I didn't think things could get worse.
I didn't think the system could take any more from me than it already had.
Then they assigned me a new worker—and everything I thought I understood about the system flipped upside down.
Her name was Ms. Crowley.
And from the moment she walked in, clipboard clutched tight, lips pinched like she smelled something foul, I knew:
This woman wasn't here to help me.
She was here to end me.
She didn't smile.
Didn't shake my hand.
Didn't even introduce herself like a human being.
She just looked me up and down, slow and judgmental, like she was already writing her report in her head.
"I'll be taking over your case," she said sharply.
"No more excuses. No more extensions. We're tightening things up."
Tightening.
Like my life was a loose bolt she needed to twist until it snapped.
She sat across from me, crossed her legs, and announced—without a shred of compassion—
"I've reviewed your file. It's… extensive."
The way she said it felt like a slap.
File.
Not story.
Not circumstances.
Not trauma.
Not a mother doing everything she could.
Just "a file."
She flipped through pages like they were proof I didn't deserve my own children.
Then she looked up with eyes that held zero warmth and said,
"I want to be clear: reunification is not guaranteed."
My chest tightened.
"It's the goal," I reminded her.
"That's what every worker has told me."
She smirked.
"Goals change."
Just like that.
Three words.
Cold. Final. Ruthless.
She didn't care about progress.
Didn't care about my sobriety.
Didn't care about the steps I'd taken.
Didn't care about the damage being done to my girls.
I wasn't a mother trying.
I wasn't a woman healing.
I wasn't a person at all.
I was a checkbox she wanted to mark "failed."
---
The next visit was worse.
She watched everything—
every smile,
every tear,
every hug—
like she was studying a suspect instead of a family.
When my youngest ran to me crying, Ms. Crowley said loudly,
"That's counterproductive behavior."
COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
A child missing her mother was counterproductive.
When my oldest tried to sit beside me, Ms. Crowley made her sit in the chair across the room.
"Boundaries," she said.
My daughter looked crushed.
At one point my youngest whispered, "Mama, I'm scared."
Ms. Crowley snapped,
"Don't put her in the middle of your emotions."
I couldn't breathe.
My hands shook.
But I held myself together because I knew if I broke even a little, she'd take it as proof.
Proof I was unstable.
Proof I was unfit.
Proof I didn't deserve to be mothering my own babies.
She wrote notes constantly.
Every time I looked at her, she was scribbling something down with this satisfied little smirk, like she was collecting evidence.
Evidence against me.
Evidence she planned to use.
---
After the visit, she called me into a meeting.
"Your children," she said, tapping her pen on the table, "are developing attachment issues."
My stomach dropped.
"I know. I've seen the changes. I'm worried. They need consistency."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Yes. They do. Which is why we're evaluating whether returning them to you would be in their best interest."
I stared at her, horrified.
"What are you saying?"
She folded her hands.
"I'm saying permanency might need to be established elsewhere."
Elsewhere.
Elsewhere.
As in:
A different home.
A different family.
A different mother.
She didn't say "termination of parental rights,"
but the words hung between us like a noose.
I felt the room tilt.
I felt my heart drop into something bottomless.
"Why?" I whispered.
"What changed?"
She gave a thin smile that made my blood run cold.
"Me," she said.
"I'm on the case now."
And there it was.
No attempt to hide it.
No sugarcoating.
No pretending.
This woman had made up her mind before she ever met me.
She wasn't here to reunite my family.
She wasn't here to help my girls heal.
She was here to end our story.
Or so she thought.
Because in that moment, something snapped inside me—not broken, but awakened.
A fire I didn't know I still had.
She thought she could scare me?
She thought she could take my girls because it was easier?
She thought she could rewrite my fate with a few cold sentences?
No.
If she wanted a fight, she had one.
Because I wasn't just a mother anymore.
I was a storm.
And I would tear down her whole narrative before I let her take my babies from me forever.