The Baby in the photo is Darcy. Born a whole 5 lbs and 1 Oz at birth, 37 weeks and 4 days in a miraculously perfect planned C section, Darcy Angela Marie Martinez came waltzing casually into the world at San Francisco General hospitals Labor and Delivery floor. What was most memorable and as taboo as this may be, i experienced Ketamine, as this was what they used primarily for my anesthesia, which I directly attribute to this psychedelic experience of being in a tunnel of DMT like visuals and entities, all of whom were gentle and warm ¨familiar- feeling spirits¨, along with this deep knowing that I had been here before, and I was aware of every breath I took (probably the oxygen they had me on) because it felt like it was the best I had ever breathed, and then, the presence of another entity alongside me as we hurdled together through this tunnel and ... I heard a baby cry it's first breath. I opened my eyes as they dialed the anesthesia down (since I requested to witness her entrance). So, I did. All of this in a few minutes it seemed. Her Dad, the current love of my life, was holding my hand, gently caressing my face, and telling me she was perfect and beautiful. And complete. Safe to say and do I dare, I believe escorted my daughter spiritually into this world. So powerful! So powerful. Beautiful. Touching. Cool af.
Rewind to 8 months and some change, and we find ourselves in the Santa Cruz Mountains, amongst the redwoods and Bigfoot, in a homeless stead, if you will. I can't call it a camp because we had built a huge mismatched reclaimed wood fence that encircled a 30 by 30 ft plot that I single-handedly dug myself with a shovel and hoe out of the side of a huge hill. I lived there for an eventful 2 years, and Beto joined me for the last one. You may be wondering exactly what the hell were we even doing out there. Wasn't it scary? Answer: Hell yes it was terrifying. And an adrenaline rush, and fun, and some of the things you would hear or see would make you question everything you thought you knew and believed in. It was also an amazing way to satisfy your inner child's urge to build forts and live in them. Like, we had FUN! YES, we were homeless. And pretty much rock bottomed out in the Poverty Department of Financials, as well as OG's in being conisuers of fine drugs, the illicit kind. Well-seasoned veterans, talented and resourceful in the art of having them around the clock in large quantities. I mean, if you aren't going to be good then be fucking good at it, right?
Somewhere in my magical woodsy dark enchanted fairy camp, and through the picean haze of a constant head change provided by amphetamines and opiates, responsibilty came rudely barging through with a positive pregnancy test, which was prompted by a missed cycle or two and rather unusually full tatas (boobs). Oh, and I was already 3 months and some change when I officially confirmed that I was indeed pregnant. TIMING was not so good, but the Fact itself was fairly joyus, because I was head over heels in the honeymoon phase of our relationship which was the very definition of love at first sight. I am here to tell you that it exists. So put that in your notes as confirmed. Blinded by love and massive amounts of oxytocin, motivated by this little peanut in me, and jaded by being a foster kid that simply aged out of the system, and having no family of my own, and about a million other reasons that played a part in my decision to keep the pregnancy. And did i mention i was madly in love? We both were and still are.
Now let's take a moment to talk about my family tree that I Hail from. I was born in San Jose on Feb 24, 1988, at 8 in the morning to four expecting parties. Angela Dawn Owens/ Kropatch and Mark Machina, both 18, and Mike and Laura Gambelin, in their respective 30's. We were one of the first publicly recognized open adoptions in America. We were on the news show Good Morning America, the Oprah Winfrey show, and the Today Show. I was born with two names: Amanda Lee Machina-Kropatch, and Natalie Christine Gambelin. That's what my birth certificate says. I go by Natalie though. My alter Gothic ego is Raven. I never really got to know my birth mom due to a fatal car accident that killed her when I was 13. I was in a group home at this time where I endured 6 months of severe sexual abuse from one of the staff members and had to process the fact that the woman who gave birth to me was dead while I was alone and feeling violated with no one to turn to which spurred my need to run away from it all and never look back. I actually made it out of the group home late one night dressed in all black with one backpack with clothes and makeup and black lines under my eyes like in the movies and hid on the lower boughs of a pine tree with branches all the way to ground. I heard the alarms go off as I had opened my window and popped off the screen, then sprinted as fast as I possibly could, and mind you that was fast as I exercised obsessively every day running laps in miles at the group home. I had about a quarter mile of open lawn to bolt across in flood lights, but the flood lights only lit the exterior of the house and not the latter half of the lawn so the darkness was my first checkpoint. Once I successfully hit the dark edge of the lawn I literally had no knowledge of my terrain past this point and everything I did next was improvised. The house was luckily in a residential neighborhood and there were some sort of manicured evergreens all over the neighborhood. I heard police units responding to the escape and literally prayed for the night to hide me and slipped under a tree and balanced on my backpack and put one leg on the branch and managed to lie flat and perfectly still with my hoody over my face as the police eventually passed by me with dogs and all, but the dogs amazingly didn't alert them to me. One of my angels watching over me I guess. I must have laid there for an eternity and long after the cops and staff stopped looking for me and I was certain the cruisers left, only then did I carefully drop down to the ground and snap back into go mode. I became familiar with this theta-like mental state of primal adrenaline and precise judgment of my environment as I ran away from almost every boarding school I was sent to all over the western United States, until I simply aged out. But it was an exhilarating feeling of freedom and it was never mottled with fear or ¨what-ifs¨. Itś probably why I am still alive. I was a pretty13-year-old white girl that was hitchhiking by herself out of Placerville, CA to Sandpoint, ID, where my Mom was buried. I made it miraculously with one single ride from a guy who felt it was his obligation to make sure I got there safely and voluntarily drove me the entire way and dropped me off at my brothers birthday party which ironically was the day I arrived in a over-sized Misfits band shirt, black DIckies, long forest green hair and black lipstick. Apparently my brothers had no memory of the accident because they were in it too and survived, but not unscathed. Andrew, my Momś second kid who was 3 years my junior from a different dad, had been catapulted out of the car and wrapped around a metal pole by his hip like a rubberband. Terrace, 6 years my junior and from the same dad as Andrew, was ejected partially but stuck to the vehicle somehow and got dragged on his face like 30 feet I was told. Both were in intensive care for 8 days and had reconstructive surgery to there face and metal supports inserted as Andrews hip had shattered entirely. My Mom, rest in peace, was ejected to the middle of the road which unfortunately was the way the car rolled and rolled right over her and snapped her neck and crushed her pelvic bones, killing her instantly. Meanwhile while this was happening I was a thousand miles and two states away in hell and being abused by a piece of shit child rapist that I later learned in life that he had done this to others before me and I was the one who came forward. I am currently suing the group home for this and it doesn't erase the lifetime of damage but when we settle will be enough to change my life entirely. Back to my arrival in Sandpoint, ID...
