Case closed

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/12/2015 (3253 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NISICHAWAYASIHK CREE NATION — When Shirley Swanson talks about her five boys, she does so with a possessive.

“My Silus” — the second-youngest, too shy to be in a family photo.

“My Phillip” — the middle child, who goes his own way and isn’t crazy about school.

“My Zacheus” — the baby of the family.

For more than a year starting in the summer of 2009, Swanson lost custody of her five boys, including Zacheus who was just six months old.

Swanson and her common-law husband were stuck in a cycle of binge drinking, but the trigger was a fight between the boys at her house.

Swanson went to the gas station to get some money and left an aunt and uncle in charge of the boys. When she arrived home, the babysitters had fled, and the boys were standing outside on the road. That’s when Child and Family Service workers stepped in, apprehending the kids and forcing Swanson and her common-law husband to leave their house so family could move in to look after the boys.

---

---

“I wasn’t even drinking at the time,” said Swanson.

The occasional drinking got worse after she lost the boys. She drank steadily for a year, staying first at her father-in-law’s house and then at her mother’s house.

“It was kind of depressing. It was very lonely. I’d wake up thinking about my kids. I’d go to bed thinking about my kids.”

Swanson’s mother nagged her a bit, telling her to smarten up, to quit drinking and to try to get her kids back.

“I’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, I will.’ ”

One evening, Swanson ran into an elder at the local VLT lounge who asked about her boys.

“I told her they were in care. She said, ‘You don’t do that to your kids. Your mom never did that to you,’ ” recalled Swanson.

“She was right. My mom never left me.”

On Nov. 29, 2010, Swanson quit drinking cold turkey.

“I thought about it really hard and I said, ‘That’s it for me. My kids need me,’ ” she said. “People ask me, ‘How do you do it? How do you stop drinking?’ I just say, it’s up to you whether you want to or not. I just don’t think about it. I don’t have the urge anymore. I know what alcohol does to me. People think alcohol solves everything, but it just makes things worse.”

CFS asked Swanson to go to a month-long alcohol-treatment program, even after she’d been sober for a month on her own. But not long after she’d completed the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba program, Swanson was allowed to return to her home.

“The kids were right next to me, everywhere I went. Even if I was just going to the kitchen, they’d come with me,” she said. “My Zacheus, two weeks after I came home, he still didn’t want to go back to nursery. I would try, and he would flip out.”

For the first six months after her return, a social worker would drop by randomly to check on Swanson. She was always home. The kids were always fine. Now, nearly five years later, Swanson works the evening shift as a custodian at the school, a job she’s held for more than a year, and her CFS file is closed.

As some of her boys hit their teen years, she’s having all the mundane problems parents normally have.

“I scream my lungs out every morning to get them to school, and they don’t budge,” she laughed.

But she’s also willing to reach out to social workers at the wellness centre for help.

“It’s easier to reach out for help. I know what to say to them,” Swanson said. “I’m not negligent. I need help. If it can’t be me, I ask for help.”

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca