257: What if you didn't know who to believe?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. I felt emotionally that I was pulled into so many different directions and I couldn't get my head straight. I couldn't figure out what was the right direction. I was emotionally just surviving. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 257. What if you didn't know who to believe?

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. I was the youngest of my mom's four children.

My birth father had some health issues. He had uncontrolled diabetes, and when she got pregnant with me, she gave him one year to get his health together, to get his act together, and he did not. So when I was three months old, my mom had him leave. She had four children under the age of six. She was on welfare. She wasn't working. She received a knock on the door, and it was some Jehovah's Witnesses that she started studying with.

So she joined the Jehovah's Witness congregation and met my stepfather who had four children himself. Mom was a stay-at-home mom and she obviously had eight children that she had to take care of and my stepdad worked a lot to take care of eight children financially.

I remember we would come home and we would do Bible study and have dinner and then go off to the Kingdom Hall. And that consists of two nights a week plus the weekends. Because we were such a large family and we lived in a secluded area, all we had was our family. It was just the eight of us.

My siblings, we were very close to age. I was very close with my stepsister. She's my best friend. And we were very close as a family because it was structured around the religion. So some of the core beliefs with the Jehovah's Witness religion is you have to ensure that you're doing the right thing. You have to fear God.

If you did wrong in God's eyes, if you have a bad thought in your head, you're not going to make it to that next stage, which they call the paradise. So you have to fear him and you lived in constant fear of never being good enough in God's eyes.

I went out of my way to always make sure I tried to be the best that I could be to make sure everyone else around me had their needs met because I feared Armageddon and I wanted to make it to that paradise.

Living with the fear of not making God happy stripped me of my confidence, of my individuality, because now I'm another number. It made me feel that me as a person and my thoughts and my fears and what made me happy, what made me sad, ultimately didn't matter because I had one goal, and that goal was to try to make God happy.

When I started getting older and starting to learn myself, I had a lot of guilt that I wasn't doing enough. Not only I'm not good enough, but when I do something that's not what they believe, they publicly called us out in front of the entire congregation. And that brings so much guilt. And sometimes that was paralyzing.

I became a people pleaser at a very young age. I did everything I could to make other people happy. If I don't do something for somebody that I know that they need or I know that they want, I feel bad. And with that, I put my needs aside.

I remember there was a time that I was in eighth grade and I was feeling really sick and I didn't want to tell my mom that I wasn't feeling well because I knew that it would make a hiccup in her life because now she has eight children. She has her own cleaning business and if I were to tell her I wasn't feeling well, I'd have to stay home from school. If I stayed home from school, that could potentially have it so that she doesn't go to a cleaning job that day.

So I went to school. I ended up going to the nurse's office because I was caught sleeping in class. Then I had walking pneumonia bilaterally in both lungs. When I left eighth grade going into ninth grade into high school, I had made the decision to start homeschooling. When I was in the younger grades, I was delayed. I was behind the other students educationally.

But when I started homeschooling, I was able to come up with my own schedule. I was able to go at my own pace. And that was really good for me. That actually gave me some confidence in myself. And I graduated a year before my class with a 4.0.

Growing up, I found it was just a normal childhood. I had my siblings, we had a lot of land, we lived on a back road, and it was a fantastic childhood until I started seeing that, yeah, my family is a little different than other families. I don't play soccer like the other kids do. I started realizing that I was different, and that made me start to question what we were being taught.

Maybe there is more than this black and white that I am being taught. There was a different God out there that I learned about, a loving one. But there was a lot of these little questions that we started having. And I remember one day my sister spoke with my stepdad and wrote down all these questions. This Bible verse right here says this, but then this Bible verse says this. So is it contradicting each other?

And his response to her was that she needed to throw away everything in her room and in her car because somehow, somewhere, a demon has attached himself to her. So we're leaving that religion. There's three ways to leave. You can become inactive. You just don't go back.

The second one where you get disfellowshipped, where the elders in that congregation have learned about a sin that you've done and they do not feel that you are repentant. And then there is disassociating yourself, which says, I've done something that's against your religious beliefs. I'm not going to tell you what it is. I'm done. And the third one is ultimately the worst one.

I was so young and naive when my sister was disfellowshipped that all I understood at that time was she did something wrong and she can't live here anymore. She did something so wrong that we're not allowed to talk to her anymore. But I didn't know what it was that was wrong. I didn't know what it was that made everybody that she knew say, we can't talk to you anymore.