I spent two weeks living with my Uncle James there but after that, my brothers dad who hated my mom, snitched me out to the authorities. Luckily I had been able to do everything I came to do, which was to sit on my momś grave and spend time there. I turned myself in to the cops when my Uncle said they had showed up at his house and threatened to take his kids if I didn't turn myself in, so what choice did I have? Long story short, I was shipped back to god-forsaken Placerville, right back to the group home I ran from. And three days later due to liabilities being significantly higher in my case (I mean they lost a 13 year old they were responsible for and found her three states away, so...) they surprise-shipped me in cuffs to girls lockdown facility in Colorado. I managed to get out of that one after manipulating their very own system and escaping in a public outing to the mall. Iwas caught and returned and escaped again no less than 6 times and eventually was shipped off to Utah where I simply refused to do anything other than congregate a band and a mini fan base within the school itself. We were a band of 5 kids all from California and I sang and played guitar and we called ourselves ¨Coat Hanger Abortion¨. We were actually pretty good, all original and we didn't have a drum set so we used buckets. The school had no choice but to succumb to our refusal to follow any rules and purposely got in trouble to get thrown into a little box of a room with nothing in it which we used to practice together. Eventually every Friday they let us perform. I was there for 1 and a half years and they eventually had to send me on a home visit to get rid of me cuz I would never graduate anyway and they knew I would disappear into the streets because I had no one to return home to. I finally got caught in a car that was stolen (I didn't know, right.I paid the guy $250!) and was shipped off to Sheridan, WY, to a co-ed boarding school. I was 17 and eventually aged out and returned to California.
So you see there is no way I can send my own flesh and blood to be raised by ANYBODY else but their own parents. I know the horrors of the system and the revolving doors of group homes and boarding schools and have been misdiagnosed by every psychiatrist they sent me to, like you can tell a 12 year old that they have borderline personality disorder so you give them Prozac?!? And a slew of cocktails of experimental SSRIś that are sponsoring the very doctor that is prescribing them!
As anyone who is still reading this can tell that I am not stupid, or un-educated, at the very least, but hopefully your already developed a reader-writer relationship with me and hopefully my very attempts at providing a first impression that people can relate to, or at least can fall in love with, thus increasing my odds of you wanting to donate to a noble cause. I aime to give a un-censored and real raw and well-detailed account of the life I have lived and if I don't write it down then who will ever even know this story? I aim to deliver my half of my experience and then I will introduce you Darcyś dad who has an equally harrowing and tear jerking story and best highlights his loyalty to his beliefs and love for his family and to his old soul and the things he has been through as you will fall in love with him, too. We all have a story but some have a best selling, novel and then a movie deal. We are those stories.
Let me bring our focus back to my early months of pregnancy. I was back in ¨go-mode"and created a team of support around me with a public health nurse that I obtained from the nurse at the methadone clinic, and I started titrating my dose. For those of you that this sounds like a foreign language to, Methadone is the only Doctor and Governmsoent approved medication to maintain sobriety safely from opiates when one is pregnant. Quitting cold turkey is NOT a solution for most as this will cause trauma to the mother and fetus and the possibility of miscarriage is quite high. I just want to point out here that back in the day, like I mean waaaay back, only 12% of women would survive childbirth and many wouldn't even make it through the pregnancy. We only now have a reign on it due to state of the art technology and medications, but the process of childbirth itself can cause ailments such as hypertension and diabetes which can stay with you for life. Hypertension was what happened to me but I had the opportunity to stabilize it through out the pregnancy.
I took myself to the Womend Health Center in Santa Cruz and had weekly checkups there as my pregnancy was considered high risk, due to the fact I was in active addiction and had hypertension andwas at risk for preclampsia, which is deadly. As my pregnancy progressed my care was transferred to Sutter Hospital and their OBGYN unit with Dr. Elizabeth Day who was amazing and was a huge advocate for me and my family to be. My partner was a silent but strong supporter of mine through all of this. And our higher power is the key to our success. I proved that despite being homeless and addicted to fentynyl and meth, the fact that I advocated for us fiercly portrayed where our hearts were at and our consistency with showing up together for every appointment no matter what obstacles were in our way earned us some key deep and meaningful connections with the women who we reached out to to be a part of our team, our cause, and they believed in us. Because actions speak louder than words.
