With every challenge their is a valuable lesson to be learned.

Melissa Radcliff, Our Children;s Place Executive Director.  ourchildrensplace.com

Hello, My name is Natasha and my blog topic is a topic I am very familiar with.   You may wonder how I am familiar with such a topic?  I am a recovering addict who went to prison in the past due to my poor choices.  This lead me to being separated from my children and unfortunately they had to go through a lot of things that they never should have experienced or been exposed to.  This exposure did not only occur while they had to be shipped around foster homes, but sadly it occurred more so when they where home with me while I was still lost in my spiral of my addiction.

 Now that I am doing very well and more stable then I have ever been, my children and I are still trying to put the pieces together and heal from all the pain, trauma, suffering and loss that occurred during the time that my meth monster had it's deathly grip on me, my children, my family, and all of our lives.  So now that I am going through the therapy and all the extra TLC for my children to start to feel safe and secure again, I question exactly what are the effects of not just my children, but all children who have had to go through similar situations as mine?

 As I have watched my son struggle in school and socially, I wonder what more could be done for him or what could of been done for him and the millions of other children who without a choice of their own, got dragged through such horrible situations?  While the United States is busy trying to improve jails, prisons, and institutions, our children are not getting their needs meet and the things they need in order to strive and develop into healthy and happy people.

  If our communities would pull together and try to put their judgments aside for the sake of the suffering child, then would their be such recidivism rates?  How do these children respond to being separated from all that they know and put in the system of foster care?  Is reunification successful in most cases, or do the parents fall back into their old distorted thinking and criminal activity?

  I am blessed to have been reunited with my children.  This did not come easy, I had to work hard and show a lot of stability and sobriety in order to prove I could be a fit mother for my beautiful children again.  Now as a family, we are all working hard to heal from the past.  I wonder how many parents get free from incarceration and feel that what is expected of them is too much to fast and just give up?  Are their better built programs that help these parents to slowly transition from addiction, to incarceration, and then back into freedom and their children's lives again?  How is the awareness of the community around such a topic?  How do the schools help support children who come from such situation?