I was taught that whatever she did was bad and we're not going to talk about it because if we talked about it, maybe one of you weren't going to do it. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to have her comb my hair. I wanted her to braid my hair like she used to. But I had to not open myself up. I had to not let myself open up to her. But I wanted to so bad and she wanted to. But she couldn't talk to her siblings anymore.

And she did end up moving in with my birth father. It was a really difficult seesaw for me. Do I talk to her like I want to so bad? If my mom finds out that I was talking with my sister, I'm going to be in so much trouble. And somebody in the congregation is going to find out and maybe I'll get kicked out of that religion as well. And then that's what God's going to judge me on.

Ultimately, about two and a half years ago, the drugs took her over and she had a drug overdose. We knew that that's how my sister would end up ultimately, is by having the drugs take her life because she had tried so many times to go to rehab. She was in and out of incarceration and she always went back to the drugs because it numbed her. It numbed the thoughts, the feelings. She left two children behind.

A lot of that was the guilt from the religion, the guilt of never being good enough. When I was 16, I started working as a banquet waitress at a local hotel, and that's when I met my husband. We would work similar shifts together, and we enjoyed each other's company, and we laughed a lot, and we talked a lot. We would go biking, and we'd go hiking, and enjoy each other's friendship. We became really close friends.

I moved out of my parents' house with my stepsister when I was 18. And my now husband and I, we didn't start having a relationship or start dating until I was about 19. I fell in love with his personality of always being able to make somebody laugh.

He made me laugh. That was such a huge thing because there wasn't much laughter in my life. There was happy moments, but there wasn't laughter from the belly laughter. And that's what he gave me. He made me feel good about myself. He made me feel that I mattered and our relationship really blossomed.

I was able to start seeing the world as a beautiful place because of his influences, because of his vision of the world. Between 19 and 21, 22, we had decided to get married. We moved out of the apartment that he had into a really small, cute little home.

My husband and I always enjoyed being around children, but we were still young, we were still really active, and we weren't sure if we were ready to have our own child at that time. My sister had two children with a man who was very controlling, very abusive to her physically, mentally, emotionally.

My sister had her oldest son placed into foster care for suspected abuse. My mom ultimately took him in as a foster child and ultimately adopted him. At that time, my sister was pregnant with her second child, and Child Protective Services took the daughter directly from her from the hospital and placed her in a foster home.

Shortly after, she became pregnant again with her third child, and that third child was placed into a foster home. And we looked into finding out how we could become foster parents for these two children in foster care. We went through the classes, and we became certified foster parents.

I had reached back out to the county and the county worker said, I want them to live with you, but I want you to go meet the foster family that they're with. They've had them since birth. They love these two children. See their life and see if this is really the next step that you want to take.

So I did. I went to the home and it was a fantastic family that had their own local farm, 500 acres of land. And the love that they had for these two children blew my mind. So my husband and I sat down after meeting the foster family and said, their life is going to be much better living with these people that they've known since day one.

So we ultimately made the decision not to take my niece and nephew. They were meant to be with that family. So we were a certified foster family. We had a certified home. And they said, well, would you like to give up your certification? Or if you want to continue to do foster care? So there was a child that came into foster care. And he was a four-year-old. Such a loving soul. Such a nice child. We had him for almost two years.

He ultimately moved with his grandmother. When you do foster care, they train you to love the child but build a wall because the ultimate goal is to have the child go back to their family. So I love this child, but I built that wall that I knew he was going to go back to the family and I was okay with that. But that's how our foster life had started. While he was with us, we got a call for another little boy.

And we took him as well. And he was eight months old. And it was an incredible experience seeing him and watching him grow as well and learn to love his personality, which is so different than the other child that we had.

And then we received a call again about a 14-year-old girl. And she lived with us for six months. And it was a fantastic relationship. We still have a wonderful relationship with her to this day. Her children come over to our house. And we have Christmas together. And we do Thanksgivings together. So we were really falling in love with being able to help children. Through our foster care experience, we did what was called respites.

So children would come and spend a week with us, and then they would go back to the foster family that they were residing with. And we really enjoyed that. We did go a period where we didn't have any foster children, and then I found out that I was pregnant. And when we became pregnant with my son, it was just that missing piece of

We gave birth to my son, and about three months later, we received a call asking if we would be full-time placement for this nine-year-old that we had met a few times through the respite.

