They Are Mine

I am tired. My soul I am tired. My soul is empty, and every day I have to remind myself of why I will not stop living, yet. Some days, I feel like a ghost, haunting this house that was once a home to a family. I look around and I see signs of life, and happiness. I hear echos from laughter that hasn’t existed in what feels like a lifetime. Who am I and what happened to the person I once was? Maybe I didn’t survive the delivery of my last child. I remember having him while on the way to the hospital, and I remember feeling incredible afterwards. They said my blood pressure was dangerously high, and they wanted to treat it with an IV of medicine that would make me unable to get out of bed for about 8 hours, but I refused treatment. I didn’t believe it was necessary. What if I was wrong, and it was. What if that was the end for me, and my memories since then have been my spirit trying to cope with life ending way before I was ready? Did I not come home that night, at least not my physical self? That would make the last 7 months less confusing. When my children were taken and I had no idea why, when I’ve been to court and argued with the judge and couldn’t understand why she kept interrupting me, and still ruled against us having our kids given back. How could she continuously rule against common sense? Why would they want to take children from parents who love and care for them? They never even told me why they were taking them. Now, after we did everything they asked, they have taken away all of our visitations, they never allowed us phone calls, I have no idea of what is going on with my children. So if I didn’t really come home from the hospital, and its been Tim fighting against dhs all this time, but alone without me, that would make this situation more reasonable. Maybe he sees me, because he is also alone in this house, and he was not ready to let me go. I feel like I am just a sad shell of the woman I once was. If I allow myself to think about my babies, who I let down so much, my heart feels like it ruptures and bleeds out internally. My beautiful newborn, who is now 7 months old, I don’t even know his feeding schedule. My boys had their first day of school, and I wasn’t there to meet their teachers. My daughter started her first job, and I didn’t get to drop her off and pick her up afterwards. My toddler, who was 16 months old when I was his “mum” is going to be 2 in two weeks, and he has a “mommy and daddy” and we are not them. And for what reason? Because they suspected I was abusing my medicine? I proved to them I wasn’t, through pill counts and drug tests, yet they still keep taking them away from me. What the hell happened to being in control of our own lives? What happened to our rights, to raise our children as we see fit, to live our lives without fear of having what we hold most precious, ripped away from us without a chance of being treated fairly? People make mistakes, and if no one is endangered by our actions, we are allowed to learn from our mistakes and fix them our way. At least I thought we were. The rules and policies that are implemented, are they not to protect our rights, as Americans? So many have been broken, actually, all of them have been broken, but who is going to do anything about it? If we could afford an attorney, he might help us. I say that because we had hired one, immediately after all this began. It took him 2 months just to get them to release our files, and when we missed our court date, he didn't drive to our house, less than ten minutes away from the court house. He didn't come to make sure we were okay, because we had proven to him that this was the most important thing in the world to us. When we overslept by 2 hours, and did make contact with his assistant, she didn't tell us that we could still get there in time to go before the judge, because he had already left the courthouse. He charged us several hundred dollars for appearing that day, several hundred more for his driving time, since he lived about 5 hours away, but he didn't think it was a good idea to check on us and make sure we were okay. The day before court we had a visit scheduled with our children, 3 hours away. We were riding my husband motorbike, because gas in any vehicle is very expensive when you are driving 500 miles every two weeks. His bike has been very reliable, and was the most sensible choice for us. Somehow, it began overheating about 50 miles from home, while on our way, and then the battery stopped charging. We ended up being stranded halfway between our home and the place where we were going to meet our kids. I sent an email to our lawyers assistant, letting her know about our situation. So when we were not in court the next morning, it seems only right for our lawyer to have been looking out for our best interests. It seems like if he was truly there on our behalf, he would've driven an extra 10 mins to our home to be sure that we had made it home from the previous day. But he didn't. Instead, he said that we owed him $1300 more, for the services already rendered, on top of the $3700 we had already given him. He wanted us to pay him the $1300 in order for him to continue representing us. Why did we oversleep for such an important day? Because we were stranded at 4:30pm @150 miles from our home, and after about 30 mins both of our cell phones died. So we had no way to contact anyone for help, we lived so far away that strangers were not willing to help us. We did not get home until 3:30am, and we had walked, while pushing a motorbike, most of the way. We did not plan to go to sleep because we knew we wouldn't be able to wake up, but we had to eat something. We sat down to eat, then we woke up. It was noon, and we were supposed to be in court by 9 am. We had been told by our Caseworker that court was going to be in the same location as our first court date 48 hours after removal. That was in poplarville, 30+ minutes from our house. When we had been there before, we were the only ones there, so we were not aware that being 2 hours late, we still could have made it to see the judge, and that we only had to go 10 minutes away. Regardless, we no longer had an attorney. We did get another court date, one month away. It was securities for August 19th, and the judge didn't approve for him to stop representing us until August 13th, on a Thursday. That made it so that the application for legal aid was denied, because they believed we already had a lawyer.

