He worked out of town when I was younger, or he was at camp after he retired, so it just felt like he was on a trip. I think that it took me years to finally fully feel that he was gone.

    My Grandma was another story entirely. She was my everything. All of the things that my mother wasn’t for me, she was. All of the love and affection that my mother couldn’t give, my Grandma gave me tenfold. She made every moment special when I was a little girl. When my Grandfather died, she went off the deep end.

    She was what they called a closet alcoholic. Most people never even knew that she drank. It got worse as I got older, and when she lost him, she couldn’t control it anymore.

    Despite being in and out of the hospital, many times on the edge of death, she outlived him by another seven years or so. I wasn’t there when she passed. I received a cold phone call from my mother, telling me that my Grandma had died. She didn’t have much to say. Thankfully I had met who would be my husband of 20 years, just six months prior. I cried in his lap. His family consoled me, as I spent our first Christmas with them just days later.

    My Father wasn’t a huge physical presence in my life once they had divorced, but I was a Daddy’s girl, and when I was able to spend time with him we made it count.

    We hadn’t spoken in several years, after a falling out when my other Grandma had passed. I had already felt very abandoned by him most of my life, when my Grandma passed away my niece was left out of the obituary. She was the first Great Grandchild on that side of the family, and as it was her own father wasn’t present. I did not want her thinking that she was forgotten. When I protested about the omission, he stood behind it, due to the fact that he had never met her.

    That was when the floodgates opened, and I unleashed everything that I had ever held back saying for all of my years. I ended the call telling him that he should just go and do what he does best, which is fuck all nothing!

    I didn’t speak to him again until about ten yeas later, when I got a message from my Aunt telling me that he had terminal cancer, and asking if I would be willing to speak with him.

    I did, and planned a trip to see him for two weeks. The trip had it’s highs and lows, but I was glad that I had spent the time with him, and he met my daughter. From the day that I got the message, we spoke every day. Until he wasn’t answering my messages anymore.

    Then I got the call… He was already very sedated, he wasn’t expected to last much longer. I’m not sure if he heard or understood me, but I asked his wife to put the phone by his ear and I told him that I loved him, that I would be ok, that he fought long enough, and he could let go.

    And all of that was just my rehearsal for the big day…

    I remember being upset at my father’s wife for how she was managing his care and transition to death. Later on I was regretful for my thoughts, when I had to do the same.

    He was such a good man. He loved me in a way that I had never been loved. He was real, he was just himself, and I could be myself.

    We built a beautiful life together in those 20 years. It wasn’t always easy, in fact some times it was damn hard, but we always loved each other big through whatever we were going through.

    We were just hitting the tail end of the battle that we fought for our child, when he had a heart attack. He was going to be ok and we finished a six and a half year court case. Just when we thought the we were finally in the clear, and settling in again, I had to have him brought in to the hospital again.

    After spending a week in the hospital he was discharged to come home. I spoke to him before he went to bed that night, after I had taken our daughter out for Halloween. I can’t remember if I told him that I loved him, we usually told each other, but I can’t remember if I did.

    I woke up to him in cardiac arrest at 4:00am in our bed next to me. I was able to keep him alive, but it would later be found that he had a severe brain injury due to the loss of oxygen. The next year of our lives was absolute hell, and I went through most of it alone, with our young daughter in tow.

    Nearing the end of that year, they found a new mass on his brain, and I sat with him and watched him die over the next two weeks. I don’t know how many times I told him that it was ok to stop fighting, or how many times I told him that I loved him, and that we would be ok. I don’t know if he heard or understood me…

    This brings me to this past Christmas. I was finally in a good place again, having met someone who I was really happy with, just a couple of weeks prior. What was left of our family was getting together for dinner that day.

    I wish that I could say that I was surprised. I wish that I could say that this was the first time that this has happened. But then I would be lying…

    Through a blow up from another family member, it came to light that everything that I was confiding in them, was being shared with that other family member. They had been talking behind my back. If that wasn’t bad enough, they were doing it while I was going out of my way to help them.

