Support a Mother's Fight for Custody

I was at work having a really good day listening to my audiobook and doing my job when I got pulled into the office and told that I needed to go home. My heart dropped into my stomach and I couldn't stop shaking. I immediately left and got into my car and called my mom and begged her to tell me what happened. He had found us and had me served with a full custody order for my daughter.

I clutched the phone so tightly that my knuckles turned white. My mom’s voice, strained with worry, trembled through the speaker. “He found you,” she said, as if those words alone had the power to pull me back into a nightmare I thought I’d escaped. He had been searching for us, and now he had the law on his side—or at least, that was how it felt at that moment.

I tried to breathe, but my chest felt like it was collapsing in on itself. It was all too much—the noise of passing cars, the blurred motion of people going about their day as if nothing in the world had changed. But my world had shifted. Everything was spiraling out of control.

I sat motionless in the car, the audiobook I’d been listening to moments earlier now an echo from a life that seemed impossibly distant. I could still hear its faint narration, the story's characters living their fictional drama while mine played out in raw, unfiltered reality.

My mind raced. What did this mean? How could this happen? I thought of my daughter—her laugh, her tiny hand in mine, the bedtime stories and shared secrets. The idea of losing her, even for a second, felt like being ripped apart.

I fought back tears as my mother’s voice softened on the other end. “We’ll figure this out,” she promised, though even she couldn’t hide the tremor in her words. I wanted to believe her, to draw strength from her confidence. But all I felt was fear—fear of losing my daughter, fear of facing him, and fear of what lay ahead in court.

I knew I had to pull myself together. This is just the beginning of a fight I couldn’t afford to lose. For my daughter’s sake, I have to be strong. But in that moment, parked outside my workplace, with the world continuing as if my life hadn’t just shattered, all I could do was cry.

I have spent 6 years under his thumb. I catered to him and humiliated myself in ways I never thought possible. I have taken the blame for years of traumatic incidents and spent more in and out of therapy because of it.

When I found out that I was pregnant with my little girl I was terrified but he seemed thrilled. We went to every appointment in anticipation of what this next chapter brought for us. I was preparing to be a mother and he was preparing to leave.

When I gave birth to my little warrior everything in me changed as a person. My little girl became my everything all at once. I thought he felt the same. After the first month of being home with her he started to disappear on the weekends. He was going out and drinking and then staying wherever he was. Then it progressed to him not coming home after work.

I begged for his help with our daughter but he brushed me off and started to drink at home. He'd already stopped helping with diapers, and bottles and nighttime feedings. He started getting angry when she'd wake up at night and started sleeping in a different room. I tried to reach out. Tried to ask for his help but he refused and just kept shutting us out.

And then he decided he was done. I tried reasoning with him but he'd already moved on outside of the home. In one of the first arguments we had after he stated he was leaving he yelled at me that I was asking too much from him. Our daughter was too much from him. He couldn't handle it anymore. He told me he wanted to put the rifle in our bedroom closet to his head and pull the trigger. She was in my arms during all of this. I couldn't even find the words. He left the apartment shortly after.

Following those next few weeks he asked me to move out so I started applying for housing and scrambled to get a job so that I could support us. He kept shifting between wanting to work things out and being totally done. I felt like I was being ripped apart and taped together over and over.

We tried to work out a parenting time schedule and I asked for help from him with diapers, wipes, formula, etc but was met with conditions. He continuously skipped visits and out right refused to help unless I asked his girlfriend.

Anytime I stated how unfair it was that I was expected to give him time with her whenever he wanted but was expected to take care of all of her needs without his help I was met with reminders that we could go to court but he'd win because of who is mom is.

By the time I started to think about moving I wasn't even doing pickups or drop offs with him. I was working it out with his girlfriend because he was too busy. On the few occasions that I did have dealings with him he stated that she was the one doing her care while they had her because he was at work or busy.

Now that we've moved he's suddenly the most devoted father and his mother has used Facebook to launch a smear campaign about me. When we moved to Washington I ended up in the hospital and was told that I was having a high risk pregnancy. I ended up in the hospital several times after. In the weeks leading up to a court date that I was never served for I was in the hospital for critical anemia. The day they went to court for custody I was in labor with my second child.

He was awarded full custody in the courthouse his mother works in and is scheduled to come get her next week.

Now I have to fight the biggest legal battle of my life. I need character statements about me as a mother and anything anyone witnessed. I need donations to secure an attorney and cover the legal fees and flights to make it to court and bring my baby girl home to her family. Anything anyone can do to help is beyond appreciated. Please help me bring her home.

We have found a lawyer willing to take the case but we need to come up with a 3500 retainer please help bring my princess home to the people she knows and loves and who love her so very much.