I had a dauntingly dangerous 9 month in medical perspectives, due to my history. A open heart surgery when I was 21 because I had been careless and sloppy with my addiction and learned about hypodermic sanitary practices by almost losing my life to an infection that grew silently in my heart, literally. I only realized I might be dying just with this sense I had, because the only symptoms I experienced was a minor palpitation here and there in my chest, and around the last two months I had left to live my left ankle started hurting to the point of not being able to walk, and I started falling asleep everywhere for days at a time since my body was dying slowly. When I went to the emergency room to see what was going on they did some bloodwork and cut me loose. A few days later a cop who knew me well showed up at the house I was crashing at to inform me I was going to die and to and I better go with the ambulance that soon arrived. They had to utilize the police to find me because even my parents couldn't tell them where I was at and no phone so... I went with them after I grabbed my makeup and Ugg boots. Little did I know I had literally 3 weeks before my heart would rupture from the infection.
I was in the hospital for 2 months and had a mitral valve repair from self induced endocarditis. This was a close call to say the least. I was able to keep my own heart and didn't get a pig valve put in me, but I now have congestive heart failure due to having open heart surgery. Mind you, this was when I was 21. Im 36 now and have matured eons from that girl I was. So back to the future, this translated to my high-risk reason number 1. Ready for number 2? I was still in my rip roaring 20-somethings and had a 5 or 6 years of sobriety thanks to methadone but eventually was booted off the clinic for 3 strikes of violence, which we wont get into here but I will just say I was a hot headed blond that liked to fight when I was young (and I was pretty good at it ,too, not glorifying or showcasing violence here but a girl that can stand up and box with the best of them is nothing to be ashamed of!) So, Iḿ going to go out on a limb here and just assume a good portion of the population has had their lives touched by the opiate epidemic here in America and all over the world, so hopefully people know what I am saying when I say I was on 369 milligrams which at the time was a very high dose. THey kicked me out of the clinic for violence so I really had no mercy offered in my case and was tapered off that much methadone in 12 days. I barely remember how sick I got and definitely relapsed. For those who don't know anything about methadone, it takes no less than 30 whole days to detox someone if they're going cold turkey. Ive experienced this and its nothing nice. To give you an idea, you CAN die from the withdrawal process despite what some people say because Ive witnessed it. If you have ever seen a person detox alcohol than there you have it. It looks and feels a lot like that. From a scientific perspective, opiates block adrenaline in the brain, causing users to feel a bit, well not alerted to much, and opiates also release a butt-load of endorphins which causes the brain to develop extra receptors to accommodate this overload, leaving the user with an unnatural amount of receptors that there natural brain will never be able to fill and is what causes the cravings that are so intense, it is why opiate users have a 2% chance statistically speaking, of remaining abstinent. But this also renders them unable to naturally sooth themself when detoxing and renders them to feel like they are crawling out of their skin due to massive amounts of adrenaline that starts surging once in withdrawal. Medicative Assisted Treatments that treat these symptoms by filling the receptors with a similar opioid but synthetic, and legal, include methadone and beupenorphine, more commonly known as Suboxone. I have been on both and Methadone is what works for me. My chance of ever living a life free of methadone are slim, but I don't care. I made my bed, no sense in crying about it. As a matter of fact I plan to share my story to advocate for the addict who still suffers and my goal is to raise awareness to the fact that opiate addicts don't need traditional rehabilitation methods, they need MAT(medicated assistive treatment) programs and an understanding from the community they live in. My experience is so unique because I currently am on 900 milligrams. My body metabolizes my dose of three hundred in 9 hours flat and I find myself in full withdrawal after 14 hours. THe average person metabolizes their dose in 24 hours, with a half life of 48 hrs. This was discovered by ¨peak and trough¨ blood tests performed every hundred milligrams to see how the body metabolites the dose at its lowest point, first thing in the morning before one doses, and then at the peak of the dose around 4 hours after dosing. So this was how we learned that Iam what they call a ¨rapid metablozer" however, it is literally the fastest they have ever seen in the entire world and they have never seen anyone on a 900 milligram dose, so I gave my doctors permission to write a medical paper on me.
Now where was I before trailing off into a rabbit hole, oh yes, the second reason my pregnancy is a high risk. Well the methadone/ addiction thing is definitely one. Mind you I didn't reach a 900 milligram dose overnight, no. I started at 30 milligrams. And slowly, very slowly, like 10% every week or so titrated up. Unfortunately, Santa Cruz county was not medically equipped to work with the kind of dose I require. I honestly wonder how anyone is finding sobriety with how slow they titrate people there and the new fentynyl epidemic/trend is pushing the number of milligrams people are on higher and higher. Prime example right here. Anywho, this fact that I metabolise opiates at a very high pace means that I have an enormous tolerance. Which means that it took me approximately something like a year and some change to find a dose that I was comfortable on, meaning that my calś score was like a 0, in OTHER words that I wasn't experiencing any withdrawal symptoms. So if you go to a doctor and tell them you are pregnant and addicted to opiates, they will tell you not to stop using, as any withdrawal symptoms can easily effect the fetus and more than likely induce a miscarriage, especially in the first trimester. A fetus instantly assumes VIP priority, and now whatever Mom goes through, baby does too. Im not going to sugar coat it. If you get sick, baby gets sick. If you are dopesick, baby is dopesick. In the perfect world, no woman strung out on drugs would ever be so irresponsible as to bring a baby into the world addicted. But this is reality and honey, just know that love knows no boundaries, even in addiction, and love trumps addiction, my addiction got put on kind of a back burner as this new addition to the key responsibilities I was juggling took front and center stage. Does this kind of make sense? Maybe a little bit? No? I tried. Anyways I not exactly worried about anyone else, well kinda. Nevermind.
