WINNIPEG -- She has been
the subject of debate in Canada's highest court of law, the topic of endless
discussions in the media. Women's rights groups lauded the Supreme Court
of Canada's Oct. 31 ruling on her case, that a pregnant woman abusing substances
should not be forced into treatment.
But all Ms G wants now is
to get on with her life and to mother her year-old baby and the one that
is to come in January.
"Ms G" -- whose name cannot
be made public because her older children are in foster care -- has gotten
off glue sniffing and was married Nov. 1, the day after the Supreme Court
decision.
Looking to faith
And she and her new husband,
George Timmerman, are looking to their faith in God for their strength.
At 23, Ms G has already lived
through years of rejection and abuse. Her first three children were apprehended
at birth because Winnipeg Child and Family Services felt she would not
be a responsible mother. Two of her children suffer physical and mental
effects from her addiction.
Raised in an aboriginal community
in northern Manitoba, Ms G lost her own mother when she was 11. "Right
away after she got buried I was in a foster home," she says. That's when
her feelings of rejection set in. "I felt like my family didn't want me."
She came to the city when
she was 13, and for the next several years went back and forth. As a young
teenager, she used to look after her sister's four children when their
mom went out drinking. One time, there was no food left in the house. Someone
had called CFS and a social worker showed up to take the children away.
"I felt like a mother to
those kids," Ms G says. She remembers being angry with her sister for abandoning
the children, and with CFS for taking them away. "I wanted to run off with
the kids."
Her older sister used to
take her on drinking sprees, leaving her in the lobby of a hotel. Bored,
she began making friends with the glue sniffers who walked into the hotel.
"And so they offered me that rag and so I took it."
She was 16, and kept inhaling
for the next six years, through three pregnancies and a five-year abusive
relationship. Back then, she thought the lifestyle was good. She enjoyed
hallucinating. "Now I don't like it at all."
Ms G remembers going to court
for the custody of her second child. She was so depressed about the thought
of losing her baby permanently that she decided she would kill herself
if the court ruled against her. "I'm going to walk out of here and jump
in front of a vehicle," she remembers thinking.
The court adjourned until
another date, and the second time Ms G went armed with a full jar of sniff,
ditching it under a planter outside the courthouse to fetch later if she
needed it. When CFS was granted permanent custody of her child, "I went
for my jar." The sniff kept her from committing suicide.
It made her not care. "I
had told myself I want to die sniffing. That's how much I thought I loved
it."
Ms G and Timmerman met in
the spring of 1995 at a friend's house. Both were lonely and struggling
with rejection. But an earlier commitment to Christ prompted each of them
to ask God for a Christian partner. "When I came back from Berens River
(her home up north), I asked for the Lord to send me a Christian man,"
says Ms G. "I was tired of abuse. I wanted somebody that was honest, that
wouldn't lie and wouldn't drink."
The beginning of a new relationship
did not mean the end of solvent abuse. In August 1996, Ms G's life became
the focus of national attention when CFS tried to force her into treatment.
She was five-and-a-half months pregnant with her fourth child, perpetually
high on solvent, and in danger of losing yet another baby.
At the time she fought back.
"Nobody has a right to force anyone to do something they don't want to
do," she says. "But me, I'm kind of glad they did. It gave me time to think
about things."
Time for healing
She voluntarily stayed in
the hospital, going through withdrawal. She was eating well and started
gaining weight. She worried whether her baby would be healthy after she
spent five months of her pregnancy sniffing constantly. "But I knew the
Lord can heal."
She was beginning to consider
life beyond the jar of solvent. Finally, through will power, support from
Timmerman, strength from God and time spent in a hospital ward, she quit
using sniff. "I made up my mind because I wanted to mother a baby," she
says. "I loved babies so much."
Ms G is looking forward to
having her fifth child, due in early January. She has no contact with her
oldest, who has been adopted, but sees her other two, aged four and five,
every couple of months and talks to them on the phone. They attended her
wedding. She hopes eventually to get them back, but knows that could take
some time. "We're not going to rush into things."
The couple's church attendance
is sporadic. They were married by the pastor of a small independent church
that meets in a private home, and look to each other and their own study
of the Bible rather than a solid fellowship.
Still, Ms G has come a long
way. In the future, she hopes to finish high school -- a top student, she
dropped out of Grade 10 when she was pregnant.
Life on the street is like
a death sentence, she now realizes. "I was only hanging on by a thin string.
Death was so close to me."
And she has a message for
others who are destroying themselves with sniff: "I've got to tell those
people to get out of there."
(Reprinted with permission
of Christian Week magazine. Debra Fieguth is an assistant editor with Christian
Week).
