When Jason died, everything lost its balance.

The life we had built—so carefully, so lovingly—collapsed overnight, and I was left standing in the wreckage with three children and no real path forward. I was heartbroken, exhausted, and completely out of fight. In that state, I went to Jason’s dad and laid everything out in front of him. I didn’t have solutions. I barely had words. I just knew I couldn’t do this alone.

He offered me a place to live, and I took it as the blessing it felt like at the time. I was deeply grateful. I dropped my housing assistance and moved to another town where I didn’t know a single person—except Jason’s dad and a few of his family members. The house belonged to Jason’s step-sister and her husband, and the arrangement was that we could live there rent-free for six to twelve months while I got my feet back under me.

I thought I finally had some solid ground.

Six or seven weeks after we moved in, that ground disappeared. The husband showed up at the door with a flimsy excuse and told me to get my things and get out. I pushed back and managed to get thirty days.

Thirty days is nothing when you don’t have transportation, when you’re deep in grief, when your brain feels wrapped in cotton and panic, and when every system meant to help you is already overwhelmed.

As of this coming Tuesday, those thirty days are up. And today, my children went into foster care.

That sentence still doesn’t feel real.

Because I voluntarily placed them, they are all together, and I have unlimited visitation and access—essentially the same as if they were staying with a friend. That brings me some comfort. But the other side of it is brutal: I have nowhere to go. I’ll be staying wherever friends or family can take me for a night or two at a time, and if that fails, I’ll try a shelter.

I am doing everything I can. I’m back on the waiting list for housing assistance. I’ve applied for SSI for my anxiety disorder. I’ve submitted job applications despite how overwhelming that feels, hoping that being forced into motion might help pull me out of this fog even a little. I’ve contacted every local agency I can think of—housing programs, shelters, assistance offices.

And the answer is always the same: they’re full. They’re tapped out. The economy has left too many families in crisis at once.

The cruel irony is that if I were using drugs, or drinking, or fleeing an abusive partner, there would be immediate help available. But because I’m sober, honest, and grieving—because my situation doesn’t fit neatly into a checkbox—there is no safety net waiting for us.

Right now, my children are safe, together, and cared for. I am grateful for that beyond words. I am also profoundly lost.

This is a true account written in my own words during the time it happened. I’ve lightly edited it for clarity in the present day (2026), with minimal exclusions, while keeping the original voice and meaning intact.