Dear Rowsheall and Katelyn, I pray each and everyday that your family you have now will listen to their hearts and come and find me before you are 18 maybe next year or something so I can at least watch you grow up through pictures that's the least I would ever want if I could have anything in the world of course the most is to have you back for always would be my ultimate wish but I know that is out of the question. I miss you two so much! I'm sure you two are getting so big. I saw a 5 year old the other day and I cant even imagine you Rowsheall being that age and I was watching our videos of birthday parties and I can't imagine you Katelyn being Rowsheall's age in these videos and pictures. I wish I could see you both it breaks my heart that I can't but the foster mom does sometimes. This part is for your parents you have now: I know you are good Christian people and I am thankful for that, at least my girls are in God's hands more so with you two by their sides. I know you couldn't have your own kids probably and it broke your heart but my story isn't quite the fairy tale you think being a birth parent is. If something goes wrong in your life and you don't know where to turn and you have two children 17 months apart and the world as you know it is crumbling fast around you, that you feel there is no where to turn. After almost loosing your mother to breast cancer, the man you thought you loved and he loved you hit you after years of verbally bashing you so you left him, your grandmother who was like a second mother to you died, and your mother was drinking and suicidal saying things like "I'm worth more dead than alive" you were taking your younger sister to school and after school activities while having two children in toe, you are caring for your grandmother cause your mother is too drunk to do anything, you hardly have time to take care of yourself then your grandmother dies, that takes the cookie. You think the only way you can get your mother to quit drinking is to let her care for your children and let her drop one of them since that is what took her to quit the time before: she dropped your infant sister on a wood floor while she was drunk and never drank again. So you decide that maybe the way to go about doing this is to admit yourself into a local hospital to force your mother to care for your two children, only to find yourself on 7 different medications within two weeks and then released. You find that your case manager you have is an old friend from a church you used to attend and she takes you off a medication that they have to monitor with blood work other wise you could be in trouble, which suddenly you find yourself going more nuts than before so you re-check yourself back into the hospital. While all this is happening your mother is having trouble paying a babysitter to care for your two children while she works so the case manager and old friend suggests a friend from the church to watch the children for free and everything will be provided as in diapers wipes food and whatever else the children or your mother needs. God sent program called "the Guardian angel program" Prayers are answered help is there. Then when you get off all these medications you find yourself in a wired state of mind so you go to a friends house because you are out of cigarettes and you sit down to sift through their ashtray and find what you think is a filter-less cigarette but after lighting it you quickly realize its a roach from a previously used joint. YIKES that wasn't your intention. So you tell your friend and new found friend of your experience and then your boyfriend dumps you for another girl, then you find a new boyfriend and he moves into your apartment above your mother's garage and you find out he smokes some type of red powder you have no idea what it is so you leave because you don't want nothing to do with anything like drugs. Again you tell your trusted friends of the activities you witnessed thinking they may know what it was. Then you run into your ex abusers friend who blames you for not letting the abuser see his children so you agree to arrange a visitation in a public place so the children would be safe and you would be safe and call the babysitter. She claims the children are taking a nap right then but she would call you when they woke up. So everything is fine. You wait and wait and finally get a call but its your mother saying that the babysitter was all upset what did you say or do to make her that upset? All you did was ask if you could pick up YOUR children but if its that big of a problem tell her to forget you even asked. So NOW its over. You get another call its your trusted case manager and friend saying the same thing you tell her the same thing you told your mother and NOW its over. So you go out to eat with your ex abuser to talk about the children's home and why they haven't set up visitation yet. You are thinking everything is fine and perfectly normal. You get a third call and its a sheriff officer claiming your children have been placed in police protective custody. What?! What did the baby sitter do to your children?! OH MY GOD are they alright?! You will be notified of details in a few days through the mail they cant release any information at this time. What? Can't release information about your OWN CHILDREN?! Something is fishy here. You get the paper in the mail and the baby sitter is claiming you are on meth and marijuana?! What is METH? You wouldn't even know what to do with it if you got it. OK this is a cake walk you haven't smoked since that one day you accidentally took one drag off a filter less cigarette and surely its out of your system since it wasn't that much you didn't even hold it like you normally would have. So you go into the court house head held high assured you are going to walk out of there and go get your children then the court appointed attorney tells you that you shouldn't go in there they will rip you a new butt hole and parade their witnesses in