So I have proof that they have done these things to us, and that they aren't even able to tell us a reason for taking our children. But still, noone will do anything about it. My children have been hurt in ways that cannot be repaired, their sense of security had been shattered. These are the top per of issues that are so deep rooted, and they will become a post of who my children are. Their personalities will grow and develop around these Issues, when they were born into lives that would never have allowed such insecurities to begin to form. They have a mom and dad who were married before they were born. They have parents who will stay together. Their dad works, while mom stays home. Mom homeschooled them, but it was never to be permanent. Just for the first couple of years of school. They were never beat down in any form. Discipline was mostly unnecessary, because I talked to them, explained why the rules were as they were, so that they would understand and their own desire to live and not be hurt was all the motivation needed. I used reasoning, and it was very effective. They all have hemophilia, but I was always aware of what they were doing, so I was able to keep them from being hurt. Their medicine was given as needed, but it has not been needed for a few years. DHS had called this'd medical neglect, and even though their initial checkups with a doctor was perfect, and they had no health issues, only two of my boys had 1 cavity each, they were taken to doctors 12 times in the first month of being gone. I only know of this by my brother making contact with the foster parents. I have no doubt this was done in an effort to create validation for their claims of medical neglect. They say educational neglect, because most of my curriculum was still packed away, from our move to Mississippi two months prior, and the investigator told me that workplaces and other work that they have done was not going to suffice, she needed typo see where i had been planning their work. The judge told me that it was because I want using Mississippi state approved home school curriculum, which all the state required was I get a certificate of homeschooling by September 15th, with a simple explanation of what I planned to teach them. My kids were taken April 29th, leaving me 4 and a half months to still be in compliance of the state requirements. I asked them to please allow my children to take achievement tests, to prove that they are being educated. They did, several months after taking them. My oldest son tested into second grade, which was there grade he would have been going into at the beginning of the new school year, yet they took him from me during his 1st year. My daughter would have been in 10 the grade, when she was taken, but she took her pretests for her GED, and passed all of them, with the exception of math, which was her weakest subject. I was certain that would be the end of the accusations of educational neglect, but when we went to court, and I pointed this new development out, the judge disregarded this, and still ruled that we were guilty of educational neglect. Our Caseworker lied to the judge and the prosecutor, when asked about our progress with the family service plan, telling them that we had only completed a few of the goals, yet I have a recording of a meeting with her and with her supervisor from there weeks prior, that clearly says otherwise. All e had left to do was to get our vehicle registration to our Caseworker, which we had done prior to that court date. Speaking of our Caseworker and her lies, she had also lied to our daughter, telling her that we were abiding our prescriptions, because a drug test had shown our levels to be very high. She didn't speak with a professional before making this claim, she decided, using her own ignorance as a referral, on this interpretation of our test results. Which after she counter or pills and they were all accounted for, she then decided to call or doctor and ask what our levels should be. I don't know if she ever told out daughter otherwise because the damage was done. She had already began making accusations against us, and had gotten her biological father to apply for her to be transferred to him, in middle Tennessee. I spoke with our Caseworker about my concerns for what my daughter might try to do, based on her sudden change in attitude with us and the Caseworker assured me that there was nothing she could say or do that would keep us from getting out kids home. That was June 24th. After our daughters first couple of accusations were proven untrue, she came up weight an accusation that could not be proven either way. She said that my husband, who she had known as “dad” for the last 8 years, had fondled her breasts one time, and when she left him know that she was not okay with it, he told her that he was just checking for lumps. She claimed her reason for not telling me was because I had told her that if she ever said that he had made with her, I would not ever believe her. This came about prior to July 13th but after June 24th. We were not made aware of them until August 19th. My husband asked to take a polygraph because this was the only obstacle to our children coming home, but he wasn't allowed to take it until October 22nd, 8 days after our court date that was scheduled to review the results. Their were discrepancies, due to very unspecific questions and a misunderstanding, which I am certain was intentional. The detective believed him to be innocent and so far the grand jury had not indicted him, yet dhs recorded the results as a fail, and cancelled all of our visits because of this. I don't understand why since they were supervised the entire time, our daughter had not been present for them since the end of June, and they claim their intentions are still for us to be reunited. Besides, why am I not allowed to see them? Our Caseworker also lived to the judges August 19th, and said I sent my daughter a text message that I did not send. I asked the judge to allow me to prove that I didn't send anything close to what she was saying, but I was ignored and she ruled that I have no contact with my daughter, so that I could not influence her.

