My Mom Works in a Hospital, and We Are Scared
My mother works as a laboratory technician at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. She runs tests on blood samples to help doctors diagnose diseases such as cancer, HIV, and diabetes. Her 10-hour days are demanding; she must remain focused so as not to make any mistakes, and then she communicates with doctors and nurses […]
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Drugs Come First for My Mom
My mother’s primary relationship has been with drugs my whole life. If she wasn’t selling it, she was doing it. I spent the first four years of my life living in a trap house in Brooklyn, where my mother sold drugs and guns. She and my dad were both in the Bloods, but he abused […]
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Three Generations of Substance Abuse
My mother was a great mother before she started drinking. We had mommy-daughter days where we’d get our hair or nails done together. We’d look in photo albums at old pictures of me, and we’d bake cookies. My father was often in jail or in trouble so I never looked to him for anything. My […]
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A Parent’s Road to Recovery
This story originally appeared in Rise, a magazine written by parents involved in the child welfare system. When my daughter Rosemarie was 5 years old, she told me that her father was sexually molesting her when she went on weekend visits. As soon as she told me, I took Rosemarie to the hospital, got the […]
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