front of the Judge and will win your children right then and there so you should sign this waver agreement which means that you are not prepared to go into court and would like to work with the court to get your children back and have a second chance to make things right. You walk away thinking this will be easy. They give you some court orders to complete first one on the list is a drug and alcohol evaluation ok easy enough you go down to a local drug and alcohol re-hab place not far from home walk in and ask about a drug and alcohol evaluation and they quickly get you in. They ask you a bunch of questions and say that you have no problems with drugs nor alcohol and you want documentation stating this. They can't release that sort of information to patients?! What?! OK well send it to your attorney here is his card. They said they would. So that is taken care of. Next on the list is Parenting classes ok call the children's home because that is where the Youthville people suggested you to go. You think that they would know what class you need to care for two children in such close ages so you go there. It don't seem like it would work with so young of children but you have to finish a parenting class soon so you can get other court orders taken care of. You find out it cost $150 for the class for you to get your certificate and you also enrolled in an anger management class because that was another court order and that is going to be $120 but you lost your job because they got tired of working around your schedule with court and court orders and classes that you needed to get your children back. OK easy enough, it cant be that hard to find a job can it? YES IT CAN you place an application in every help wanted sign that you see and call them daily but they already filled that position or they no longer need someone in that position so you are getting dead ends right after left. So you figure you could find a boyfriend who would want your children and support you and pay for all your court orders since you cannot find a job. You find yourself a man who falls in love with you and your children through pictures and he wants to help you get your children back but after your court hearing he realizes something that you don't. And that is you can't win but he fails to mention this to you. Your emotional roller coaster you are being taken through with the case workers saying you have everything in order and have everything is perfect for you to get your children back then go into court and say the opposite to the judge you figure that the newly found friends are back stabbers liars and over exagerators who take things way out of context to suit their needs and that is to win your children. But you continue to follow all their recommendations and get on medication that you don't really need cause your starting to get your mind together after a few months of being off medications all together. So now you have no boyfriend or financial support so you start looking again for a job you move into a friends house because they stated in court that you are co-dependent because you live with your mother. You can't find a job no where Sept. 11th hit and there was little to no jobs in your area. Then your car breaks down, the motor freezes you forgot to put oil in it you dummy. You end up having to pay some idiot to tell you that your car is broke completely and there is no way to get out of it so now you are s.o.l. with transportation. You meet a guy who seems to really like you and its a friend of this friend you were living with at the time. He wants to help you get your kids back then you find out he is married and he moves in and everything is cool. You quit worrying cause he is leaving his wife to be with you and to help you get your kids back. Then he ends up leaving you and going back to his wife after you find out he is a coke addict. Then you meet this new guy and he acts like your knight and shining armor. Since you cant work you need someone to support you financially and he seems like he wants to get your girls back. Even during visitations with your kids he tells them He loves them too. Then three weeks before you go to court to be either terminated or to win totally your kids back, he quits his job and plays games on the super Nintendo and claims he has plenty of time to find a new job. Then he don't get one and court comes and you loose your girls. Collapse outside the court room doors after looking to the sky and saying "Forgive them father for they know not what they do". You hyper ventilate from crying so hard outside those court room doors. You go to a local bar you know your boyfriend is at cause he knew what was going to happen that day cause he didn't get a job. He says he didn't want to raise "Bruce's kids anyway" and he wanted your undivided attention and not have to share your attention with two kids. You break off the relationship but he has to participate in the last visitation and you go and try to be as strong as you can cause this will be the last time you see your kids. You start to cry and the supervisor claims she is going to have to end the visit if you continue to show emotions like these. So you look all happy that your never going to see your kids again even though you hurt so bad and want to just take them home that very moment but cant. You tried your hardest and it wasn't good enough. You didn't deserve this but some how you believe maybe you didn't deserve to have kids. After the visitation your oldest throws a fit she wants to go home with you but you tell her your sorry she cant a man said that she had to go live with a new family, and there was nothing you could do or say to change his mind. You leave and you make your boyfriend leave the house and every waking hour from that day on you go down to a local bar and get drunk and stumble your way home cause you deserve to be miserable for the rest of your life cause you sure don't deserve to have kids and that was your only goal in life that was to