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I Was Kidnapped At 5—It Destroyed My Mom
I’ll never forget the heartache of listening to my mom cry about her mother kidnapping me in 1981. Grandma took me out of state just two weeks before CPS ordered her to hand me over to my mother.
By the time I was four, I had experienced more loss than most adults. My mother felt those losses and for a brief time, she used drugs to cope. My brother died in 1977, followed by my father’s death in 1978. In 1979, my grandfather passed away suddenly. He was my mother’s best friend and my favorite person.
After my grandpa died, my grandma slowly started losing her mind. She claimed to believe that she had to keep me in her custody to protect me. But that wasn’t the complete truth. She kept me because she was afraid to be alone. Without me, she would be alone, and that terrified her.
In 1981, Grandma decided to move from Kansas to Texas to help her daughter with her terminally ill children. At least, that was her story. Years later, Grandma confessed she left the state after receiving that letter. She couldn’t hand me over to my mother. She had to keep me by any means necessary.
