When I was 17, I found myself pregnant with my first child. I was a rebel teen. Wild and out of control. Always in trouble in school, and floating through life until graduation. Literally on a fast track to failing, and waiting to be free to sign up for my GED since my school wouldn’t allow me to transfer to the local alternative school. I was terrified. How could I provide the stability a child deserved? How could I be the mother a baby needed and could honestly look up to? Just when I got comfortable with my new reality, and the idea of this precious baby girl that was going to be entering my life…it all came crashing down around me. I miscarried at school. Almost 15 years ago to the day (11/14/2007). For 3 days, her father and his friends got me addicted to drugs and alcohol. I put any and everything up my nose that they brought me just to numb my pain. It could have been anything from carpet freshener to meth. I didn’t know, I didn’t care. On the third day, he decided to leave me. In three days, I lost my daughter, my boyfriend of 5.5 years, my dignity and my mind. I spent the next 7.5 years in active addiction to pharmaceuticals (whatever I could get my hands on, which was anything, honestly, in a small town with drug dealer Drs). That was, until, I overdosed on lean, musicale relaxers, anti anxiety pills and alcohol inside my factory job and had to be revived twice. That’s when I quit cold turkey and decided to never take life for granted again.