Dad Came Home Drunk With a Shotgun. I Hid My Brothers

"I want to go home with you, Miss Megan."

Those words, spoken through tears by a 5-year-old boy I was driving to yet another foster home, changed my life—and by extension many thousands of other lives.

It was at that moment that I realized there has to be an alternative to our overburdened—and in many cases, broken—foster-care system, and vowed to find it, even if I had to create it first.

Those nine words were the seeds that grew into Better Together, the nonprofit I now head which supports struggling families to keep kids out of foster care. The idea came to me when I was a child welfare case manager and had gotten to know that little boy.

He and his brother had been in and out of dozens of foster homes. They were sweet boys, but difficult. They'd suffered a great deal of trauma, including physical and sexual abuse by foster parents.

One of the boys, for example, was beaten on the bottom of his feet with a wire coat hanger so the marks wouldn't show.

Then there was the trauma of being separated. Sadly, most foster parents won't take in siblings. So in addition to losing their parents, the boys lost the only person they truly loved.

On top of that was the added trauma of being moved from foster home to foster home, and not being able to attach to an adult parental figure, or stay in any one place consistently.

By the time the boys were on my caseload, the state had written off their parents, and there was little hope that the family would be united. Eventually, I got to know the parents, who loved their children very much but were young and overwhelmed by the birth of premature twins. So they surrendered them to the state.

Eventually, they grew up, found steady work, became more responsible, and had two more kids they are raising at home today. But they were never able to get their first two boys back.

I was in my mid-20s then, but as a case manager I had already seen hundreds of cases where families—overwhelmed by hardships brought on by unemployment, poverty, addiction, illness, or incarceration—had lost their parental rights.

My Own Family Story

When I was a child my own family had experienced similar hardships. I lost my father at the age of 21 to a massive heart attack, but not before I'd seen him—with the help of our faith community, counseling, and my amazing mother—overcome his addiction, find meaningful work, and eventually reunite with the family.

Like the Road to Damascus, my family's path wasn't easy. But looking back on it now, my parent's example—and our family's faith—gave me the courage and strength to turn my vision of a better life for unwanted or abused foster children, like the twin boys who touched my heart, into a reality.

My two little brothers and I weren't poor growing up, at least we didn't feel poor. Some of our best childhood memories are of the "adventures" we'd go on with dad near our home in Orlando—fishing in lakes and waterways, exploring the wetlands and nearby beaches, "dumpster diving" for abandoned treasures, or broken things that need fixing not throwing away.

My father was a plumber, worked hard, and made a decent living—until an injury sparked a downward spiral of depression, drinking, and opioid abuse. Like millions of Americans, he was prescribed painkillers by a doctor, and soon became addicted.

He wasn't alone, of course. According to the National Library of Medicine, between 2002 and 2011, approximately 25 million people in the U.S. began nonmedical use of pain relievers. More than 11 million misused the medications. Today, at least three million suffer from opioid use disorder (OUD).

Things reached a low point when I was just 6. My dad came home one night drunk and angry and cornered my mom in the kitchen with a shotgun and was threatening to shoot her.

I remember—small as I was—hiding my little brothers behind the couch, grabbing a baseball bat, and stepping between my mom and my dad.

I'll never forget my dad's face in that pivotal moment, which seemed like an eternity—his anger subsided, his eyes filled with tears, and he went to bed.

After that moment my mom knew she had to make some changes to keep us safe. But she couldn't do it on her own—not with three children ages 6 and under. She needed support.

Thankfully, our local church and community came to our aid, helping us move to southwest Florida where all four of us lived with my mom's mom in Port Charlotte.

My grandmother was key to our starting a new life. She provided the two things we needed most of all at that time, a roof over our heads and a stable home life, and I'll always be grateful to her for that.

After we left Orlando my dad hit rock bottom, was arrested for stealing to support his opioid addiction, convicted, and sent to the state penitentiary. My parents were divorced by then but my mom was adamant about our dad being in our lives, even after his conviction.

With the help of our church, she got us counseling as soon as possible, making sure we worked through the trauma we'd experienced. She immediately forged strong bonds within the faith community in Port Charlotte.

One couple, in particular, Edie and Jerry Gillis, really took us under their wing and treated us like family. Jerry was the associate pastor at our church, and when our dad was in prison he reached out to my brothers and me and served as a surrogate father. We also received a lot of other support from the community, family, and friends.

But it was my mother who really held our family together in the darkest of times. She worked hard and studied nights, eventually getting her CPA license and starting her own accounting firm. She even started a "single mom's ministry" to help support other mothers struggling to raise children and make ends meet.

No matter how hard things got, she had a heart devoted to serving and loving others and modeled the importance of giving.

Despite everything my mom went through with my dad, she never talked negatively about him. She left the marriage when she needed to, when it was no longer safe. But she also knew the power of redemption and the importance of family, fatherhood, and forgiveness. She believed in second chances.

But she was also very strict about what he needed to do to rejoin the family. First and foremost, he needed to stay sober, continue counseling, and keep a steady job. It wasn't easy, but he managed—again with the help of our faith community at the South Biscayne Baptist Church—to do all three.

I honestly believe that if our community hadn't come to our aid in our time of need my brothers and I might have ended up in the foster-care system. Thankfully, through the grace of God, my mother's strength, and the help of many compassionate individuals, that wasn't our story.

Over time my father returned to the fold, and my parents were remarried when I was a teenager.

My family's story, and the years I worked as a case manager, and later as the director of a foster care agency, taught me the value of empowering families with support, resources, and relationships to help them overcome hardship and not lose their children or their parental rights.

I understand, from firsthand experience, that some kids get lost in the shuffle, neglected, or abused in our overburdened foster care system. But I've also seen wonderful foster homes and group homes that care for and nurture their kids until they can find a permanent home.

With the help of hundreds of compassionate volunteers and faith communities, Better Together builds lasting support systems and relationships that help families cope with hardships—unemployment, substance abuse, homelessness, and even jail time—to ensure children are cared for in a safe home until they can be reunited with their families.

At Better Together, we believe an effective and humane way to keep the foster care system from the overload that contributes to neglect and abuse is to dedicate more resources to families upstream before children are removed from their birth families.

We also know this isn't possible in all cases and that there are caring and nurturing foster homes as well as group homes. Our goal is to work with the foster system, not against it; to ease the burden on the system by keeping families together, in a safe environment, whenever possible.

I don't know the details of what happened to that 5-year-old boy who changed the course of my life.

But I do know that he and his brother never got adopted, and that they had multiple engagements with the Department of Juvenile Justice before they "aged out" of the system.

I also know that one has a child of his own now, and I hope and pray—against all the odds—that his new family is a loving one.

Still, I can't help wondering what might have happened had he and his brother—both of whom suffered so terribly within the system—had the community support, counseling, job training, and positive relationships in their lives that my family had.

What might have happened had they been showered with love and support, like my family was, and reminded of their dignity, worth, and value?

Maybe he wouldn't have said, "I want to go home with you, Miss Megan." Maybe he would have simply said, "I want to go home."

Megan Rose is founder and CEO of Better Together, a Florida-based nonprofit that supports struggling parents by helping them work to build a better life, keep children out of foster care, and ultimately reunite families.

All views expressed are the author's own.

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