So now for the third reason I was a high risk pregnancy (like the first two weren't enough) was due to a D.V.T. (Deep Vein Thrombosis) I had in my left femerol vien. Otherwise known as a blood clot. This had also almost claimed my life. Rewind to 2016 and we find me going at it yet again with my addiction and relationship to hypodermic syringes which is almost as powerful as heroin itself. Of course I relapsed after being kicked off the methadone clinic and suspended from coming back for 6 months. I would have literally died if I didn't. In part I am responsible for my actions that led to that but mind you I had not used illicit drugs for 5 years nor did I think I would ever have to use again. I literally did not forsee them booting me out of the clinic and to this day don't entirely understand it. Either way it was what it was and yes I was back to shooting heroin in my veins, which I was running out of and eventually started using my femerol vein in my left leg. I still have the scar from the fistule I created on both of my legs like to dots right in my pelvic, its nothing horrible to see if you don't know what they are, like if were to wear a bikini to the pool you would see them but its just like a dot on either hip right where the artery runs. Yes there is a vein there and its about the size of your pinky in diameter, and it runs all the way down from starting under your chin on either side of your throat. And yes I used those too. It is a wonder how I manged to stop before I killed myself. Like how dangerous it is. I literally managed to collapse almost EVERY SINGLE POSTERIOR VIEN in my body, including in my left femerol vien. Yup, ladies and gentleman, I blew out the left lifeline in my body. It collapsed and left me with a huge blood clot in my leg that traveled to my lung. I had 3 MINUTES left to live when I walked through the emergency room doors. Im not exagerrating. 3 min. I was in the hospital for 2 weeks and to this day have a problem with my left leg getting swollen if I spend too much time on my feet. And Iḿ ADHD so Im always actively doing something. But an ultrasound of my body they had to use to find a vein somewhere on me for an IV this time in the hospital and its crazy because I saw with my own eyes that a full scan of any possible location they could run an IV through revealed that literally ALL of my surface viens were gone. I didn't even have my clavicle vein. They eventually had to put me under anesthesia to locate a deep vein in my arms. Like these IVś were valuable like gold to my nurses and usually they expire after like 16 days or something, but mine they just kept using until they stopped working or after reaching an appropriate dose that didn't require supplements or adjuncts.
Wait, what? Im confused what are you saying? Im trying my best to explain why I am a high risk pregnancy. So lets recap: 1. Mitral valve repair/congestive heart failure 2. Rapid metaboliser 3. DVT 4. I have hypertension induced by pregnancy 5. Hi risk of preclampsia which stems off of hypertension. So now we bundle it all together in a big squishy ball. And it goes like this: I was camping in the woods when I fell in love with this guy they call Drifter. My nickname for the record is Raven (NO I DID NOT NAME MYSELF)
We were now living together in the woods when we realized I was pregnant. So we started our journey out of the woods into housing. I gathered a loyal team of county offered support, like a public health nurse (an angel named Rachel) and a wrap around case manager (the first one) named Lauren. Together Rachel and Lauren advocated for us and got us into the shelter. Rachel bussed me around to all of my doctors appointments every week and called to make sure we were ok . The name of the game now was getting ourselves to the clinic everyday and making sure to take my blood pressure every day and to take my bp meds. When 7 months of pregnancy came around and I still couldn't get sober (this was ONLY because I wasn't yet able to find a stable dose and I was only on 200 mgs anyway. I left out the small detail that I stopped shooting up 3 years ago when fentanyl became popular. In a sick way it saved my life probably because it was strong enough for me and my metabolism to simply smoke it and get well. So I could ditch the needles and the struggle and stereotypes that comes with them. Itś not exactly anything to celebrate over but it was an epic relief to know that I wasn't going to die from shooting up. A win, no matter how small. And if your too much of a snob to agree with me, well you can kiss my ass, because I don't like you anyway.
I am going to take moment here to brush off the congregation of cheese flavored fish crackers that has settled all over my keyboard. *cracking fingers* streeeetch and three deep breaths. Puff on my vape, and here we go...
Next, we are going to talk about how me and my dude moved from the small micro-toolsheds, I mean homes, that the shelter provided for us. Mind you we were grateful and all but itś no place for a pregnant woman. Now you are probably like ¨you have a man, what is he doing about this?¨ . I will clear that up right here. I picked him up during the lowest bottom of his life, and vica versa. Like same tolerance for drugs and same disposition, same sense of humor, and this man was literally made for me. I will spend a moment to talk about my Beto. He is after all the father of my daughter and if the circumstances were different we might have not even ran into each other again. Yes, again. He was that one hella fine dude with the clean cut southsider look, like immaculate. With tattoos and a matching homie on his side, but I never could say even hi beacuse I was with someone else at that time. Come to find that he was checking me out too. Because heand I crossed paths approximately 15 years later in a trapped out tent city in Santa Cruz where he was working for another homie who literally wasjust there to sell dope but had a home elsewhere. Call it fate or coincidence that we would end up sitting next to each other on a sofa in a two-story structure made out of pallets, tarps and PVC pipes ( it was elaborate in the sense that there was a TV upstairs, and a garage downstairs for the bikes and scooters) and the main room where Beto was working was a hunting tent so it had a window that inten
