I used to think silence was peaceful.
But the silence that came after they took my girls was a kind of quiet that bruised. It pressed against the walls, crept into my lungs, and made its home inside me like an echo I couldn't escape. It was the kind of silence that didn't soothe—it punished.
I remember the knock.
Three sharp taps, each one a warning I didn't yet understand. Morning light leaked through the blinds, catching dust in the air, dust I'd never noticed, dust that suddenly made the whole room look exposed—like every secret I'd tried to bury was hovering in plain sight.
When I opened the door, the woman stood there with a folder tucked under her arm like a verdict. Her face tried to look soft, but her eyes already held the decision. Behind her, the car idled with its doors open, as if the engine couldn't wait to leave with what little I had left.
"Kristen… we need to talk."
Even before she said it, I felt something inside me fold.
A mother knows when something is being taken from her—sometimes before the hand reaches out.
My oldest two were at school, my youngest, almost one, was still in her crib sleeping.
Completely untouched by what was coming. They were safe in their world, still believing mama could fix anything.
I wish I could've frozen that moment.
Held it still.
Stayed suspended in that last breath before everything shattered.
But time kept moving, even when I begged it not to.
The woman read from her papers—words like temporary custody, safety concern, placement, removal. Words that don't sound like bullets until they hit your heart one by one.
"I'm going to need you to pack a few of their things."
That sentence is a brand burned into my memory.
Pack a few of their things.
As if a child's life could fit into a small plastic bag.
My hands shook so hard I could barely hold their clothes. I folded shirts they loved, socks that never matched, little shoes that still had playground dust on them. I slipped in their hair ties, their toothbrushes, a stuffed animal each.
What do you pack when you don't know when—or if—they'll ever come home?
They didn't understand.
My youngest reached for me, confused when the worker lifted her instead.
"Mama?"
That's the kind of word that can break a person in half.
There are no answers that fit inside a child's ears.
No way to explain that sometimes systems take children before they save them.
No way to explain that even love—big, messy, desperate love—sometimes isn't enough to fight paperwork.
I held my babygirl in my arms sitting on the sidewalk outside, until the last second.
Their fingers slipped away, one by one, like the ends of threads I couldn't tie back together.
Then the car door closed.
Just a click.
Such a small sound for something that changed everything.
The car pulled away, and I didn't scream—I couldn't.
The pain was too large for sound. It sat in my chest like a weight made of concrete and memory. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, staring at the empty space where my girls had stood minutes before.
The house felt wrong without them.
Their toys looked abandoned.
Their voices hovered in the air like ghosts.
I didn't feel like a mother anymore.
I felt like a shadow wearing a mother's skin.
I'd lost many things in my life, but losing them…
That was the day I lost the version of myself I had left.
But this isn't where my story ends.
It's where it begins—in the devastation, in the silence, in the promise that even broken mothers can rise again.
And I did.
But first, I had to survive the emptiness of that house and the long road that followed.