    There had been many other times that we had gone no contact before, but this was different. I was done being a people pleaser, I was already wrung out and exhausted, trying to put my own life back together, and I sure wasn’t going to keep doing it with an anchor tied around my neck.

    I took my child and left that house. I didn’t say goodbye to them, and I won’t.

  • The Sound of Silence

    I’m sitting here drinking my morning coffee, and it’s quiet…

    My Kiddos are off to school for the day, hubby is at work, and I’m alone.

    For the longest time I didn’t know what that was. Not to be at someone’s disposal for hours of each one of my days. Not having time to do what I needed, or wanted to do, because I was listening to the same conversation repeatedly. Realizing that they didn’t care about me, or what I was going through, or what I needed. But I suppose that’s the way that it has always been.

    I look at my own tween daughter, and I can’t imagine saying the vile things, or calling her the disgusting names that I was called at her age.

    Being told that I was “useless as tits on a bull”, how many times that I was told that I wasn’t very bright, being called a “little wench”. Looking back, I know that it was all meant to break me down. By that age I already had so many negative experiences under my belt. I craved being nurtured, and it wasn’t coming from them.

    It’s hard to think back and realize that I really wasn’t hugged or kissed by them, I cannot remember a trip to the park, or being pushed on the swing in the backyard. Never having played tea party with them, or dollies.

    All that I can remember is that I could never do anything right, even if I was doing it right…

    When I was little, our house was a war zone. I learned to make myself small, I learned to be quiet. I read a lot in my room, I stayed under the wire and most of all, I learned to comply. Once they split up, it didn’t matter how small that I made myself, I was picked on.

    There were the rare moments when they didn’t have anyone else, so suddenly I became the best friend for the moment. We went shopping for them, I stood in a dressing room watching them while they did their thing. I stayed quiet. We went for coffee now and then, and for a moment it seemed good, until it wasn’t.

    Just a quickly as I had their attention, they were turning on me.

    I was the brunt of a joke that wasn’t funny. Every mistake that I made as a child was skewed and shoved in my face, usually in front of people. Usually that mistake was because of their own deficiency as a parent. Failing to teach me something, and having to find my way on my own.

    I can never forget the days of them doing my hair, never gentle. Always so angry and frustrated. Dragging the brush through the tangles of my fine little girl hair, then smashing me on the head with the hairbrush when I dared to cry or say that it hurt. I still remember the day that they clamped my ear in the curling iron and proceeded to curl it with my hair. As I cried, I was told to stop crying or they would give me something to cry about. That it didn’t hurt.

    But it did… They realized what they had done and released the barrel of the iron. I think that I saw the brief moment of regret, but I never trusted them again.

  • Hello World!

    I’m not anything that I was supposed to be…

    I’m not dead, I’m not unhappy, I’m not unloved, I’m not unsuccessful, I don’t live in poverty, and I’m not uneducated.

    These are just a list of some of the things that were expected of me, based on how I entered this world, and the way that I was brought up.

    I was born in the 1970’s to teen parents who were struggling with their own life and upbringing. When I came crashing into this world at 4:15 on that Saturday morning, no one knew what was to come.

    Of course I don’t remember any of it, but I was told that I was blue, my insides were on the outside, and “they” didn’t think that I was going to live.

    I was baptized right away, and my Grandma was my only Godparent. I spent a week at our city hospital, and was eventually flown to a larger city to get better medical treatment. I was told that when I finally came home, I was still the size of a newborn, and I was already closer to six months old.

    But that’s not my first real memory…

    My very first memory was standing in the kitchen of my “home”, guiding my baby brother behind me with my arm, so that he couldn’t see what was going on in front of me. The words, “I’m going to put your head through the fucken wall!”, are what we were hearing. I’m guessing that he was not quite one, and I was not quite three years old.

    There was a bottle heating up in a pot of water on the stove, I remember it vividly. I can see the linoleum tile on the floor. I remember it to be white and blue. There were snippets of other things that I remember from before that day, but nothing so complete, in detail, or as vivid as that moment. It was the first, but certainly not the last of those days.