If you are new here, welcome. If you have been with me for parts one and two, thank you for staying with me in this. This is where the story keeps turning, and where the cost of survival starts to show up in ways that are not always visible on the outside.
Coming Home
After giving birth and placing my second son for adoption, I came home physically wrecked and emotionally undone. I had surgery recovery happening in my body, grief sitting in my chest, and a level of exhaustion that sleep could not touch.
And then life did what life does. It kept stacking.
A death in the family. A funeral. A best friend’s wedding. A need to get out of Georgia just long enough to breathe. I was not healed, but I was desperate for air. So I went home to Texas, even when the people around me tried to control the timeline and rush me back into “functioning.”
There was no room for recovery. Only pressure to perform.
You've Been Served
While I was in Texas, my dad called about paperwork that arrived at the house. Paperwork to legitimize the baby. I had been served.
I remember the shock of it. Like the ground moved underneath me.
I had already signed my rights over. I had already said goodbye. I had entered adoption believing connection would remain through openness. And suddenly I was being pulled into a battle I did not start, and could not stop.
I fought going back. I did not want to return to Georgia. I did not want to reenter the trauma. But I was forced back into it anyway.
For four months, everything became courtrooms, lawyers, questions, pressure, and power plays.
The adoptive couple fought to keep the baby.
The father fought to get the baby.
And I was pulled in every direction, asked to pick sides, asked to lie, asked to become a weapon.
But I refused.
I would tell the truth. Even if the truth did not benefit anyone’s strategy.
I will never forget the guardian ad litem telling me something that gave me the smallest thread of steadiness in the middle of the chaos. She said that out of everyone involved, I was the only one actually thinking about the child’s best interest.
That mattered to me. Because everything else felt like I was being treated as a problem to manage, not a person.
Then the court decision came. The father won against the adoptive couple. And in Georgia, that meant custody reverted back to me first. Not to him.
So suddenly, I was facing something impossible. Either take the baby back, knowing my circumstances had not changed, or sign my rights away again, knowing this would be the second time I would have to surrender my child.
I chose what I believed was the least harmful path. I signed again. I could not risk court-ordered child support I could not pay. I could not risk losing everything and ending up in jail. I could not pretend I had stability that I did not have.
And then he brought the baby over one last time.
He was four months old.
I held him. I looked at him. I took pictures because I did not know if I would ever get the chance again. And then I said goodbye for a second time.
That was the last time I saw him.
What I did not know then was how long that grief would echo.
The open adoption was gone. The connection I was promised was gone. And over the years, that loss became leverage. It became control. It became something used against me.
And life did not pause to let me process any of it.
As soon as the court battle ended, the pressure to “get back to work” returned. The plan for me resumed. Job. Man. Apartment. Function.
I was still breaking, but the world around me wanted me packaged.
The Aftermath
Right after the baby left, my dad and stepmom took me out, dressed me up, and brought me to a club like they could shake me back into normal. That night included them trying to push an older man toward me, and a younger bouncer who was the first person to show me real empathy.
He bought me roses. All of them.
And in true Heather fashion, that tiny moment of care became a lifeline. Not because it was healthy. But because I was starving for connection and compassion.
That relationship turned into another push to move out, another rush to build stability before I had any emotional foundation under my feet.
Texas Bound
Eventually, I reached a breaking point.
I filed back taxes, received a refund that felt like freedom, and made a plan to go back to Texas. I thought leaving Georgia would fix everything.
And for a moment, it did feel like relief. Like escape.
But even in Texas, my anxiety followed me. It was not tied to a place. It was tied to everything I had never been allowed to heal.
Still, God made room for me there.
A couch to land on. A waiting list that opened at the exact right time. An apartment that cost almost nothing. A home near my grandmother. A sliver of stability that felt like mercy.
And outwardly, things started to look better, but internally, I was still a mess. I was still grappling with all that I had been through, feeling scared, lost, and alone. And then, without any hesitation, I found myself entering into another relationship.
A Valentine's Gift
My grandmother had been excited to introduce me to a friend of my uncle's. My uncle, newly released from being incarcirated had a friend who also had been released. My grandmother had gotten to know him and his family during visits and was just taken with him. She loved his love for God and wanted me to meet him, and against better judgment and my uncle's warnings, I found myself swept up yet again.
Three weeks after Valentine’s Day, and 6 weeks after we met, I found out I was pregnant. Again.
So I did what I thought you do when you want your choices to mean something. I thought I was in love. I thought this time it was different. I was not going through another adoption; my heart and soul couldn't take it... so we got married.
We moved to College Station, and what followed were years of instability. Evictions. Repossessions. Pawned possessions. Constant moving. A man who could not keep a job, and a life that never stopped burning down.
It's A Boy
When it came time to have Andrew, I believed it would be different. We had a better plan for surgery. I had support in the waiting room. Andrew was already so loved by so many, and I was hoping it would all be different.
Andrew was born on November 4th, and he was just beautiful and wonderful, but me? Not at all what I had hoped.
I refused IV pain meds because of anxiety, and when the spinal wore off, the pain became unmanageable. The panic surged. I could barely function. I could not take care of my baby in the hospital. I white-knuckled my way through discharge because I just wanted to go home.
But home was not safe inside my own mind.
They told me it was postpartum anxiety and depression. And at that time, the cultural story around postpartum had been shaped by a horrific case in Houston that made mothers fear themselves. People talked about postpartum like it meant you might hurt your children.
So I became terrified of myself.
I was scared to be alone with my baby. I could not eat. I vomited bile. I ended up in the ER. I picked my lips raw. I sat on the couch, praying and spiraling while everyone went to work and left me there.
Eventually, I asked for help and was put on Zoloft. It helped some, but nothing was addressing the deeper truth.
I was carrying PTSD from everything I had already lived. And little did I know I was just getting started.
A week after Andrew was born, we were evicted. Strangers from the church packed our home while I could barely walk. We moved into a tiny room. Then another eviction. Then another move. Then another eviction. The lights cut off. Cars lost. Long walks with kids. Jail. Hot checks. The list went on and on.
Nothing stabilized.
I tried counseling. Church counseling. Ministry counseling. Nothing changed.
And eventually, after a public fight, I said the words that had been building in my body for a long time.
I want a divorce.
Why Me?
When he left, he suddenly pulled his life together. A job. An apartment. A Car. While he left me to suffer the consequences of his decisions. Evicted again from the home we had lived in together. Our car was repossessed that I was driving. I was sleeping in my car and bouncing between places. My kids went to stay with him while I tried to survive. How did this happen? Why me? Why isn't this happening to him? I lose everything while he gets it all?
I remember calling my dad for help and receiving a condition that devastated me. He believed I should not be a mother and wanted me to find someone else to take my kids. If I could do that, then he would help me. Needless to say, I did not do that. But I did lose them for a year.
And the most painful part was watching the man who could not provide for our family become the one with stability, while I was out here with nothing.
What now?
Key Takeaways
✨ Some grief does not come as one moment. It comes as years of aftershocks
✨ You can do the right thing and still be devastated by what it costs
✨ Telling the truth in a broken system is its own kind of courage
✨ When healing is rushed, survival becomes your only skill
✨ Sometimes God provides stability before you feel ready to receive it
Final Thought
Part three is the chapter where I learned this truth the hard way.
Life can look like it is moving forward while you are still stuck in the aftermath.
And if you are there right now, still functioning but not truly okay, I want you to hear me clearly.
You are not weak. You are not behind. You are not broken beyond repair.
You are surviving the parts no one sees.
And freedom is still the advantage you already own.
Come back next week for part four.