tionally faced the main trail for customers to drop by with out having to come in. The whole ¨property¨ itself had a pallet fence and gate and a real door on hinges into the breezeway that locked with a padlock on either side. Pretty nice considering the circumstances. Some of these places would simply blow your mind. But that is how I ended up on a sofa merely inches from him and it was a cupid interfering I guess or love at first sight because we both experienced an ¨are you kidding me?!¨ feeling when we locked eyes. It was literally the finest face in my eyes that I had ever seen and visa versa and the rest is history. He has been by my side for all but a week up until we both had to go to program. But our daughter was created during our honeymoon phase where we were literally living in the creepy and stormy forest where at the time it was winter and the rain was pounding down in torrents and I think 5 trees fell down around us with a terrible ¨crack!¨ and it is a scary event yes but it was not my first rodeo,folks, and I had made my spot with honoring this knowledge that trees fall unpredictably and I visually noted all the trees around that could possibly fall one way or another and I was about 98% positive that non would fall on me, so Iḿ still here, right? But it is still loud as hell and they almost fell on our neighbors who lived a quarter mile down the trail and obviously didn't have the same campsite protocol as I did. LOL. And the trail was so muddy and flash flooding was happening as a seasonal river flowed through the gully right past our spot, and our heat source was always a battle and sometimes was a ton lof candles and terracotta flower pots and other times was a sterno or hand sanitizer in a can, and we always had a firepit and tons of redwood because that is what fell. We had to take wheel barrows and hatchets down the trail and down some dirt stairs that i eventually dug another flat trail around for us. And we found a megladon tooth and root the size of my hand while digging around out there! It disappeared magically but if there is a tooth there's more out there, because these woods have bones everywhere! But between the soot and mud and rain we barely noticed because we were so much in love. It was summer when our daughter was conceived, like april i think. So from the woods to a shelter to a family shelter in my seventh month which is called the Rebele Family Shelter in Santa Cruz and is a building with individual rooms in a apartment like pod, with a shared bathroom and kitchen, and a housing navigator with wrap around services. When I got close to full term we had made a plan with our doctor at Sutter to transfer us to San Francisco due to my heart condition and due to the fact that Dominincan hospital was not equipt to deal with me. Also, General Hospital´s methadone clinic are the leaders in methadone in the whole United States and are called Ward 93. I could not titrate my dose fast enough to find abstinence at my Santa Cruz clinic so I also was going to transfer clinics. Beto obviously came with me and transferred as well. He came with me to the Hospital to San Francisco and stayed with me every day for almost two months where we both detoxed together in a safe environment with understanding nurses and doctors who let him stay with me the whole time. There is a team of nurses, therapists and doctors here at General Hospital called Team Lily. They are dedicated to mothers and families that struggle with addiction to opiates in particular and they help to keep families together. I was handed over to a new public health nurse from Rachel, to an equally amazing woman named Kristin. She has been an advocate for me from the time she was assigned to us. Rachel is a constant support for us still. Everything was great even as the planned C section was performed at 37 weeks and 4 days. Darcy was born at 5 lbs and 1 oz and came out looking like she had been doing reps in my womb. I survived the pregnancy and came out relatively unscathed, but the epidural did damage to my nerves in my spine and Im still experiencing issues with walking due to it. But for the fear my obgyn and my nurse Rachel had that I wouldn't survive, I proved that I could! But I wouldn't survive another pregnancy, at this point.
Since Darcy was born with opiates in her system she had to spend about a month in the nicu to detox but she did like a champ. It is not fair to say that babies are born ¨addicted¨ because this part of their brain hasn't developed yet and they usually don't remember any of the experience. If raised in a healthy and sober environment they have as good a chance as anybody in living a life free of drugs. It is about theparents and the values and knowledge accomponied by the self esteem and support the families provide that determine if a child begins experimentation with illicit substances. There are plenty of studies and no evidence that support that a baby experiences any physical damage from opiates being used in utero. Both Beto and I were prepared to change our life on the spot for her to keep her in our lives. I could never let my child slip out of my care to a foster family! Both her dad and I enrolled in 90 day residential programs and I went to one that I could have her with me at. I did 90 days in a program with her and CPS had gotten involved because there is methadone and fentynyl in my system. I will just clear up now that fentynyl can show up a persons system for up to a year after use ceases. Neither one of us have used from the day she was born on. The initial investigator saw all the prenatal care I had and complimented us on proving that our daughters safety was our priority and they were impressed that we voluntarily were enrolled in treatment programs. I opted for therapy because it was free and who wouldn't take advantage of free therapy, I mean it usually expensive. I actively participated in therapy weekly while I was in program. Both Beto and I ran into a bunch of BS in our programs like female staff in his program trying to hit in him and when he turned her down, she got him kicked out by falsifying a dirty drug test. He turned around after spending a night out on the streets and got himself right back into program. He and I haven't had any legit dirty tests anywhere and we get tested everywhere we can like the hospital and at methadone.
