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At Safe Haven North, families affected by domestic violence or high conflict can spend time with their children safely, usually through supervised visits or safe custody exchanges ordered by the court. Many parents have come through our doors, and one mother's story has stayed with us.
When she first came to us two years ago, she was trying to stay connected to her two older children. Her oldest was living under the guardianship of a former boyfriend, and her younger child lived with their father and stepmother. At the same time, she was raising a two-year-old, working two jobs, and recovering from domestic violence and substance use.
The court ordered supervised visits twice a week. But as motions were filed and old mistakes resurfaced, those visits were cut to once a week, and then to every other week. It would have been easy to give up. She didn't.
Instead, she quietly kept building a different life. She got treatment for her substance use, and she ended a relationship with a man on the sex offender registry because she wanted a safe home for her kids. She rented a small place of her own and found a better job, which let her leave her second one. She saved for an attorney, and when no one would take her case because of the guardianship, and she didn't qualify for free legal aid, she kept going anyway.
Meanwhile, something was changing in our visit rooms. At first her kids were wary. Her oldest hung back and stayed quiet, and her younger child kept looking to our staff for reassurance. But she showed up every time, calm and focused, and over the weeks her children noticed. Her oldest started bringing drawings and news from school, and her younger one grew playful and affectionate. Visits that began tense slowly turned warm.
We helped where we could along the way. When her youngest needed dental care and she had nowhere else to turn, we paid the bill. When bed bugs threatened the home she had worked so hard for, we covered the treatment. And week after week, we kept supervising her visits.
Eventually she filed her own motion with the court, and she won. Today she has four hours of unsupervised time at home with all of her children.
None of it happened fast. It happened the way most big changes do: one good visit, one paid bill, one more week of showing up. That's why patience is such a big part of our work. Our job is to be there, to supervise the visits, help with what's getting in the way, and stay steady while a family does the hard work of rebuilding. Then, when a parent is ready, we get to see what that looks like. For this mother and her children, it looks like time at home, safe and together.
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