“Her name was Codi. She was the rainbow we didn’t know we were missing. We were done waiting for the kids to grow up, waiting for the house to be paid off. So, we put it on the market, bought the RV we always wanted, and sold absolutely everything. Our hearts and family grew a little bigger.”
‘In the blink of an eye, we traded our passion for the typical American dream. The house, the yard, the white picket fence. We fell in step with everyone around us. Then, something changed.’
‘At 19, I got pregnant and relapsed. My son wasn’t enough to stop me. I continued to use behind his back. I went back to hiding it, and was caught by my son’s father.’
“My friend introduced me to a better way to get high: injecting. He left when I got pregnant. I looked at myself in the mirror. ‘What are you doing? You are worth so much more.’ I wanted my kids to have love, but first, I had to find it myself.”
‘Casey had no idea what was happening to the woman he married. He thought I was no longer happy in our marriage. All he wanted was the woman he married. I could not do this one thing.’
“I became very closed off and did not want to communicate with my husband, the one I was supposed to be sharing my life with. I felt like I was letting him down, when in reality all he wanted from me was the woman he married.”
‘I would have taken her place if I could’: Husband’s heartbreaking account of their ‘devastating’ infertility battle
“I felt helpless.”