And my husband and I decided, yes, we have the space in the home and we would take her in through foster care. And she moved in when my son was three months old. And the moment that they met, I just kind of remember the look in her eye and the smile on his face.

My son and this foster child connected on a whole different level. And they spent so much time together. He grew up through his years and learned how to walk and she was right there. And he's learning how to eat and she's the one holding the spoon. And they became brother and sister. And then we received the opportunity to adopt her.

When we had asked the caseworker what would happen if we did not adopt her, they said most likely she'd be placed into a group home until she aged out. So my husband and I decided that we would adopt her. And we did. We adopted her. And it was an incredible day. It was such an incredible day. The smiles, the laughter. My son just... The way he looked at her in some of these pictures, it was his sister. And the thought of...

That not happening would destroy me because of one, the love that he had for her and the love that I grew to have for her.

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When you become a foster parent, you get limited information on the child's background. You get very limited information of the abuse that they had went through and why they were placed into foster care. We did know that there was some sexual abuse in her past, which was heartbreaking because she moved in with us at nine and she had been into foster care for four years before she moved in with us.

She was in multiple foster homes before she ultimately settled into ours. The day that we adopted Heather was a gorgeous May day. The weather was beautiful. It was the perfect spring weather. We had gone out a couple days prior, her and I, and let her choose a dress, whatever dress she wanted. And she chose this beautiful green dress that had glitter and sparkles.

We did her hair beautifully and my son dressed up. It was breathtaking. I am now able to provide her a life where she doesn't have to worry about abuse, where she doesn't have to worry about if she does the wrong thing, she's going to be placed into another foster home.

Heather was a very intelligent child. She loved reading. She loved school. She got straight A's. Very intelligent. She really just settled in so well. And she was able to find out who she was as a person and her interests. Loved sports, loved soccer, but she also enjoyed drama.

After the adoption, she really blossomed. She really just came out of her shell, but she was also still very reserved. She also had this background story that she was holding and she was putting away in a closet and she wasn't discussing it. She wasn't talking about it. And when I would try to talk with her about her history, she became very reserved, very shut down.

And after the adoption, we did receive more information about the abuse that she went through. And it was just heart-wrenching.

We learned that she never met her birth mother and that her birth mother had given birth while she was addicted to drugs. And Heather was ultimately placed into foster care right from the hospital. The birth father had stepped in and said, I'm the father and ultimately got custody of her at about two months old.

There was a lot of sexual abuse, there was a lot of physical abuse, a lot of emotional abuse by her birth father who she lived with prior to coming into foster care. And they suspected that the abuse started happening with him when she was about two years old.

Finding this out was really heart-wrenching. And after the adoption, I seeked out therapy for her on multiple occasions. And I remember the one therapist, her first one, saying she's blocking out a lot of it. And she told me, I know that you can't bill if I don't talk, so I'm going to sit here in silence until you discharge me from your services because I'm not going to discuss my childhood.

I had attempted to get her into other therapists through the years. I also attempted to just talk. We just talked. And she was able to start opening up, but I could never get her to open up about her past. And I remember one time I said, can you just tell me one memory you have about your father? And she said, do I have to do this? I said, no, you don't have to, but it might help you feel better. And about an hour later, she said payday.

He loved the candy payday. I always wondered what that tasted like. So I said, let's go get one. And we jumped in the car and we got one. She had a payday and she said, well, I don't understand why he likes this. This is disgusting. But that was one of the only times that he had ever discussed her birth father. She was about 14 years old when we allowed her to go to a prior foster family's house on a school break.

So she had already been adopted and she had been in and out of this prior foster family. And she's kept a relationship with them. And I wanted her to have positive relationships in her life. She actually referred to them as grandma and grandpa. She had called while she was there and says, I'm having a fantastic time. Can I stay a couple more nights? And I said, absolutely. And I said, can I talk to grandma? And I said, could you please just make sure that if she's on the internet, you do supervise that.

When she came home, we found out that she was not supervised on the internet. She had multiple opportunities to have internet access in the middle of the night. She created a Facebook account. She created a couple email accounts. And she was chatting with much older men. She sent inappropriate pictures, and these older men would send her very inappropriate pictures. And I believe that that triggered her.

Seeing the inappropriate pictures that these men were sending her, when she came home, she was a completely different person. She was very reserved. She wasn't happy anymore. She was trying to sneak my phone at multiple occasions to get on and chat with these men.

