Just Until May We are a family of three: me and my two daughters, Oliviah, 18, a high school senior, and Dahni, 10, a fourth grader. Right now, we're living in a fifth wheel parked in my adopted aunt's backyard in Magdalena, New Mexico. We're doing everything we can to keep our heads above water in a town where employment opportunities are few, money is tight, and sometimes it feels like your past arrives in the room before you do. Our lives haven't exactly followed a straight line. My reason for being in Magdalena is my oldest daughter, Oliviah. She has never been a child who asks for much. If anything, she has learned to make do with what she has, probably because life taught her that lesson far earlier than it should have. I've battled addiction throughout much of her life. It is something I don't hide or make excuses for. I have made mistakes, and I have spent years trying to repair the damage those mistakes caused. Today, I am clean and sober. But getting here wasn't easy. In 2022, we lost my stepfather—Oliviah's beloved Papa—very suddenly. Six months later, we lost my grandmother in a horrible accident. Two enormous losses, back-to-back, completely changed our family. My girls went to stay with my mother while I tried to put the pieces of my own life back together. I called every day. I sent money whenever I could. I was constantly reassured that everything was fine. It wasn't. My mother began struggling with the losses in ways that ultimately turned all of our lives upside down. Oliviah repeatedly found herself defending her little sister and, eventually, defending herself. I didn't know the truth. Then I got the phone call that changed everything. My mother had attacked Oliviah, striking her in the back of the head with a phone multiple times. The result was a severe concussion that took approximately four months to medically clear. And the hardest part? At the time, I was homeless. I had already lost nearly everything. I had been sending my mother every dime I could make because I believed my children were safe with her. When I found out what was really happening, I had nothing left to give—but I went anyway. I came to Magdalena determined to figure out how to get my daughters safe and get myself stable enough to be their mother again. For a while, my girls stayed in temporary "foster-type" arrangements while I tried to rebuild our lives. We were separated for three heartbreaking months. Eventually, I was able to bring Dahni home with me. But even then, things didn't suddenly become easy. Dahni couldn't enroll in school because her vaccinations weren't current. What should have been a simple matter turned into another three-month battle to get her medical records and vaccinations caught up. I learned that many of the appointments I had been told my mother had taken the girls to had never happened. Meanwhile, Oliviah made a decision that broke my heart and inspired me at the same time. She wanted to stay in Magdalena and finish the school year. Not because Magdalena was easy. Not because our circumstances were easy. But because she wanted to graduate with the same kids she had started kindergarten with. She wanted to finish something. After everything life had taken from her, she wanted one thing that belonged entirely to her. So Dahni and I went to a family shelter in Albuquerque for three months while Oliviah stayed in Magdalena. Eventually, we came back. And that's where we are now. Three people. One fifth wheel. A whole lot of history. And a whole lot of determination. Financially, we're barely making it. Magdalena doesn't offer many employment opportunities, and our circumstances—and, yes, my colorful past—can sometimes feel like another barrier standing between us and the stability we're desperately trying to build. There is also the small-town gossip. The judgment. The assumptions. But people don't always know the whole story. They don't see the nights I've spent worrying about how we're going to make it through the next week. They don't see the work it has taken to stay sober. They don't see a mother trying to rebuild her life while making sure her daughters don't have to carry the weight of her past. They don't see Oliviah, who has been through more than any child should have to endure, asking for almost nothing. She just wants to graduate. So that's our goal. May 2027. That's the finish line we're looking toward. We don't need a miracle that fixes our entire lives overnight. We need a bridge from where we are now to where we're trying to go. We need enough work, enough food, enough gas, enough stability, and enough support to keep moving forward. Just a few more months. Just long enough for Oliviah to graduate.
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