Now this is where it gets weird. Long story short there is very little to no oversight in these treatment programs so staff can get away with a lot more than you would think. I hate to say it but I reckon that a few even get high, judging by the pupils and unpredictable mood swings and nerotic tweaker-like behavior (i.e. mopping the whole house with bleach at 3 am and sweating profusely.) but niether here nor there, cuz I wasn´t there to worry about anyone else, I was there for my daughter and myself (and Beto) and no one else. My original safety plan (for those who dont know, a Safety Plan is what CPS calls the plan for the family moving forward) simply stated that ¨The Mother admits to struggling with drug addiction and is hereby required to complete a 90 treatment program, the baby will remain in the mothers care¨ and that was literally it. Dad was not required to complete any such program but voluntarily put himself in the men's sister program to the one I was in. We were looking at the whole thing as a positive in our life, we were not denying that we needed a little structure and support and thought ¨fuck it, if you do it I´ll do it,too¨. Plus, where the hell would we stay otherwise, you know what I mean? Housing was still a mystery at this point so we also viewed 90 days in a victorian mansion where we didn't have to pay rent was perfect. The hardest part was that we had to be separated. CPS promised us visitation rights would be honored. Our first court date the judge said that he didn't want anymore than two supervised visits for us because he saw the back story and all the work we had done to make sure our baby was healthy and that we were prepared for her. Dad was told by the first worker that he didn't do anything wrong that the company had to call it a ¨removal¨ in order for him to be able to coordinate visitation rights from his program and supervised at mine. At some point I was offered therapy and I jumped on it, I mean free therapy, who wouldn't? I did my 90 days and never missed a single therapy appointment or medical appointment and had taken care to make sure all of my insurance was transferred from SC to SF. I provided clean tests from day one and remained stable on my methadone dose and kept up with taking all of my cardiac meds and refills as needed. I take six other meds for my heart and blood. I will include a medical itinerary for reference purposes somewhere in this fundraiser. I never missed any groups in my program but the staff were bullies (not all of them but the majority, if you live in San Francisco, the program is called Womens Hope, look it up or ask around and you will here something, I mean an infant died under their care and it was not from SIDS, the baby was starved and smothered, and this happened while I was there. It was tragic, but they swept it under the rug. We weren't aloud to process it with each other or with our family because they didn't want it to ruin there image. I had a staff who was black, flip out on me racially one night when I had my daughter in my arms and was alone with her in the med room. She called me various racial slurs and threw an empty paper cup angrily into the trash that was right next to me. It made my daughter jump and cry, and I still had to sign the binder for my meds but felt uncomfortable so I just excused myself to get me and my baby out of there to go back to my room and she was hollering behind me saying I was being defiant without giving a signature and to shut the hell up, that people were sleeping. I was so shaken by this that it made me literally shake all over and I realized then at how little oversight these places have, because nothing came of it. The same staff weeks later was the main aggressor in a terrible incident where an alumni member who had graduated the program came to the front gate with her baby and her partner late one night and obviously was mentally a little unhinged, possibly drunk, but the way she was approached was sad. The other girls, my peers, disrespectfully taunted her and that particular staff member actually chased her down the block while cussing her out and threatening her with another girl who was 7 months pregnant. I stayed in my room but could hear everything. Nothing ever came of that either. Eventually I had two weeks until I graduated. My patience had literally worn thin with the politics within the program and Darcy´s father and I missed each other, and we had already been through 3 different workers from CPS, actually 4 and we had already gotten our 5th one and her name is Pernita Brown. This woman is one of the reasons this fundraiser exists. I first was introduced to her false sense of security after I was transparent and kind with her, and she turns around and is part of a curve ball that the Womens Hope staff pitched at me to try to get my daughter removed. They called me down to the office at 10 a.m. and told me with a disturbingly smug attitude that I had 2 hours to find a safe place to go, to pack all of my things and to get myself enrolled in outpatient treatment.. Firstly this is ridiculous and impossible to do in 2 hours. Secondly, out patient treatment is largely a referral based process which I have zero authority over. Thirdly, my daughter was not in imminent danger in my care and removing her violated this. I had no one to cry to this about that could help me other than my partner who was helpless himself. He could only sit on the line back at his program where he informed me he was sweating profusely and throwing up. Thank the dead, Kristin, my public health nurse and my therapist Shawna had been summoned by me and were on there way to help me pack and to help with Darcy. Bless Kristins heart she had panicked and called around the city looking for a program that could help and take us in last minute. She connected with a transitional housing program called Cameo house. So they had no reason to take her from me. I didn't care if it was a whole new program I was only concerned with the fact me and my daughter were still together. Our bond is a deep one, I just need to point out. I believe this stems from the lack of bonding I had with my own family and have such a strong maternal nature genetically. I heard when my own mother gave me up for adoption that it ruined her forever and I understand how now. So it would be ultimately the breaking of my heart if I lost Darcy. I fiercely have fought through my own demons to keep her with me and it is not fair the way CPS works to separate families for profit. I was at Cameo house for two weeks and I refused to sign there paper that committed me to two years in their program and demanded that I voluntarily sign over 60% of my E.B.T. card to them . If I had my partner with me I wouldn't give a shit where we were, as long as we were there together, as a family. And these fuckers want nothing more than to separate us as it seems. But men/fathers arent allowed in any of these programs that allow the mothers and children. And as far as my ebt card is concerned they are not supposed to be demanding any of their income if they are enforcing groups because itś the groups that are how a transitional rehab gets their funding and any other revenue goes straight into their pockets. I point this out because on a Friday, roughly 3 weeks ago, I was blindsighted again by Pernita Brown and her supervisor. Kristin was there too. She was silent as Pernita told me that they were taking Darcy from me for no clear reason. Mind you I am not just going to be like ¨oh sure, here you go" and fucking hand her over to CPS to take her into a Foster home on wishy washy allegations that hold no court with me. I was raised in the system so over my dead body and out of my cold dead fingers you would have to pry her. Just wait, it gets worse. I panicked. I said no. I called my dude who had ZERO knowledge of this move. I put him on video and showed it to pernita and told her to explain this to her father. ẅhy are you taking her from my wife? What did she do wrong? Are you out of your mind?