My children were not in any danger, or home was clean, we had food, they ask had their own beds, and clothes, everything was safe. If things had not been, they should have implemented a family safety plan where the kids started at home and the Caseworker checked in regularly while we worked on the items on the plan, making our arrangement safe for our kids. The only two reasons for removing our children, according to the Mississippi state dhs policy manual, are if a safety plan does not eliminate the risk of imminent danger or if we had been operating a meth lab out of the home. Those are the only two reasons that it is allowed to remove children from their home. So if I was guilty of the things that they accused me of, they still should not have taken my kids. See, in our case, it's really different though. They did not make these accusations until our 48 hour court appearance, which our children had been told that they would be coming home afterwards. The investigator told me the day before they took my kids that I had no reason to worry they would not be taken from me, and then when she did take them, she said she did not know why, her supervisor has gone to the judge without her knowledge and gotten the judge to sign for them to take custody. After taking out children, she told them they would be going home in two days, that they never should have been taken, yet when we went to court, she recommended that the state keep custody of my children. When the judge asked her for the reason for her recommendation, she shrugged her shoulders. That is when the judge said educational and medical neglect. That was the first I heard of these being issues. Everyone assumed that the judge instills fairness, and there judged will ensure that the Caseworkers don't do anything that is unnecessary. What if the judge doesn't do those things? What if the judge is involved in whatever it is that makes them want to take children from good homes? Who do you turn to then? I was supposed to be given something that informs me of the procedure for filing an appeal, but I never was. I look online constantly, but there isn't any information for filing an appeal in Mississippi. I don't want to go to the judges office and ask these questions, because I am afraid of where I might be directed to, and what might happen with our next court date. I got the attention of the person assigned to investigate this state, on the regional level, and I told him of my fears of retaliation if they learned that I had reported them before something would be done to stop them. This was at the end of August, and since then I have lost all contact with my children, without ever going before the judge. I don't believe the judge would have stopped this from happening, since the judge goes along with whatever is suggested. I looked at the profiles of our youth court staff, and found the judge, the guardian ad lidem, the prosecutor, and the investigator who took our children, to be so close of friends that they are friends with each other, each other's children, parents, cousins siblings, to the point of some even being intermarried. How does this allow us any chance at being treated fairly? This whole thing is a conflict of interest for all of the court personal. The guardian ad lidem spoke with us one time on the phone for one hour total, and that is all. She had never come to our home, not has she met my children. On August 19th, her only question that concerned the conditions that involved then taking my children, was about their shit records, which the prosecutor answered with “it doesn't say “. That was his answer to every thing asked. I told them that I could build our entire defense from what “it doesn't say “. Yet this is their evidence against us, that has resulted in our lives being destroyed. What ever happened to their being a preponderance of evidence against us being necessary in order for us to be found guilty? There is none. They have taken or children with nothing to suggest they were being neglected or abused, and have spent the last seven months trying to create something to validate their actions. I also believe that taking away or contact is another attempt at creating a reason for taking them. Maybe they will be able to form memories of neglect of advise by keeping them away from us. This is such a terrible crimes and should not happen to anyone anywhere, but most certainly not in America. The government is stealing our children from us, and if we fight back we will be arrested. If I try to take them back by force, I could be killed, and at the very least I will lose any chance of ever having them back. They are my children. I made them, I have both to them, I loved them with all of my heart and soul and sacrificed my own personal wanted and needs for them. I know them, better than anyone else ever could. They come from me, and they will have thoughts that only I will understand. None can teach them how to accept and love themselves as I can. None will die to protect them and none else will fight to live so they can protect them none besides me. I had my daughter when I was 16. She will be 18 on December 16th. I have never had dhs involved in my life at any time, and I was always a very good provider for her, when though I did it by myself. Her biological father still owes me over $7000 in back pay, yet they are wanting to send her to him. All I know it's living for my children, and without them, I have nothing to live for. If I have any more children, they will take them from me. I always believed that DHS only took children if it was necessary. Anyone who claimed otherwise was lying. They were the worst, because not only did they neglect of advise their beautiful children they wouldn't even admit to their mistakes so they could get then back. I so wish that was true. If I had done something wrong, then I would be able to fix it. How do I did that the situation that changed when it already was exactly as it should be? I have spent over 18 years as a mom, it was me. I made these children and it was me who owed them the absolute best I could give them. I dedicated myself to them and improving myself for them. Then strangers came and took them from me, and there is noone to turn to, noone to help me save them. How does this happen in the “land of the free”? How does this happen in a country that is run by its citizens? What reason could they possibly have for taking my beautiful babies away? That is such a scary thought, because once I realized that this was really happening, and that it was not by accident, I realized that those with power to take children, obviously have managed to rise above the checks and balances system that has kept this country together for so long. Those that are capable of such a selfish and heartless action, are capable of anything. So I have to ask myself, how far will I go to protect my children? As far as needed. What am I willing to do? Anything necessary. Where will we go after the fact, so that they can live a life of safety and stability? Still, I have no idea.

They Are Mine

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Smell of stale hurt

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Dogs and Meat

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Indestructible Dreams/CPS

Burning House dedicated to my babies

Burning House by Cam

dedicated to my daughter and 5 sons whom I miss so much

Monday, December 7, 2015

My Prison of Pain

Thief in the Night

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Did i Die?