At that time, my son was going to daycare and she would still go there. And she tried to steal the daycare provider's phone and get on that and chat with these men. She was exchanging pictures and we did contact the sheriff's department when we ultimately found out. And because the pictures that she was exchanging did cover her up, but were very showing, she wasn't distributing any pornography whatsoever.

She, at that time, became very obsessed with the idea of sex, the idea of seeing the naked body. I remember the first Fifty Shades of Grey book was really popular at that time, and she tried to sneak the book into the bookstore. And of course, she's 14 at the time. I do not feel it's appropriate for a 14-year-old to read this book. I told her to return it, and I stood outside, and she did, but then she stole it.

She had the book in her shirt. We were really, really nervous for her because she's going into such an important stage of her life. During that stage from, I would say, 14 to 17, she became so reserved. She became so angry as a person. She started to not do the things that she liked. She didn't sign up for band again the next year. She didn't sign up for chorus. And then she started having arguments with my husband.

Knowing what to say to get him upset and have a reaction back. There was a lot of arguing in our home. It got to the point where I wouldn't leave my son alone with her. I was afraid that she didn't know how to control herself. I started building up a wall again because I felt that this relationship is starting to have a lot of tension.

I remember one night there was a really bad rainstorm and everyone else in the house was sleeping. And I'm looking through my phone and I turn on a local police scanner and I heard a 911 call go out for someone who had a diabetic emergency. And they toned it out three times and there was no answer.

And I remember thinking, I have so many family members who are diabetic, I would be petrified if one of my family members had to wait, which could be life or death. And I said, I have to join the local rescue squad. I have to make that change. I have to be that change that I want to see in the world.

At that time, my life felt so out of control because Heather was so angry with her life. She had so much anger that she didn't know how to express. My confidence was chipping away and my husband was starting to be angry because it was just a constant fight in my home. So I can join the rescue squad and I can help people.

So I joined the rescue squad and it was amazing. And at that time, my grandfather had become very sick and I would spend a lot of time with him in the hospital. And I found out like 40 years before, my grandfather started a rescue squad with two of his friends in his town because they didn't have it. And that connection with him was really amazing.

When he was in the hospital, we would turn the scanner on and we'd listen to it and he would diagnose calls. And he would tell stories and he taught me how to love emergency medical services. I pursued becoming an EMT for my town and I still am to this day.

He told me, you're going to have a bad call. You're going to have calls where people aren't going to make it and you're not God and you're not going to be able to bring them back. But you have to find a healthy way to express those calls. You have to find somebody to talk to. I have to talk about it because if I don't, it's going to create traumas. And it brought me back to Heather. I knew she needed a healthy outlet, but I couldn't find a healthy outlet for her.

When we received the paperwork after we adopted her, we found out that Heather had accused a foster father of sexual misconduct. And an investigation did show that it was unfounded. He was actually out on a business trip out of country at the time she said it had happened. And it was because she did not want to live in that foster home anymore.

So that did have our guards up a lot to the point where the time that she would spend with my husband alone was very limited. She was still a very angry child. She's in a new school district at this time. She was able to make friends because she was very into sports and into soccer. And she befriended a teacher and was able to open up to the teacher. And I thought, this is it.

But ultimately, I had found out that she was opening up about how much she did not love living with us and how much it could be better if she lived with somebody else. And the teacher ultimately said, if it's that bad, you can live with me. At that time, I was looking into multiple different organizations to help us help her.

I reached out to our local child protective services and said, this is my situation. It is getting so toxic in my home. My husband and I are discussing separation, not because we're falling out of love with each other, just because the toxicity in the home is just so unbearable. I reached out to our local mental health and I said, this is the situation. I don't know what to do. We came up with a couple options and she completely refused them.

I didn't know what to do. I was losing so much control. I was losing so much hope and I was losing so much of my family. And this teacher had said, well, why isn't she move in with us? And the local child protective services said, I think that's a good idea. That might be the break that you all need. She had ran away one night and ended up going to this teacher's home. And this teacher had taken her in and she moved in with them temporarily.

Heather wanted to join the National Guard to help pay for college, and she would be able to go away to boot camp for the summer. And my husband and I were in approval because we had attempted so many different things to help her, and nothing was working. About a month into it was the middle of June, and my son had came into our bedroom to snuggle with us in the middle of the night. And it was about just before 6 a.m., and I hear a pounding on the door.

