Ep. 6: The Divine FemiNest Podcast Transcript

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“Before we dive into today's episode, I want to set the stage. The story I'm sharing today is simply what happened and how it happened. It's the raw account of events as they unfolded. I know some of you might find yourself asking, but what about your choices and how they played a part in all of this?

I'm going to do a deeper dive into the psychology behind all of that in future episodes. So for now, just take this story for what it is. It's a piece of the journey and let's get into it.

Welcome back loves to the podcast. I'm so happy to be here with you today and I'm excited to share that I have a few new offerings for you. So I am now offering a 30 minute Akashic records reading.

30 minute psychic medium reading and a 30 minute oracle card reading. So if you would like to book your session, You can go to my Instagram @sironawest and book through the link in bio there. You will see all three of those readings listed under 30 minute readings.

So in the last episode, I left off where the kids and I and Priscilla and our doggy made our way from Texas to New York. And so we arrived in Schenectady, New York where I had a friend who had been through a similar experience and so she directed me to first go to the YWCA and see what type of help that they could offer. So they looked around for a place for us to stay and they found a shelter for us which was about an hour away in Hudson, New York. So we began living in a domestic violence shelter there. It was a big old house on this huge property surrounded by trees. And it was definitely a haunted situation. There was a lot of energies, a lot of activity going on in this place, but we were very grateful to be there.

So I want to talk a little bit about what the experience is like arriving at a domestic violence shelter for the first time for anybody who may find themselves looking for help in this way. This was the third shelter experience that the kids and I had. We had already lived in two separate shelters in years past.

So there are some things that you can expect at the beginning, the protocols, the way that the process goes when you arrive. So if sharing this information makes it easier for anybody else to know what to expect, then I'm happy to share it here. So when we first arrived at this particular shelter, we were taken inside and it was like you walk into a a large living room, and then to the right there is a room that functions as the office.

In the past when I had the kids with me, they were much younger and moving around a lot and you have to supervise your kids at all times. So if you're by yourself, which is how it will be for most people arriving at a shelter, it's a little bit tricky because people are asking you all these questions. They want to know the history of the situation, what has been going on, where did you come from?

They want the documents that you have, so birth certificates, social security cards, school records, medical records, if you have that stuff. If you don't have that stuff, don't worry about it. They will help you as best they can, but things are much more smooth and quick if you're able to provide those types of documents so that they can start helping you as quickly as possible.

In this situation, I had my wife with me. Again, she was very, very, very weak, not doing well. However, she was able to keep her eyes on the kids as they played. There was another room across the living room from the office that was for kids. And so there were a bunch of toys in there. So she got to keep an eye on them while I was getting us all checked in.

And then we began living there. One of the things that I was most excited about was the size of the kitchen. It was a really large kitchen, so multiple people and families could be cooking in there at the same time if needed. The shelter provided a good amount of food. They would get donations. Sometimes different meals would be provided, lots of lasagna-type stuff from churches, I think. Most of us were able to receive food stamps. And so we could also buy some groceries and cook. And that's not always the case.

There have been other places we have stayed where you're not permitted to cook and they cook for you. So it just depends on where you are. But there were several other families there and women that had been through quite a lot. They had - most of them - pretty young children. There was one with a little baby that we really connected to. But in the initial days of moving there, Priscilla was really, really sick. There was a flight of stairs we had to go up because all the bedrooms were upstairs. And she required a lot of help getting upstairs and getting to the bathroom, basic things like that. It was really intense. And we were all in one room - me, her, and the kids.

It was a really large bedroom with lots of beds. There were five twin beds in there. And so we made the best of it and did the best we could. Pretty soon after that, she required hospitalization. She was becoming more and more orange and less coherent and it was really difficult. And so there was a hospital just a few miles from the shelter and she was taken to the hospital and she stayed there. I believe it was for a couple of weeks and I was communicating with her doctors that were in Texas and there was a lot of back and forth.

Basically the doctor that was in charge there was communicating to me that she was stabilizing. He was able to help her get stable, but said that if she began drinking again, there was absolutely nothing that they could do and she would die. So she eventually came back to the shelter and it was like a roller coaster. It was a lot of up and down. I was feeling like I didn't like her very much.