have kids. So what's your purpose now? Who cares what happens to you now? You pray that one of the men up at the bar takes you somewhere out in the country and kills you. You pray you get hit by a car on the way home stumbling from curb to curb. Then you end up in a treatment facility and get out a month later and then relapse and end up back in treatment for two days get out and you are about to go out to the bar and your mom talks you into sticking around to meet the guy who is going to place a bid on the house that is for sale. You argue with your mom and then he arrives. Your eyes meet. You both cant keep your eyes off each other. You say "So, you buying this house for your wife and kids I suppose" and he says "actually I'm single and looking" and you say "Wow what a coo-wink-a-dink I am too" and he says "really? Would you like to go to dinner?" you say "Sure" and off you two go to dinner. He ends up buying your mothers house and you two end up going to a bar on your second date and you get drunk and he does too and you get in a wreck but don't get hurt and almost get away but the cops find you and send him to jail and you get to walk home a long distance in the rain (Feb. Cold) You get home and tell your mom that he would have to buy you 12 dozen roses and a big teddy bear for you to forgive him. The next morning you find a bouquet of 1/2 dozen roses with yellow flowers and baby's breath with a card that has a teddy bear on it, and decide its close enough and forgive him instantly. From that day forward you and him stopped drinking and were never apart except when he was at work of course. You get married 5 months later on 7/03 and then have a son 11/03 and are happy but still miss your two girls who you have a chance to get pictures of them. But you fear rejection so you don't write and don't write. You don't handle rejection about little things very well from strangers and this being personal and having to do with your kids you just don't know how you would react if you were rejected your request of receiving pictures of your girls. So you go to professionals for help to build courage or confidence or something that will help you do it so you can say at least you tried to contact the adoptive parents to be apart of the girl's lives while they were apart from you. Plus how do you ask a stranger for pictures of your own children without sounding like your ungrateful or rude or something that will definitely get you rejected. Now you are due to have another baby boy Sept. 2005 you were hoping for a girl so at least you could do her hair up and dress her up in dresses and stuff. But you got a sonogram it says boy. So maybe God didn't want you to have girls maybe he wanted you to have boys and the girls were meant for the family they are with now. You become at peace with it by looking at it this way. You reach out to the community for help with your son and son to be so you don't make the same mistake as you did with your girls. Your girls were 17 months apart and you were young but now you are older and the space between these two boys will be 22 months apart and that should make a big difference you hear. So you hope it will be fine. Just in case you have the resources available to you to not end up going crazy like you thought you were going crazy with the girls when it was the oldest that needed the help not you, come find out her behavior issues could have been helped, and it wasn't your fault that she was acting out towards her sister. There you have it from then to Now. I hope it lets you know I been through a lot and am here loving those girls waiting for them to come home to me. Just because I moved on with my life doesn't mean I don't care. I have to have kids of my own cause I was born to have kids. I love kids too much to not have any of my own. Plus with out them I tend to get in more trouble than when I don't have them. They give me a reason to get up every morning. If I didn't have Dylan my son right now I probably would sleep all day long and do nothing at all. This way I get up every day and even clean house and do things I never did before. I found a site called www.flylady.net and it has helped me with getting my house organized and de-cluttered. I'm doing really good now just can't find that courage to write to you guys requesting pictures of my girls. I really wish I could cause I would love to see what they look like at age 6 and 4. I cant picture them older than 3 and 2 that was the last time I saw them. I placed the videos on DVD I plan to put them up on the computer and editing them and cutting out the obnoxious supervisor of the visits so I can enjoy them better, plus I want to pause some of the frames and save jpegs so I can have pictures I didn't have before. Anyway I am going to be getting into scrap booking and I'm planning on making a book of the pictures I already have of the girls, and hopefully I will get the courage to write to you two requesting pictures of the girls from the time they came to you until the date I finally write. I hope I will get this courage I lack soon. I really would like to see what my girls look like just because I want to know what they look like for therapeutic reasons not because I want to track them down. I hope you don't think that. I am at peace with the idea that they have you and will eventually come back to me. I wouldn't want to take them from you that would make it hard on the girls. All I would want is updates and pictures at the most. I wouldn't mind being pen pals with them when they are older, but that's totally up to you two on how involved you want me to be in the girl's lives. Thank you so much for taking such good care of them while I cant. Sincerely, Rabeka Jo (F)D Ps. Girls I love you so very much and just because I don't write on here don't mean I don't write in a journal I have for you girls here at my place for when you do come home to me. I love you two and miss you so much and can't wait to see you again. I will talk to you later.