And I'm like, what is this? And I look out the window and my house is surrounded by police.

I said to my husband, the cops are here. And I go to the front door and I open the door and I said, can I help you? And they shoved the door open. They go past me and they go to my husband and tell him that he needs to get up and he needs to come with them. And I'm asking what's going on. And the one senior detective kept saying, you know exactly what's going on. And I say, no idea what's going on. I just woke up. I'm surrounded by 40 police officers, probably.

They come out with my husband out of my bedroom. And I look at my husband. I said, what's going on? He said, babe, I have no idea. They wanted to take me to the station to interview me. And again, the police officer keeps saying, well, you know what's going on. And I said, I wouldn't leave my house unless if my mom was there with my son. So I was able to call her and I said, mom, the cops are here and I don't know what's going on. And she came right over.

I went down to the station and it was with a female police officer. We're in the interrogation room and she's asking about my sex life.

Does your husband and you do anal? Does your husband force you to give him a blowjob? No, my husband's never forced me to do anything. She asked about if we had sex toys. And I'm like, well, we probably did, like, forever ago. I doubt we have them now, but if we do, this is where you'd find them. And she called, and they searched, and there was nothing. And then she said...

Heather has told us that she has been having sex with your husband since she's been 14 and he took her virginity. And I was like, that's impossible. I said, I don't believe it. And the officer said, do you not believe it or do you not want to believe it? I said, well, both absolutely impossible. I said, I need to go home. I need to talk to my husband. I said, well, your husband's at a different location. He's in custody.

at this point, have been married for 13 years, and I had never seen him raise a hand to anybody. He is the type of person that would pull over and get a turtle out of the road. Loving, caring man, and for her to say that he physically abused her, he hit her and tried to throw her across the room was just astonishing.

I cleaned up the house because they tossed my home. The cushions to my couches were everywhere. My mattress was flipped over. Everything off of our bookshelves were ripped off. I tried to get a hold of my husband and they wouldn't tell me where he was. They wouldn't tell me if he was okay. They wouldn't tell me anything. And they just kept saying, you know what he did. I was informed that he had a court hearing.

So I went down to the courthouse and the lawyer said that he's trying to figure out what's going on. It was a public defender that was given to him. At this point, I'm able to find out where he is. And I went to the jail. I just look at him. I said, what is going on? And he said, Heather accused me of rape.

And I looked at him and I said, you need to tell me right now. Did you do it? I need to know in this very moment. Did you do it? Because 99% of me said no, but that 1% wanted to believe my daughter. I wanted to help her. And he said, absolutely not. I did not do that. I never would do that. The next day he had another court hearing and I was able to make bail for him and bring him home.

They said, you need to go stay with your mom for a couple of days. I need to figure out what is going on. And he said, okay. He came home 16 days after the initial allegation, six days in incarceration, and then he spent 10 days at his mother's house.

This is where we're starting to hire a new attorney and we're starting to get more paperwork and we're starting to put the pieces together of her story. She's now off to the National Guard for boot camp. We were both in survival mode, so we were very coexisting in our home.

mentally, emotionally, as a marriage. There was days that we just couldn't talk to each other. But then there was days that we would sit down, we would have coffee and ice cream, and we're almost being investigators together.

We started to get dates that Heather said this abuse happened. We started to get locations that she said it would happen. And I, for some reason, save everything. I have file cabinets of calendars that I've created. I would put her soccer practices, her games, her cheer competitions, and I pull them all out and I'm looking...

And the dates that she's saying this is happening, she was in New York City on a school trip. Or she was in New Jersey with her cheer team. All of these pieces are starting to fall into place. All of these pieces are saying, of course my husband didn't do it. But there's always that 1% that always makes you question.

When all of this is going down, I'm trying to, one, preserve my name in the community. Two, continue to have a normal life for my son. Three, try to figure out the story that was told. And then four, just that battle of that 1%, that what if? What if this is the true story and I'm not being the supportive mom? What if this is the true story and...

My daughter's just been subjected to so much trauma and we weren't supposed to be that family. We were supposed to be that fix. And then it's happening again. I love my husband and I support my husband and I believe mostly that he didn't do this. But then there's that part of me that says, well, they arrested him. And that doesn't happen if it wasn't true. But then she said it happened on this date. But how could it happen in this date when she's out of the state?

