I wasn’t political. I didn’t follow the news. I didn’t post opinions online. I always assumed my voice didn’t matter unless something truly life-altering happened — something so important that staying silent would feel like a betrayal of my own values.
That moment came when I lost access to my children.
I grew up in a world where almost any problem could be solved. My family had resources, influence, and connections. My stepmother spent years in local politics. I lived a life where systems made sense, and when they didn’t, someone stepped in to support us — financially, legally, or emotionally. I had always believed that if something ever went wrong, there would be a clear path to make it right.
But when substance-use concerns entered a private custody dispute, all of those assumptions collapsed.
Despite having:
No DUI
No arrests
No criminal charges
No allegation of child endangerment
No CPS involvement
I still lost almost all access to my kids.
And because my case was not handled through CPS, I received none of the protections and supports the state automatically guarantees in child-welfare cases:
No attorney.
No treatment or recovery plan.
No reunification benchmarks.
No timelines or goals.
No oversight.
No mandatory review hearings.
No standardized criteria for progress.
No roadmap back to my children.
Instead, a single ruling restricted me to eight hours a month with my children and zero contact outside those hours — no phone calls, no school events, no milestones, no ordinary moments. And I was given no guidance whatsoever on how to increase that time or rebuild what had been lost.
I completed 90 days of residential treatment.
Eight months of sober living.
A full program of recovery work.
Consistent meeting attendance.
A sponsor.
Daily accountability.
Eighteen months of sobriety and counting.
Every single Soberlink and drug test passed.
Yet in the absence of legal representation, I was and still am overwhelmed by procedural rules and technical requirements I don't understand. Evidence I assumed would matter was excluded because I didn’t know how to admit it. Motions and accusations arrived faster than I could research how to respond.
I am smart — but I am not a lawyer — and the system treats those two realities as indistinguishable.
And while I fight to navigate a process with no map, my children live inside the confusion the system created.
When the court offers no transparency, no timeline, and no clear structure, children naturally assume the parent must still be unsafe.
My kids struggled to understand why our time was so limited. In their minds, if I were truly sober — if I had truly changed — the system would have reflected that. Their confusion was not a result of defiance or mistrust. It was the predictable human response to a system that provides no explanation and no clarity.
That is the deeper harm of this gap in our laws:
When recovery has no defined path, children fill the silence with fear, shame, and incorrect assumptions.
My children are already 12 and 16. This work is not for me — it is for the families after us.
Because now I understand the truth I did not want to learn the hard way:
If my case had gone through CPS — if I had even been arrested — I would have been given a fair, structured, evidence-based path to reunification.
Private family courts do not offer that.
Because they don’t, families across Texas are navigating:
inconsistent rulings
unclear expectations
no timelines
no accountability
Not to weaken safety.
Not to excuse addiction.
Not to punish any parent.
But to ensure:
Fairness
Consistency
Transparency
Recovery standards that are evidence-based, not arbitrary
A clear pathway for families to rebuild
This Act is the structure I needed and never received.
It is the fairness my children deserved.
It is the path every Texas family should have access to — no matter which courtroom their case happens to fall into.
If this helps even one parent after me… then everything we have walked through will have meant something.