Her son was dead, they said. Shot and killed while selling drugs in the Projects. She remembers briefly feeling something akin to “pain in her belly.” She recalled the “sympathy money” the visitors at the wake shoved in her hand and how she wished for it to be all over so she could go get her next fix.
She remembered the downward spiral—neglecting her children, her home, her job. And then came the rain; It was Mother’s Day 1998 and the heavy droplets fell on the head of Lynn, known fondly as “Moms”, literally cleansing her enough for her to cry out, “ Lord, I can’t do this no more, take it away from me. She claimed that day was the last time she indulged in any form of substance abuse, including alcohol and crack cocaine.
Nowadays, Mother’s Day for Lynn does not just signify a day to celebrate being a mom, but it marks an additional year in her long journey of staying clean and sober. This year marked 17 years since she has been free from crack cocaine and alcohol. Drugs that would be instrumental in her losing every material asset she had accumulated while living and working in the United States of America.
“I lost everything, everything... I mean, there wasn’t anything more to lose. I had even lost my son,” she said. Her introduction to illicit drugs was a direct result of the environment she worked in and exposure to friends who were using the drugs. “I worked a side gig selling doubles and other foods in parties (in the US). It was all around and I saw a friend using it. I was honestly curious, so it was so easy me getting roped in. I begun snorting it up my nose,” she recalled.
While it took a number of years for her life to unravel, her dependence on crack cocaine led to her all time lowest as a mother and person. Lynn had left three children behind in Trinidad, but within the first five years of migrating she had them with her in the US. When life should have been better for them being with their mom, instead they suffered neglect, hunger and displacement.
Her last two children, now all adults, were carried to full term, even though their mother continued to use drugs. She said, though, that the only reason they were not “crack babies” was that she took care of herself during each pregnancy. “I was never doing drugs on the street, always in the privacy of my home or at friends who were also addicts. I worked and supported my habit. I worked as a domestic help only to support my habit,” she recalled.
To this day, the family she took care of for the first 14 years in the US, has kept a relationship with her. Losing her first home at 760 Harvard, Washington DC, having to live in a shelter, and eventually being deported were just some of the trials Lynn faced with her children at her side. Food stamps and government welfare were traded for more crack cocaine, even if it meant leaving her children hungry.
“There was a time I was afraid for them to get up from sleep. There was no food, but even then God was looking out for us,” she reminisced. One morning, as a result of a good samaritan, her children would eat the “best breakfast” they had in months, maybe even years. A friend of her eldest daughter, whom she admitted she had disliked, drove her to a nearby grocer and purchased six bags of food items for her.
One night while working at her sideline job selling with a family at a party in Georgia, where Calypsonian Baron was to headline, she snorted out $14 in profit from the sales. It finally hit her that she had reached rock bottom. Walking through the heavy downpour, Anne begun a desperate conversation with God, which would change her life around for good.
Lynn spoke to a friend and was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) where she would cry and share her ordeal with drugs. The withdrawals were terrible and her youngest daughter refused to leave her side for the month it took her to literally “shake” her drug habit. “In the past, she would just look at me and knew I was using. For that month, she would examine my face for signs. It took me having money for an ice-cream cone for her to realise that I was ok,” she recalled.
Her children were given back their childhood, she said, through the grace of God and her steadfast belief that if she ever used drugs again she would die. “I have no doubt that I would die. Don’t do it, don’t, don’t do it—is all I can tell anyone curious about drugs or in rehab. I thank God for keeping me and granting the strength to withstand the urges and the times I had gone up inside my head,” she said.
To those who know her, she is the humble, oftentimes baldheaded smiling vendor who sells tasty pies and other foods outside Juman’s at Lady Young Road, Morvant. Having gained the strength to rebuild her life, Lynn’s focus now is completing the construction of her new home in Morvant. “Life is grand and God is always good,” she said as she sold one of her loyal customers a geera pie and drink.