The paperwork said it was an emergency. It said I was self-medicating my cancer. I have never tried pot or any non-prescription medication. I have never had a drinking problem. And at the time he filed it, I wasn’t taking anything at all — I was in remission. It was a lie so total that I assumed, when I read it, that it would fall apart the second anyone looked at it. Instead, it summoned a lawyer.

Her name was Ann, and she was appointed to represent my children. Their own attorney. That’s how it works — when a custody case turns ugly enough, the court gives the kids someone whose job is to speak for their best interests. She never left. And slowly, steadily, over years, she moved my children toward their father.

I want to be careful here, because my kids were kids. They wanted more time with their dad. Children want both their parents — and there’s nothing wrong with them for wanting it. It wasn’t in their best interest. But they were her clients, and they wanted what they wanted, and so their attorney followed their wishes right into the damage.

I brought her things. That was my role for years: gathering evidence and carrying it in to a woman who would look at it and say the same two words.

I see.

I asked for a curfew for my son. She didn’t think one was necessary. I see.

I asked that my children have housing. Their father was living in a motor home on Rye Street — no address, not even a mobile home park, just a vehicle parked somewhere. I said my children needed a home. She said she was fine with him splitting the bed in the motor home into two, and that would be their home. The attorney appointed to protect my children looked at a bed in a motor home, with no address, and called it adequate shelter for them. I see.

I copied their homework so there’d be proof it was getting done. I documented, repeatedly, that he was sending them to school with no lunch and no lunch money — not once, over and over, because it kept happening and nobody would do anything unless I could prove it again.

She told me, at one point, that his ability to tell the truth was missing. She said that out loud. She knew. And then court orders were ignored, and she did nothing.

I see.

When my son was released to him, he began to struggle. Badly. In ways that frightened me, and in ways I could document. I brought her the evidence of that too. I sat there with it in my hands and gave it to the woman whose entire job was my children’s welfare. She said it should trigger an emergency screening. And then nothing happened. No screening. No action. Nothing. Because her clients were the children, and the children were acting out, and the children sided with their father — so their attorney did too.

I see.

Here is how it ended, and it did not end in a family courtroom. The motor home was not a home, no matter what she’d written down, and eventually he was forced to get an apartment. And then he was evicted from it. Everything I had said would happen, happened. Every piece of paper I brought in was right. It just didn’t matter, because nobody was going to act on it until the damage had already been done.

There were hard years after that. They were my children’s to walk through, and they’re theirs to tell or not tell, so I’ll leave the details where they belong, with them. I’ll only say that through all of it, I was there. Every time. In the seat beside them, whatever room we were in.

I brought the truth into that room over and over and was told I see, and the seeing never once turned into doing. I was only told the more responsible parent always gets “screwed”. What I know is this: they gave my kids to their father, on paper, with a lawyer’s signature and a judge’s order and a lie about a mother self-medicating her cancer. And when it all came apart, I was the one who was there.