12/07/2024
Rebuilding After Losing Custody: How I Began My Recovery and Why I Started Motherhood on Hold
It was January 29, 2016. I can still feel the sweat trickling down my back as I stood in that tiny, sterile room in the courthouse. It was one of those moments where time seemed to freeze, yet everything around me was moving at full speed. The attorney was standing in front of me, pressing me to sign the paper. My heart was pounding, my head was spinning, and all I could hear were his words: "If you go into that courtroom today, you'll be proven unfit, and it’ll be much harder to get your daughter back."
I glanced over at my fiancé, but he didn’t seem to know what to say. He wasn’t my daughter’s father, and his uncertainty mirrored my own. I didn’t know what to do. All I could think about was how much I was about to lose, but if I didn't sign, would I lose even more? What would happen to my future as a mother? The room felt smaller, the air heavier, and the decision weighed on me like a hundred-pound anchor pulling me under.
In that moment, I thought about my daughter—how much I loved her and how desperate I was to prove I could be a good mother. I wasn’t sober yet, but I was fighting. Or so I thought. So, I signed the paper. The decision felt like I was handing away my rights, my identity, and my motherhood all in one fell swoop. I told myself I would get her back soon, that everything would be okay once I could show I was sober. But here I am, nearly nine years later, and my daughter still isn’t home.
I remember life without her being so empty and confusing at first. It was more like a state of shock than confusion to be honest, so I was willing to do anything to escape that void, which meant more substances and getting distracted by a toxic relationship. That eventually turned into a marriage with two more kids. But the emptiness was still there. I look back now and see where much of the time I’ve been a mother has been full of dissociation and distraction. I was on autopilot, trying to avoid feeling the weight of what was missing.
The toxic relationship I found myself in—well, that’s a whole other subject to talk about. But processing the feelings of getting pregnant again, when I hadn’t even gotten my daughter back, was a whole mess of regret. I had a belly full of regret for a while, then another belly full when I was pregnant again, and the weight kept piling up. Stress was through the roof, and six months after having my last child, I went back to using to cope with how overwhelmed I was and how dissatisfied I felt with myself and my life.
When my husband left and the boys were taken too, I was devastated. I never would’ve thought I’d allow this to happen again. And yet there I was, lost in the spiral. The world around me was pushing sobriety, as if that was the one and only thing standing between me and my kids. But no one cared about the emotional turmoil eating me alive. No one cared about my mental state or whether or not I was truly happy. All that mattered was that I be sober. But how could I want to get sober when the pain of everything was so overwhelming, and the only thing that made me feel even remotely alive was the numbness from substances?
If I had known then what I know now, things might have been different. Maybe I would have fought harder. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so easily swayed. Maybe, just maybe, I would have understood that sobriety alone wasn’t the answer. But no one gave me an outline, no steps to follow. I was told to go to rehab, get sober, and everything would fall into place. But it didn’t.
You know why it didn't work? Because I wasn't doing it for myself.
I thought that if I could just kick the substances, I could be a mother again. But it doesn’t work that way. Sobriety isn’t just about putting down the drugs or alcohol—it’s about reclaiming your identity, about healing the wounds that run deeper than what’s in your bloodstream. I wasn’t doing it for me, and without doing it for myself, it never stuck. I didn’t have the foundation I needed to rebuild.
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Rebuilding after losing custody is about more than just fixing what’s broken—it’s about starting over, from the inside out. It begins with understanding that the journey is long and that true healing takes time. It’s not just about the surface-level issues like sobriety; it’s about digging deeper, facing the trauma, and finding your strength again.
I learned that the hard way. It wasn’t enough to just stop using substances—I needed to find out who I was underneath all the pain and the mistakes. I needed to rediscover my worth and rebuild my self-esteem. The journey was messy. There were relapses, there were setbacks, and there were days when I thought I’d never get back on track. But every step forward, no matter how small, was progress.
This is where the real rebuilding process began—not with getting sober, but learning to WANT to get better on my own. Sobriety wasn’t the only fix. It might have been the beginning for a lot of people, but that didn't work for me in particular, because without addressing the pain and trauma deep within first, it wasn’t going to stick. How could it? If I wasn’t doing it for myself, if I wasn’t facing the real reasons behind my actions, sobriety became just another thing to check off a list.
And that’s what I wish I’d known back in 2016. Sobriety alone wouldn’t have brought my daughter back. It wasn’t just about putting down the substances—it was about reclaiming myself, about addressing the void, and about learning how to fill it with something real and meaningful: self-love and being the parent to my inner child that I had never had in childhood.
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It's still hard for me to wrap my mind around the concept that motherhood doesn’t have to come with a constant sense of losing. I have spent so much time feeling like a failure that for a long period I couldn’t see the steps I was taking, even when they were small ones, toward being whole again. There was no roadmap for this kind of pain. There was no guidebook to tell me how to handle the heartbreak when everything I thought I knew about myself was turned upside down. I had to piece together my own map—one that had nothing to do with whether I could keep my kids, but everything to do with whether I could be the person they needed me to be.