¨ And she said that I wasn't following the rules at Cameo house and that I dropped out of therapy. WHAT?!? How is this imminent danger?!? How is this above all reason? You have children out there RIGHT now who are actually suffering at the hands of there caretakers, much of the abuse coming from the foster parents themselves, and you feel it is necessary to remove a 4 month old from the paternal mothers care to place this four month old into a foster home where trauma from neglection due to separation will ensue simply because I was requesting a new therapist?? Red flags are present here. Where is that guy with the red flag that runs across the screen on you tube grumbling warnings through gritted teeth when you need him? This is wrong. I called my dude on messenger right away to face time him to add his support because the numbers of us against them were uneven. It looked like a fucked up episode of Intervention, with the fat toad named Pernita Brown (Iḿ sorry, did I say that?) at the head of the table, her ¨supervisor" next to her and the lovely staff of Cameo house next to her and on the other side of the table, the ¨us¨ side was public health nurse Kristin Gundlach (pronounced Gun-lock, isn't that wild?) who was busy fighting back tears while biting her knuckles, and Eli Mcklintock, a Berkley Law student who was assigned to my case for his class and had developed a personal closeness with me as a person I could call and get information and console at nine p.m. when no other official people were reachable, so he was known as a good support system for me and that is why he was there for this removal, I only later learned the legistics of the amount of time ahead of knowing about this meeting they had, which ended up being like 15 minutes warning, in Kristin and Eliś case, in my case I was blind sighted. So back to Beto,Dad, on facetime who also had zero knowledge of this was literally on the other end in his respective treatment center, many blocks away and helpless to the situation unfolding as my voice cracked when I told him bluntly ¨they´re taking her from me. They are taking Darcy¨ ¨What?!? Why?¨ ¨I don't even know why don´t you ask them?Yeah, explain to her father why you are taking his daughter¨ and turned the phone so they were face to face and they told him because I had complied to therapy and that I had dropped out of it so they were taking her. Firstly, the conversation between me and my therapist was literally something that happened 12 hours prior to this. And it was based on the conflict of interest that remained because my therapist was also the therapist of several of the girls I was living with at Womens Hope and didn't feel comfortable working with her anymore and she said she understood, but obviously had gone and told my CPS worker enough that they twisted it into what it was. THe very fact that I was in therapy was my idea as therapy isn't always cheap and here it was free to me and of course it would be a good idea but it is not helpfulif one doesn't feel comfortable with the other so either way it is not any grounds upon which to remove a child. Want to know what what I have been diagnosed with recently in this most recent therapy sessions? Anxiety. Not any specific type of anxiety, just anxiety. Im sorry but WHO WOULDNT HAVE A LITTLE ANXIETY IN EARLY RECOVERY? Still not enough to remove a child. I had tested out a medication with my psychiatrist called Duoloxitine and had to abruptly stop taking it as I was experiencing precipitated withdrawal symptoms from my methadone which is my sobriety so I cant take any chances with that. My dose is so high that moving up on my dose will require more than just a doctors signature. It would require bloodwork and EKGś and then a meeting about the findings and Im already at a dose that floors doctors that have came across my med list. Anywho, none of this has anything to do with the type of parenting skills I have. Ask anyone who knew me and my daughter and you would hear about what an excellent mother I am and Kristin who saw her weekly and weighed her and checked her out knew the deep bond between darcy and I and knew this would be traumatic for both of us and though she couldn't flat out tell me to take darcy and run, she also couldn't tell me to hand her over. I kept looking to her for support and asked her what I should do, my poor partner on the other end occasionally taking a moment to retch into the toilet from the stress. To make matters worse, the police were called and they came pretty quickly. I am not a dummy. I had no other reaction to this than to explain to thew female officer who was very nice, what was going on and how messed up it really was and she sort of calmed my nerves a little bit by reassuring me that this was temporary and that the way I handled the situation was very good and spoke volumes to my parenting. She noted that I was attentive to my daughters needs no matter what was going on, and the sun was going down by the time I agreed to hand her over. How could anybody in their right mind just willingly hand over their 5 month old baby to the clutches of CPS, fully well knowing the horrors of foster homes, and mind you our daughter is beautiful and has Grey eyes and a wonderful disposition, and an old soul. This is what scares me, but the fucking pieces of shit came with a paper signed by a piece of shit judge that bit on whatever hook these CPS workers baited. I kept looking at Kristin like"what do I do?" and she would shrug and reply "I don't know, she's not in imminent danger" which I interpreted as not to hand her over. The officers told me this was temporary and that they couldn't see any reason why she should be removed, but there was nothing they could do because it was a warrant signed by a judge. They would make sure their report was a good one and that it said that i was cooperative and that i handled such a messed up situation appropriately. Truth be told, I was in shock. This was the heartbreaking decision that I had to make, and now not everything was OK. I WAS CLEAN AND SOBER AND NOT ONE SECOND OF ANY SUCH DAYS WAS DARCY NEGLECTED. THE BOND WE SHARE IS A DEEP ONE AND MY PARTNER WARNED THE VILE EXCUSE OF A CPS WORKER AND HE SUPERVISOR THAT THEY WERE STANDING TO TRAUMATIZE BOTH DARCY AND MOM. THEY DID NOT CARE. THEY SAT STONEFACED AND STARED ME IN THE FACE AND TOLD ME THEY HAD SUCH CONCERNS OF WISHY WASHY ALLEGATIONS. "OH, WE'RE NOT COMFORTABLE
make matters worse, the cops had run my name and they had found a handful of bullshit warrants out of Santa Cruz from when I was still using and had to arrest me. So they took my baby girl and arrested me all ìn the same day. I couldn't believe it. My inner child was upset, scared, hurt. In a way, I was glad I got booked into the county jail so I didn't have to remain in that godforsaken "program" that had the room with my daughters clothes, formula, bassinet, and diapers, around all these other women with their children asking me what happened, I just couldn't, I needed Beto. But by law they had to arrest me and house me for 5 days to give Santa Cruz co. a chance to pick me up. Which they did. But they let me out when I arrived when the booking office received multiple phone calls from both of my public health nurses, who I love for this, but they called and told them they better re-evaluate my charges and figure out exactly how they were going to get me my medication or they were going to have a dead girl on their hands, and what would the city and her family think about that? Fifteen minutes later I was dressed out in my own clothes and given a court date which, upon later realization, was for the 3rd of September, which was a Saturday. They had me "courtesy" dropped off at Dominican hospital, the Worst Hospital in California, or just the most judgemental, or meanest, so I had to use their emergency room to charge my phone and get emergency funds sent to my cash app to make it back to San Francisco before I got really sick, basically in withdrawal, because remember I metabolise my dose in 9 hrs, and I hadn't had my blood pressure meds either, and I know I was in a hospital, but they weren't about to help (yes, I asked). So I made from one bus to downtown, where I caught the 17, and from San Jose, I boarded the Cal Trans train to downtown SF and from there, caught the 9 to General Hospital, went to the emergency room and had all my medical papers from the jail intercounty transfer, and got my evening dose and my blood pressure meds thank God, I kinda just spent the rest of the night in the E.R. with the rest of the homeless that were there. SF General is a special hospital, I'm so grateful for them. Night and day difference between General Hospital, and Dominincan Hospital in Santa Cruz. Just in the judgemental aspects of how they treat different people, like, the lines are so black and white in Santa Cruz, in between the rich and the poor, the homeless and the housed, and I am glad we took the initiative to get the hell out of there. San Francisco at least lends a hand if you're trying to do better for yourself.