There was so much of a seesaw back and forth of who do I support? Do I support my husband or do I support my daughter? I felt emotionally that I was pulled into so many different directions and I couldn't get my head straight. I couldn't figure out what was the right direction. I was emotionally just surviving. I felt that I was living this internal battle alone.

It was such an isolating feeling. But yeah, I had to try to keep life as normal as possible for my son who's living this. He's going to school and we live in a small town and people talk. Also in this time, the COVID-19 pandemic started. We're a year and a half into this story since the allegation and we're six months into the pandemic.

Because of the pandemic, everything with the court cases were delayed and then everything was behind. And if it weren't for the pandemic, we would have already been going to trial. We would have already been going to court. But that pandemic gave me time. It gave me time to investigate. It gave me time to look, gave me time to figure it out.

I was up one night and it was like 3 o'clock in the morning. I couldn't sleep. And I have to pull out paperwork. I've got to go through something. I'm still in this investigation stage. And I'm trying to make heads or tails of who I need to support. Come to find out, this is the third allegation that she made against a father figure. And the first two were unfounded. This is the third father figure that she accused. The same story.

And I pull out a psychologist report from prior to her moving in with us. And I read the story and it names the birth father. But if you take that name off, it's the same exact story. I'm sitting there at three o'clock in the morning in my living room, surrounded by papers. And it was this aha moment. I said, you know what? It is impossible that my husband would do this to her.

But it's also possible that this story is true. The story she told the police is a true story. What happened to her is true, but it wasn't my husband.

It was her birth father. It was the same exact story. You can compare the stories, but it was named from when she was six years old. It was named that it was her birth father. It was named that her sister went through the same exact thing and her sister's report is in there and it's so incredibly similar. This police report that I'm looking at. That was a huge moment.

It was a moment of relief, but it was also a moment of such agony for the life of the trauma that she went through. And now I can believe both of them. I can believe both stories. And I know who the true abuser was. When I saw that, when I compared it, I cried. But I didn't cry sad tears. They weren't happy tears either. It was a different cry, a cry that I can't experience anymore.

I felt like for the first time in a year and a half, my head was above water and I could take a deep breath. I felt the first time in a year and a half that I had a light at the end of the tunnel. And I realized for the last year and a half, I was struggling to breathe. I was struggling to survive. I was struggling to live every single day mentally and emotionally.

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And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. After I come to this realization, I wake him up in the middle of the night and I tell him about it. And we're sending all of these things over, all the paperwork that I have over to his attorney. And now we have to wait for court dates during a pandemic.

We ultimately get to the point where we can go into court in person. My husband's attorney presents our findings. The DA looked up at the judge and she said, "I'm going to look into these, this paperwork, but if this is the case, I will be dropping this." We come back a month later and the judge asked, "How would you like to proceed?" to the DA and she said, "At this time, we're dropping all charges."

It's just this sigh of relief. And I'm so many emotions and I'm so angry and I'm so hurt. But I also understand her trauma. It's still this dread because I have not had communication with my daughter. I haven't been able to hug her. I haven't been able to see if she's been okay. And I want to hug her and I want to tell her that I love her. But I can't.

I'm not able to. She was in the National Guard at this point when the DA dropped all charges and the judge agreed. The DA was very limited with the information that she gave to the attorney. However, the attorney feels that Heather had recanted her story to the DA, but there's nothing that ultimately says that.

The attorney feels that Heather did recant. But I have nothing that tells me that. Insecure, I have nothing fully that will tell me that. Yeah, I felt so many mixed emotions. I love my daughter. I love my husband. I have trust in my husband. And then I have anger. I have anger that this whole situation happened. Why is this our story? If I never met her, if I never got into foster care, would this have never happened to us?

I felt so much hurt for her because she's got so much pain. And who do you run to when you have pain? You run to mom and she can't run to me. In anger because my life was just picked up and shook and then dropped. And everything was so out of control. I have disgust for the birth father. He shouldn't be able to walk this planet anymore and he is...

I have joy that I'm able to start figuring out the story. And then I have guilt. I have guilt that it was my decision to start a foster care process. I had a lot of shame. I had shame in the community. I felt I couldn't go out in the community. I felt my identity was ripped away because I am not the same person that I was. The lack of identity is

I was such a happy person after I left my parents' religion and I met my husband and we were just so easygoing. I enjoyed every moment of every day and I could see the beauty in this world. And then this happens and I see bad. I see hate. I see anger. And I see this in myself.