I really felt overwhelmed and frustrated, but we still communicated the best that we could to try and help each other out with the kids. So I want to fill in some information here about the nature of her relationship with the kids and a little bit more history about our family. Priscilla came into our lives when my twins were two and my oldest son was four. So she was with them and with us for the next five years. We ended up getting married the following year after we met.

And we were living together for most of that time. So when we first met, you know, the kids just loved her. She was a lot of fun. They called her Ms. Priscilla. And then after we started living together and she was with them 24/7 and doing just as much mothering as I was, they started to want to call her mama. So we came up with the name Lala. And so it was mama and Lala and they had two moms for their formative years.

So she would be able to hold a job off and on. She was a social worker. She also did some work in the school. She would be a substitute teacher. So she had a good amount of knowledge and training in how to talk to children, especially children who have been through or are going through trauma. She would have to do home visits with kids who were in really horrible situations. And that added stress onto her. That definitely contributed to the drinking, drugs addiction in addition to all the stuff we were dealing with in our personal life.

She had a really difficult time growing up. She was introduced to alcohol as a child, given alcohol as a child, and had a lot of abuse happening in her family and neglect. So I just wanted to speak those words because there are things that I say in terms of how the kids relate to her when they would choose to disclose certain information, sometimes it would be to her rather than me. And that may not sound like it makes sense if you don't have the context.

The way that she would respond to the kids when they would tell her things was in a more professional distanced way - and in a more observational way. Like, interesting, tell me more. When they would tell me things, I think that they were definitely picking up on the strong emotions that I was having, the shock, the horror. So there would be instances where they would tell her first. And then, of course, we would have follow-up conversations about it.

And then eventually I learned over time with the help of the friend that I mentioned who was in Schenectady and counselors and you know, these staff members at the shelters. And, I just eventually learned these trauma informed approaches and how to have these conversations and how to respond in these instances.

Let's see, the next thing that I want to talk about is that the kids needed to be enrolled in school. So COVID was still an issue at this time. When we got to the shelter, this was, end of July, 2021. And the school in upstate New York, that they were assigned to go to had been able to open up again and had implemented all these protocols. And of course, everyone was wearing masks. But the kids were required to go to school. And luckily, we didn't have to provide all of the documentation from their previous school because that would have made it easier for their dad to locate us.

The shelter and the school had a great relationship. There were a little group of kids that went to school together, that all lived at the shelter together. And it went pretty well. There was a social worker and a counselor there that would see my kids pretty often.

So the next thing that I want to get into is what it's like living with children who have severe PTSD from the trauma of the things that they've experienced. And I want to talk about this by mentioning and putting it into the context of the things that are getting talked about in the news right now without using specific words about the things that my kids have gone through at this point. But it is very much related to the severe nature of the things that people are talking about in the news right now. And these things are happening in families, in homes.

It's not just famous people with more money than we can imagine. These things are happening in the home, in everyday situations that look like they might be normal, and yet it's not. And so our life was characterized by raising children that were constantly experiencing the symptoms of the severe experiences and abuse that they were suffering.

I mentioned that in talking about the school because it would be very common for my twins and one of them in particular to spend hours of the school day with the school counselor and social worker in their office, laying down, talking, drawing, needing a lot of extra attention, not being able to handle the classroom setting like other kids. There was one instance where one of my children had a, I guess you could call it an episode, where he was convinced that he had seen his father in the school parking lot and he described what he was wearing. He described the car that he was standing in front of.

And he was just absolutely terrified to the point that, the school went and, and looked through all of the footage, of the the parking lot cameras to make sure that that was not the case. And so that was more or less a hallucination that was happening.

So the flashbacks and the triggers. There would be specific moments, specific things that would trigger flashbacks and just outbursts in the kids. For instance, Priscilla was bathing the twins at one point in the shelter and they started talking to her again about some of the things that had happened. And what had triggered their memories that time was the shower curtain. There was a particular shower curtain that their dad had. And so they were scared to go in the bathroom and to bathe. And so it finally came out that that's why.

