stories & quotes

“Mother’s Day has new meaning to me now.”

Tracie lived a comfortable life in California. She was married to her best friend since high school. They lived in a nice house with their six children.

Life was enjoyable – until her husband became a drug addict and abusive. “It started slowly,” she recalls.  “First he became slightly jealous. Then it became worse and worse – until he finally hid the phone and computer, and nailed the windows and doors shut when he left the house.”

After her second stay in the hospital, CPS stepped in and placed her children in foster care. Tracie was sent home without her children. “I was absolutely devastated,” she says. “But I also knew we all had to get away from this situation.” Tracie’s son Paul had a complex cardiac history and suffered a stroke at the age of 9 which left him a non-verbal quadriplegic. Tracie worried about him constantly.

Her husband’s abuse escalated until her escape. At one point, he locked her in a bedroom and raped and abused her for three days straight. When he finally fell asleep, Tracie grabbed her wallet, ran upstairs, threw on the first clothes she could find and escaped out of the upstairs bathroom – the only window that wasn’t nailed shut.

“I ran as fast as I could away from that house,” she recalls. “I had $100 stashed in my wallet. I purchased a bus ticket for $78 dollars - I chose Seattle.”

When she arrived, she had nothing. No kids, no home, no clothes (except what she was wearing) and no self respect. After weeks spent in the shelter, Tracie sought out domestic violence counseling and was given the number to Jubilee Women’s Center, where she lived for nearly a year.

At Jubilee, Tracy began the long and arduous journey of getting her kids back. “Jubilee pointed me in the direction of so many resources,” she says. “I couldn’t have done it without them.” She found clothing in Jubilee’s boutique, got a job at Macy’s, and began putting the pieces of her life back together.

She found a school for her kids and physicians for Paul. “Every day I would watch moms drop their kids off at the nearby school. It was heartbreaking – but it also motivated me to work harder to get everything in place.” 

Every other week, Tracie would take a long trip to California to visit her kids. During her three days off in the middle of the week, she would board a Greyhound and endure a 48-hour round trip bus trip so that she could visit her kids for a mere 4-hour window of time.

Her insistence on being in California at her son Paul’s bedside after a surgery, she believes, kept him alive. She tells the story through tears. “I stayed by his bed constantly after his surgery. At one point, I looked at him and he had turned blue. They called Code Blue, and doctors and nurses came running. I spoke quietly to him, ‘It’s okay honey, I’m with you,’ and his heart beat resumed.”

In fall of 2006, the courts ruled that Tracie’s children could be sent to Seattle to live with her. “I was absolutely ecstatic,” she says. “There’s really no way to describe the feeling.”

Today, life is full. Tracie is in school to become a social worker. She rents a home in Bellevue where she lives with three of her children. Her oldest son, 21, attends college and is Paul’s full-time caretaker. Her daughter will be graduating high school soon.

“Mother’s Day has new meaning for me now,” Tracie says. “I get coffee in bed, and mushy cards that make me cry. We appreciate each other so much more now.”

I Am Not A Number...

I'm 263rd on the state list for Department of Vocational Rehabilitation

I'll be waiting for 3-4 months

I'm 1-2 years down on the housing list

In 3-4 months I should hear about my Social Security

My magic number is $339 a month in Government Assistance

and $127 in food stamps

I pay $200 a month in rent and live in transitional housing

4 months here and 14 to go

Before I have to leave for what I do not know

I'm one of 27 lucky women with a stable roof over my head

and a small room with 1 bed

I'd like to be somebody someday, somebody real, somebody strong

and have a real name

Instead of numbers strung along...