Hello,

This is really hard to write.

I’m Tarra, a mom, retired Air Force veteran, and family medicine doctor who is now in the hardest chapter of her own life—recently recovering from a chronically collapsed lung requiring a VATS pleurodesis with lung wedge resections and biopsies, after 1.5 years+ of fighting a murky interstate custody battle to stay in my 3-year-old daughter’s life, after 4+ years of documented physical, emotional, verbal, and financial abuse, culminating with what I believed any mother with a duty to protect would do: I called 911, left with my daughter, rebuilt safety with my parents in California.  That was the first time I’ve ever called 911 in my life… 

Unfortunately, for me, and my daughter, instead of safety and stability, the last year and a half has become an interstate custody nightmare anchored in a state where she was neither born and where neither of us lived. I miss her so much. I breastfed her for 14 months. And we had never been apart… then after a new judge, decided against the previous judge that my standing restraining order no longer needed renewal due to a loophole exploited by our abusers council called “personal jurisdiction”. Because he didn’t live in the state of California, California didn’t have jurisdiction to “try him on domestic violence” committed elsewhere. Nope, they said they would only look at a couple small instances of witnessed abuse he committed in the CA alone, instead of the totality of the 4 years of documented terror I had sustained at his hands.  But this unimpressed new judge found that a a back peddling mom, dragging her child into a house, retrieving from a man with a raised fist, screaming obscenities in the middle of a sleepy Neighborhood just wasnt bad enough; therefore she said California shouldn’t be the one to have to handle a restraining order and then I should just ‘go back to where I was from’, even though I wasn’t “from” North Carolina at all, and was a resident of California with my daughter. The thing that confuses most people is that California does custody and restraining orders backwards than most other states… in California custody orders are attached to restraining orders and not the other way around. So when this judge refused to renew my restraining order, I lost my custody orders that I had had for months to protect my daughter. And that’s when he took her.

I now understand why so many women in abusive relationships feel trapped and stay. Bruises may fade, but the emotional and legal fallout can stretch for years—especially when children are involved and the system does not clearly protect the parent who tried to get safe. So here we are. Month after month, I make the cross‑country trip into a state foreign to me to see my daughter because she deserves her mother. It has been this way since March 2024. 

These visits aren’t “extra.” Maintaining visitation from across the country is painfully expensive and not optional. Every monthly visit requires round‑trip airfare, housing (Airbnb or similar), a rental car, gas, and food for both of us, all costs tied to these supervised exchange logistics tied to these old temporary orders. 

They are the only way I can hold our child, maintain our bond, and demonstrate consistent involvement as time drags on until we finally get to a real hearing.

What pushed me to finally start this GoFundMe is that my health has taken a dramatic turn, and we can no longer absorb these costs on our own. 

I’ve had several medical setbacks (above) over the last year, but the worst has been in the last few months—and it has financially devastated both me and my parents. In September was when my lung collapsed unexpectedly and I was hospitalized for an extended period. The causes weren’t fully clear—possibly constant flying, extreme stress, lung lesions, snorkeling, or a combination—but the outcome was the same: repeated hospitalizations, lost income, and mounting costs on top of continued visitation travel, even with risk to my health. I have since undergone lung surgery (VATS pleurodesis with wedge resections), and I still have biopsy results pending for a growth that has me worried. I was discharged on December 4, 2025, and it still hurts to breathe or exert. 

As a Veteran I love working with Veterans so I continue to do flexible consulting work from home with veterans to bring in some income, to preserve the ability to travel for visitation, but the repeated hospitalizations culminating in surgery have made consistent work difficult right now. 

When you add nonstop travel requirements and ongoing legal fees, my savings have been wiped out in just a few months. My parents have poured their retirement funds into keeping me afloat and keeping all of us connected to our little “rainbow miracle,” and they’re now at the point of needing to sell belongings to keep up. 

This winter has been the hardest and Christmas almost didn’t happen this year.  It was the first time my father (grandpa Papo) got to see her and almost 8 months.  I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to make it work without help.     

By helping me continue this fight, you are also helping push back against a harmful precedent in my case—one that, in practice, has allowed documented abuse in one state to go largely unaddressed because the abusive partner lives in another state (and in my case, the abuse spanned multiple states). I want my case to say clearly that I do not accept that as the price of coming forward.

I simply have not yet had a day in court where that full record has been meaningfully heard, so my lawyer holds onto the evidence waiting for the time and place to move forward.  Some of which were recorded rages where he threatened to “end me,” physical violence, his arrest (which culminated after 4 years) for assault and communication of threats, years of bruises predating even the birth of our child… the list goes on, and the documentation, substantial but has not yet made it its way to a full civil hearing, unfortunately for myself, our child, and the others he has potentially harmed. Litigation abuse is another thing I never knew existed.   It took me two years to get divorced after four attempts on my behalf and he has interfered with every single move, I try to make two separate myself from him.

Some people have asked why I recorded so much. I’ve learned that victims often begin recording when they’ve suffered a pattern of being gaslit or naturally if they fear what might happen.  I learned later that gaslighting is when one person is repeatedly told events didn’t happen the way they remember, or that they “caused” the abuse. Perhaps that was part of it, but also I could see the pattern building in him the work up to his rages… I guess after enough of abuse, a partner also starts to develop a sort of type of “Spidey sense fear” that something bad is going to happen. 

After each terrifying incident, there would often be apologies and explanations that left me doubting myself. Recording during my fear became a way to anchor myself in that reality, and later, a way to leave a record for my parents “in case something happened to me”—because I kept so much of it quiet for so long. 

My last recording was titled, “just in case.” And that was when he threatened to “end me” in front of our daughter, and that was the “last hit”, which created a huge hematoma on my thigh and sent him to jail. I only found the others later on. But the leg was the worst.

Now we are waiting for North Carolina to proceed. I remain hopeful about the next steps, and the judge so far has seemed compassionate. There is also the custody appeal still pending in California, but the process has left me concerned about the message sent to victims of intimate partner violence when jurisdiction becomes a barrier to protection. 

Appeals are an uphill battle—they don’t “redo” the case; they review a limited record and look for specific legal errors—so while we are continuing to fight, we are also living with the reality of delay. 

And now we are at the Supreme Court level fingers crossed.

What makes standing up for myself so important is this: 

I am NOT alone. 

Multiple women have shared with me their experiences with this same man, and their statements are part of ongoing legal processes. 

So, early on, I made a promise—to myself and to them—that in addition to fighting for my own child, I would not be quiet. 

I am determined to use my voice for the basic truth that mothers and children deserve protection, not punishment, for trying to be safe.

If you can donate, you are helping a mother and proud veteran keep her bond with her child across the country while she heals—and keep going in a battle she never wanted, but must endure.

If you can’t donate, sharing this page is powerful too.

But truly, the fact that you read these words and heard my story is the most touching of all. I’m grateful someone is finally listening.

Thank you for standing with my family.