So I mentioned that because again, for anybody who is dealing with children who have PTSD or these types of symptoms, you never know what it is that can be triggering a really icky memory for them. So that's just one example. But soon after that, it was Halloween time and everybody in the shelter was painting pumpkins and having a good time downstairs in the kitchen. And they would organize fun things like that for the kids and they would have cooking nights and stuff. It was really nice. And at one point, one of my children got upset about something, ran upstairs, and it started this whole long, screaming, kicking, violent episode. And this was not uncommon. We had already been dealing with this for a long time.

And so there were things that we would do. It would get to the point where we had to make the decision to either try and isolate that particular child, whoever it was at the time that was having the issue, isolate them in a room so that they couldn't…you know, there was the least, least amount of ways for them to injure themselves or injure somebody else.

Sometimes we would have to restrain them. I learned how to, again, this was something that Priscilla was trained in and something that I had to learn about how to protect them by holding down their arms and legs so that they couldn't injure themselves, grab anything that they could and be threatening to hurt themselves or someone else. It was a very, very volatile, terrifying, highly emotional time when anything like this happened. And so one night it got so bad for one of my kids and they were having such terrible flashbacks that it began to affect the entire house. Everyone was scared. Everyone was upset.

He was screaming. He would not stop screaming for hours. The things he was saying were just very, very scary. Things that you don't want to hear or you don't imagine hearing from a seven-year-old. So it was just really, really scary. And it got to the point where we had to call for help. And so the police came, an ambulance came, and he was taken in an ambulance, strapped down in the back of an ambulance and he just did not look like he was there anymore. His eyes were like bulging out of his head. He was terrified.

He was just repeating these things over and over and over again and thought that he was about to be killed at any moment. And it was just awful. So we rode in the ambulance together to the hospital and he was held in the psychiatric ward, I don't know what you call it, held overnight for observation. A psychiatrist, was talking to him, observing and talking to me. And then he ended up being released the next day and there was not much else that happened there, but we just continued to deal with this on a regular basis, just as part of our way of life.

So I wanted to emphasize that because there are many people and families and parents who are trying their best and have no idea how to handle this and it feels so isolating. It affects, so let's say you're not living in a shelter, right? You look like everything's normal. You're living in your own place. Your kids are going to school. It affects everything. If you get invited to a birthday party, you don't know what's going to possibly trigger them.

You don't know if it's safe to go and do normal things and be in public places because you never know what could set them off and remind them and give them flashbacks and make them think that they are in a situation that they're no longer in.

The next thing that I wanted to go into was that shortly after that, Priscilla started drinking again. It became really evident one night when her behavior totally changed and it was just so frustrating for me and...I guess that's an understatement, but it just felt really frustrating. Like, okay, I just thought that we were making progress, even though we weren't really acting like a couple. We had been working together in all of these challenges. And so it just felt like once again, like, okay…alright, I'm on my own and we've got to handle this now.

And so she was dismissed from the shelter. One day while the kids were at school, she was escorted off the shelter property and I believe they tried to arrange for a place for her to go, another place that would be more appropriate for her to go. And that was the last that we saw her. We didn't see her again after that. I remember I was really heartbroken for the kids, just in terms of the confusion and all of that. It was a really tough time to explain to them what was going on, but she had been acting different for a few days.

So when I told them, I remember I took them out for ice cream just with this huge lump in my throat, having to tell them, okay, she's gone, she's really gone. And they took it very well. At that point, I think they were relieved as well because even though they're kids, they're like, yeah, this is getting old. So that was the last that we saw of Priscilla. The next thing that happened is that I ended up getting to work for a friend of mine, a new friend that I met through another person who had a skincare company. Her name is Sajata and we're still friends to this day and I've worked for her on and off and on.

But I was so blessed and so grateful because she needed some of the skills that I had. I was able to help her with her email marketing and her social media and it was really exciting. It was like, my gosh, this is so wonderful to be able to be in this spot where, yes, we're living in a shelter. Yes, my wife just left in all that chaos. Yes, I'm dealing with all the stress of these PTSD episodes, but my kids are in school, they're safe there. We have food to eat. We know where we're going to sleep. We have this little community here. And now I am able to bring some income in and okay, we're going to start to make some steps.