The truth is, we never talk about the after of losing custody. When the world is watching and telling you what you need to do—get sober, go to rehab, fill out the paperwork—it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking those things will fix it. They won’t. They don’t fix the heartache or the sense of shame or the loneliness that seeps into your bones. There’s no quick fix when your life feels broken. And no one tells you that you have to rebuild yourself, not just to get your children back, but because you deserve to be someone you can be proud of.
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The hardest part, at least for me, was the realization that I couldn’t do this for anyone else. I couldn’t stay sober for my children if I didn’t want it for myself. And here’s the kicker—just because I was sober didn’t mean I was okay. I needed to find a reason to stay sober, a reason to push through the darkness, and that reason had to come from within. It had to come from my own will to change, my own desire to be better, even if I didn’t know exactly what that looked like.
When the noise of everyone telling me what I “should” do drowned out my own voice, I struggled to even hear my own thoughts. All I knew was the pain of missing my children, the shame of feeling like a failure, and the guilt that gnawed at me every time I looked in the mirror. But slowly, very slowly to be exact, I learned that there is no shame in starting over, no shame in taking one step at a time, no matter how small they are.
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Unfortunately, motherhood doesn’t wait for you to have everything figured out. And neither does healing. You don’t get the luxury of saying, “I’m ready now,” because the process doesn’t work like that. It’s messy. You will fall. You will stumble. So the sooner you start the process, the better. And when you start putting yourself first instead of running from your problems, when you learn to stop making your pain the reason you give up, that’s when the change begins.
If Motherhood on Hold had been around to tell me that the process wasn’t just about checking off boxes, but instead it is about piecing things together, then I might not have fallen flat on my face so many times in front of my enemies. The process wasn’t just about going through the motions of therapy or getting sober or any of the other “required” steps. It was about learning to feel again, to deal with the darkness and pain without running away from it, and to start rebuilding my life, my identity, and my relationship with my children; what we call the Bridge to Reunification that connects the vast space across the Canyon of Custody Loss.
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I also had to learn that my motherhood didn't have to be on hold forever. It felt like it in those early days, but with time, I learned that even in the hardest of times, I was still a mother. It was just a matter of finding the right version of myself to show up for them. They needed a mother who could stand up and fight for them, and to do that, I had to first fight for myself.
I’m still in this fight. I don’t know where this journey will take me, but I know one thing: I’m no longer letting the past define me. I’ve learned that change doesn’t happen overnight, but it happens when you take each step with courage, even when you don’t feel ready.
Of course, the path isn’t easy. But if there’s anything I can rest assured of, it’s that reclaiming your life and your motherhood is worth the fight. It’s not about what happened before, but what happens next.
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The Purpose of Motherhood on Hold
Over the span of all this time without custody of my children, I searched high and low for a resource that felt like it could truly help me. But nothing ever seemed to fit. There was no guide tailored for women like me—mothers who had fought tooth and nail for their children but still found themselves navigating a system that seemed more concerned with checking boxes than actually supporting us. Maybe something like that existed, but I couldn’t find it. And so, I spent the years trying to figure out how to be the resource I so desperately needed back when this all began.
This group, Motherhood on Hold, is that resource. It’s everything I wished I had: a place that gets it, a place that’s built to hold you when you fall, to lift you up when you’re struggling, and to remind you, gently but firmly, to keep pushing forward. We’re not here to judge you for your mistakes or your setbacks. We’re not here to shame you for how far you’ve fallen. This is not a place for negative commentary or unrealistic expectations from people who have never walked in our shoes.
There’s no tearing you down. No harsh critiques. No one trying to force you into a mold you can’t fit into. Motherhood on Hold is about seeing your worth, even when you feel lost, and helping you piece yourself back together. It’s about recognizing that you’ve been through hell, and we’re not here to act like nothing’s happened. Because nothing is the same after losing your children. But instead of ignoring or downplaying that trauma, we acknowledge it, work through it, and use it as the fuel to rebuild.
I’ve never understood the logic behind breaking someone down and then expecting them to just function like nothing happened. That’s gaslighting at its finest. The system claims to care about the children, but if they’re willing to tear them away from everything they’ve known, why aren’t they willing to take the necessary time to actually heal the family? Why are there no resources, no therapy, no guides to help mothers fix what’s been broken when the children were taken, or address the pain that led to this point in the first place?
Instead, mothers are expected to pick up the pieces alone. We’re handed the burden and told to figure it out, but we’re not given the support we need to actually heal. We’re not shown how to rebuild. This isn’t right, and that’s why I’m here. Motherhood on Hold is about making sure no mother ever has to go through this alone.
It is more than just a group—it’s a lifeline. A place where you don’t have to apologize for your struggles. A place where we understand that healing isn’t linear and that sometimes, the road is long and rocky. But no matter how tough it gets, we’ll be there. We’ll help you take the next step, even when it feels impossible.
This isn’t just about surviving—it’s about learning how to thrive again, for yourself and for your children. You deserve more than what this system has given you. You deserve to heal, to rebuild, and to find the strength to keep going. We’re not here to offer empty promises. We’re here to walk beside you through every challenge, every setback, and every victory, no matter how small.
Because the road back to your children isn’t just about following rules or meeting expectations—it’s about finding yourself again. And Motherhood on Hold will be here to help you find the way.