I completely had changed who I was. I was not a fun, happy-go-lucky, naive person anymore. I saw the world's true, ugly colors. I didn't like the person that I became in this process, and I didn't like the person that my husband became in this process.

But I also felt so fake because I had to fake the normal life because I needed my son to stay exactly like he was. In the meantime, we're in a pandemic and I'm going into people's homes doing CPR on them in full PPE gear and then coming home being petrified to bring COVID home. So on top of seeing the ugly of the world, you're seeing the ugly of the pandemic as well.

On top of all of this, I can't hug my mom. I can't hug my best friends. I can't go out and have dinner and a girl's night just to be able to unload because the world is shut down. I almost felt lost because your whole last couple of years were wrapped up in this one event.

I felt lost because I didn't know what my next step was because I didn't think past this step. The most challenging part of this whole experience is figuring out how to fall back in love with my husband. I still love my husband very much. I became a different person and he became a different person. The most challenging experience is the unknown of these new people.

If these new people can fall back into head over heels love like we were at one point. My husband went from this happy person to a very secluded to very depressed person. We became so different so quickly. There are days that we are two ships passing in the night and then there's days that we're

a family and we're playing games and we're going to my son's football game. So I think it's just getting past that initial trauma, him figuring out who he is, him figuring out who he wants to be as a father and as a husband and me figuring that out and seeing if those two exist together again.

I have not had contact with her since two weeks prior to that allegation. I encourage my son and my daughter to continue to be brother and sister. If she writes a letter to him, I make sure that he gets it. If he'd like to write back, I encourage that process.

Up until June of this year, I never had a return address, but I did in June and we were able to return a letter. They were able to have a visit with the support of the school counselor.

She is going to college. She was given multiple scholarships because she's a very intelligent person. I believe that she has finished her service with the National Guard, but I don't know 100% because I don't have communication with her and I don't know if I will in the future. I feel like I'm grieving somebody who's still alive.

and grieving person that I know can be right there and that I could possibly hold and hug and have a relationship, but then they're not. And I never had that closure because she's not past, she's not dead. I also get a lot of waves because this is what my parents did to my sister.

when she left the religion, and I saw how much it messed up my sister, and so I'm not closing her out of our lives. I'm not saying she can't talk to us, and she can't be involved in our lives. So it's different, but I do get moments where I'm pulled that way. I'm pulled back to my childhood where my sister was ripped away from me for an unknown reason, and I had shame talking to her, and I don't want to do that to my children.

My husband and I have discussed at multiple lengths if we wanted to become foster parents again and to become adoptive parents again. And we have said no. It hurts. But I know that for those seven children that we had fostered, that they were able to hopefully have a better life and a better life story.

If this never happened to me, I don't know if I would have been so grateful. Grateful for my family. Grateful for my friends. I have some incredible friends. And I'm grateful for my mom.

Because she gave me so much moral support through this whole process, even still being part of her religion. And I don't know if I would have ever seen the actual deep love that she has for me if this didn't happen. It took a lot of time working on myself, finding out who I was and who I wanted to be. It's a puzzle, a puzzle of my life.

I worked really hard on my health. I started running and I started doing yoga and I started eating healthy and my son and I were taking healthy cooking classes together and I'm looking at the world again and looking for the beautiful and not noticing the ugly, or at least I'm attempting. I'm focusing on, for the first time in my life, finding my inner peace and

Today's guest requested to remain anonymous, but if you'd like to reach out to her, you can email at friends13459 at gmail.com. That's friends13459 at gmail.com. Thank you.

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Welcome to the Offensive Line. You guys, on this podcast, we're going to make some picks, talk some s**t, and hopefully make you some money in the process. I'm your host, Annie Agarne.

So here's how this show's going to work, okay? We're going to run through the weekly slate of NFL and college football matchups, breaking them down into very serious categories like No offense. No offense, Travis Kelsey, but you've got to step up your game if Pat Mahomes is saying the Chiefs need to have more fun this year. We're also handing out a series of awards and making picks for the top storylines surrounding the world of football. Awards like the He May Have a Point Award for the wide receiver that's most justifiably bitter.

Is it Brandon Ayuk, Tee Higgins, or Devontae Adams? Plus, on Thursdays, we're doing an exclusive bonus episode on Wondery+, where I share my fantasy football picks ahead of Thursday night football and the weekend's matchups. Your fantasy league is as good as locked in. Follow the offensive line on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can access bonus episodes and listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.