And so because I had a little bit of income, we were able to then apply to move into a transitional apartment on the shelter property. So like I said, it was a big, huge piece of land surrounded by trees in the woods and they had a separate structure, another building with four apartments. And so you didn't get to see them ahead of time, you had to apply and the rent was very, very low. But it was a step to discovering and maintaining independence for yourself. And so that was really exciting.

So in November, we moved - the kids and I - into the transitional apartment. And that was a really challenging time. It's almost like it became more challenging because now when I was there with the three kids by myself and they were having more and more of these episodes, I was totally on my own. Not only that, there were other neighbors also trying to rebuild their lives and have peace and quiet and normalcy. And we were upstairs. And so the pounding, the stomping, the screaming, the yelling, all of that was a constant thing that was going on. was, I would say it was happening maybe 25 % of the time, which felt very disruptive.

Still the kids and I were very close. We had beautiful relationships. We would laugh. We would spend time together. They loved to draw, build Legos…but these moments between the three of them, you just can't predict when they're going to happen. And so it was still really stressful and really difficult and really scary at times. So while we were there, we would go to the playground and things like that. And we started to experience being stalked again. I'm not going to go into the details, but being chased in the car, being watched at the playground, followed at the grocery store. The familiar scene that we had experienced before in Texas. And so it was clear that we had been located.

And at that point I applied for a temporary protective order with the help of one of the staff members who managed the transitional housing, who was just this beautiful Soul. And she was very helpful and she helped me to create the petition. I did have a court appointed lawyer at this point. And so we were able to apply for a temporary protective order which meant that if it was granted, that their dad would not be able to see, contact, or come within a certain distance with the kids or myself. And so that was granted. So we were now protected for the next year.

And then after that, there would be a trial to determine if we could prove those allegations. We had a virtual hearing to determine that. So I was able to do that from our apartment on the computer, which was very helpful. And that was a relief. That was a big thing to celebrate. That felt like a victory because I had applied for protective orders in Texas several times and it was always denied. The staff at the shelters are always very accommodating and it's their job to make you feel safe and heard and seen and understood, right? So we did feel validated and believed by the staff, but to be granted the protective order through the court, through a judge, was something else entirely. And it felt really good.

But not long after we were there, so we were there for about a month. And then right after Thanksgiving time, the same person that helped me to get the protective order…I remember she ran up the stairs and she was banging on our apartment door and she was out of breath and she looked like she had seen a ghost and she was like, there's sheriffs here, there's sheriffs here and they're saying that they're gonna arrest you. And I just remember feeling like, okay, I'm seeing all this emotion and terror on her face. I have to stay calm. I have to be level headed and I have to just face whatever is happening here.

She asked me if I wanted to speak to them. And at first I said, no, I'm not going to see them. And I knew my rights because the laws were that even law enforcement were not supposed to have the information that we were even there. So the fact that they had located us and they were there, she had never seen anything like this before. So I agreed to speak with them.

I just checked in with myself. I took a few minutes and I was just following my intuition. I felt like, well, if I refuse to talk to them, then it's going to seem like I think I'm guilty of doing something. And...I am just going to let them come in. So I let them come into the apartment. They observed that the kids were healthy and well. They talked to them. They found out that they wanted to stay with me. And they told me that there was an arrest warrant out of Texas and that they were sent to arrest me and that I was supposed to be charged for kidnapping and being a fugitive of justice.

So somehow they decided not to arrest me, but they said that it was only a matter of time. So I called my lawyer and he advised that we get out of there and find another safe place to go where they wouldn't know where I was. So this was a really heartbreaking moment because it felt like we were just beginning to make some progress, make some steps, have the slightest bit of stability. And now I had to take the kids out of their school. We had to leave the place that we were living.

We had to throw out the Christmas tree. We had to quickly pack up the few belongings that we had, blankets and toys and clothes. And they found another shelter for us to go to, which was about another hour away, I think, in Cobleskill, New York. It was late at night and we drove over to this other shelter. And when we got there, the first thing that they had us do was make a Christmas list, I was so grateful.