Now, here I am, sober around a lot of people on drugs, and dealing with the loss of my daughter, which blindsighted me. I didn't see it coming. Apparently, this bendeja was planning it from the gate. Apparently, this is what she does. My friendly, vulnerable, honest to a fault, want to connect with some one, anyone, tree hugging animal loving ass, was open with her, I'm referring to our CPS worker, Pernita Brown, I am honestly still learning that CPS is not to be trusted, they aren't your friends, they want to use your own wit against you, they're highly suspicious of parents, and we just were unlucky in the luck of the draw of workers. It's to the point of realizing this, even if it was the hard way, but apparently this lady made a 70 page report, dating back to July, stating that they recommend to Bypass us completely. No reunification period. She's trying to say I'm delusional, that I have delusions of people trying to attack me and poison my baby. Wow bitch. OK. So, we're taking it to trial. Trial is in December. In the meantime we're not only testing in one place, we're testing in 3. We are going to an outpatient treatment program for relapse prevention on paper where we earn money for submitting clean urine samples that are tested by intstastrips for every drug testable under the sun, and we have to request a separate one for fentynyl. Every test we earn 10 dollars for every test, at the end of the program would be a grand total of 340 dollars. But you can pull out money anytime. It's saved our butt's once our twice when we were broke and had no food. I'm a vegetarian and been one most of my life, so free food usually has meat in it and I can't eat it without suffering massive diarrea for like a week and sulfur burps. 🤢🤮.TMI? IDK. IDTS.
We have visits with our daughter, which we wouldn't miss for the world and occur twice a week for 3 hours each. Naturally my dude left his treatment program because I was no longer in mine and he was certainly not going to leave me on the street. Screw there program.Anyway it's not for everyone and we are proving that. They have two little oversight in them in staff can literally abuse You and get away with it and there's no body to tell them otherwise Is literally your word against theirs. On the bright side , we're blazing a trail Improving that We can do it if we want to anyway If you want to To be clean you will be. We test twice a month randomly for the method on clinic.. We've earned take homes because we are clean. A take home is your dose for a day so you don't have to come into the clinic to pick it up. And when you earn five months clean With clean UA's you get take homes for three days a week. I dose three times a day anyway so I had to earn a little trust there with the doctors to begin with, with such a high dose. We call a test line for CPS five days a week, Monday through Friday, and have a computer system randomly select which days you test. We have never missed a test except for one day because I ate CHICKEN. BUT I called in and warned them that my UA was impossible because I had liquid coming out both ends at the same time, and therefor they wanted non of it. What's funny is, the people who have grown close to us from working with us every week are avid fans, they say I'm "brilliant", queen of responsibility and organization, I laugh. But let them think that! Who knows maybe there's some truth. We just want our daughter back. Who wouldn't all out fight for their daughter? What foster kid who knows what it is like to not have your mom and dad, can just roll over and let them go? Maybe some people don't have a maternal instinct, maybe some folks are broken and mentally incapable of being a safe nurturing and supportive parent. You can't take care of yourself, how can you care for a child? I get the suspicion. I question many all the time when I witness some parenting skills or lack thereof in public, but who am I to judge. My dude and I have some very dark pasts, that give us an edge that others or age might not have. But we are believers in that we are the best people to raise their own offspring, and never to let them down to grow up feeling unwanted. Or passed off. I know how that feels. He has three trades in his resume. Diesel Mechanic/ Auto Mechanic, Journeyman Electricians Apprentice, and his B license. He needs to apply for these again and that costs money. I have a certificate in wildlife rehabilitation and a gift with animals. Both of us are interested in creating a program to address the homeless crisis, a place like a shelter or a program that aims at families experiencing homelessness and for those with animals. We're living in a shelter ourselves which is the one road block between us having our daughter with us and not. We're one of hundreds waiting for a place where we can call home, and the price of living here is insane! First off, I've started sewing my own clothes by hand, and it comes from the need for clothing, but also the need to create. A sewing machine would be amazing, a good treadle or industrial or serger would be excellent, just the ability to fund my craft and what not would be a game changer. Enough talking let's see some pictures and videos! 5
a letter from her foster parent, which soothed us in a major way, she is lucky, Darcy. The pictures are from her foster parent as well. Were glad she reached out to us and found out that Darcy is in swim lessons!! 🫠🥰🥹
Dad and Darcy at a visit
the back of a shirt I decorated with bleach
this is another piece I attacked with bleach, like the spider web and the prayer on the sleeves
me, above... in all my glory...
dad and Darcy
Darcy Chunka Munk at a visit with us, 5 months old
Darcy, minutes old with Dad
Darcy in the NICU