We were there for a few days and my lawyer was able to get the courts to agree to letting the kids do another forensic interview. So this meant that they would be taken in just like they were the first time to the facility in San Antonio and be able to speak for themselves on their own behalf and tell what had happened to them. And so this was just several days after we had moved into the shelter. I had to drive them back to Hudson and we first stopped by their school and picked up some gifts that they had for them and so the back of the car was just full of presents and then we drove over to the Department of Family and Children's Services where they were going to do the interview.

And we had an appointment, it was like 4 p.m. And so we pulled up and our advocate was there, the one who helped us get the protective order. And she looked similar to the way that she was looking the day that the sheriffs showed up. Her face was red. She looked very concerned. So I took the kids inside and they were given some juice boxes and snacks. And then they were taken with a couple of staff members to this other space, to the back of the building.

And I was taken to a little room that was just like…there were little cubicles with glass separating it from the main room. So there were two women there, and they were on the other side of another glass. And they began asking me questions in a very aggressive way. And I just started to feel really uncomfortable. And they were asking me how I got here, what's going on. And the final question they asked me was, “Who has custody of these children?” And I had to answer, he does. And one of them looked past me and put her hand out and motioned at somebody who was behind me to come in. And at that moment, a...Sheriff came in and placed me in handcuffs and told me that I was under arrest, that I was a fugitive of justice, and that I was being charged with kidnapping.

This was...absolutely devastating and shocking to me. Even though it might not seem that it would be shocking after having been told already what the situation was, I didn't expect this because I was looking at it as a positive thing that my kids were getting the chance to speak for themselves again. But really it was just a setup. And so I remember citing as many facts as I possibly could think of at that time talking about how 70 % of judges believe these narcissistic abusers and how this is all just such a disaster the whole system and how I've just been trying to protect my kids.

The sheriff was laughing at me. This was a common experience that I had with law enforcement. They were just laughing in my face. And the two women that were there, it was just fascinating, the amount of women that I've dealt with that are in these certain positions, these roles, and they really seemed to believe that they were on the side of justice, that they were helping to right a wrong.

Perhaps they really believe that, perhaps they didn't know, but it just felt like a really yucky energy. It didn't feel like it made any sense. So I was escorted to the sheriff's car in the parking lot. It was this SUV, police car thing and I had on a big jacket and so they went through my pockets and then sat me in the back of the car and reached over me, buckled my seatbelt because I was handcuffed. And it was really, really cold out and dark and I just remember thinking like…oh and before we left I had to give them the names of who could take my kids from here. And so I gave the name of my friend who was like an hour away and my Mom and my sister. And so I was taken to the jail.

And it's interesting because I didn't think I was going to get this far in this episode. I thought this was going to be the following episode because it is so difficult to talk about all of this. So thank you for holding the space for me. I'm starting to feel pretty emotional. So I think I'm gonna pause here. Thank you for listening to all of this that we have endured.

This part is particularly painful because my kids had to spend the night in that building with strangers. I did get to speak to them on the phone briefly, and they were very confused. One of them who typically had the most outbursts was having one while I was on the phone with them. And of course they had no idea how to handle it. And they were telling him that if he didn't calm down, he wasn't going to get his snacks and toys and all this stuff. It was really difficult to listen to. And they hadn't told them what had happened to me. They just said that I went to fill out paperwork and I never came back.

I didn't tell them I was in jail. I really had no idea how to handle that moment. I knew that my Mom, they had told me that my mom was gonna come and get the kids, but she was in Tennessee and so she wouldn't get there until the next morning. That was the earliest she could get there on a flight. So, I'm going to go ahead and end the episode here. Again, I truly appreciate you listening and walking with me through this journey and helping me to alchemize this pain.

I'm just going to keep doing my best to share from the perspective of someone who is hopeful and wants to help others to approach these impossible circumstances from a different way.

I'm gonna leave it there. I appreciate you.

Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. If you're enjoying this podcast, I encourage you to take a moment to give it a five star rating and a review. This helps other people like you to find it, to be notified when there's a new episode, be sure to follow the show as well. And if you're joining me on YouTube, you can show your support by liking this video and subscribing to the channel. I look forward to connecting with you in the next episode.”