I wrote this on 5/20/2008

I was born on October 6, 1980. My mother was Laura Elizabeth Evenson. My father was unknown — although the rumor was that his name was Allen Smith.

My mother was only 18 years old when she had me. She wasn’t married, and for the first year of my life, I lived with my Grandma and Grandpa Evenson.

When I was about a year old, my mother married Ronald Bailey. Nine months later, my half-sister Alicia was born. My mom always joked that Alicia was their honeymoon baby… although, honestly, I’m not sure I believe that.

The marriage didn’t last long.

After the divorce, we moved back in with my grandparents for a while before eventually moving into the Olive Apartments with my mother.

Some of my earliest memories come from those apartments.

The loud music.The cigarette smoke hanging thick in the air.The strangers coming and going at all hours of the night.The parties we were always told to stay upstairs during.

But Alicia and I would sit quietly at the top of the stairs and watch anyway.

Even as children, we knew something wasn’t right.

One night, my grandmother showed up with Debbie and the Cops. they

found Alicia and me dirty, neglected, and scared.

That night changed everything.

My grandmother called social services and took us home with her.

I still remember sleeping in bed beside her that night. I remember her telling me everything was going to be okay.

For the first time in my life, I believed someone meant it.

In 1984, my grandparents officially gained custody of us. Alicia was three. I was four.

Over the years, my mother drifted in and out of our lives like a storm you could never fully prepare for. Sometimes she would disappear for months. Sometimes she’d suddenly return, full of promises about how things were finally different.

They never were.

In 1989, my mother invited Alicia and me to spend the summer with her. By then, she had remarried and had two more daughters, Lacey and Antonia.

I remember my grandmother crying before we left, begging us:“Please come home.”

At the time, I didn’t understand why she sounded so afraid. Of course I was coming home… wasn’t I?

The truth was, I mostly wanted to go because I loved babies, and my mother had just had another one.

We came back home that summer.

But the next summer was different.

My mother wanted us to stay permanently.

Her husband didn’t want us there — and somehow that made me want his approval even more.

While we lived there, their marriage fell apart. My mother became deeply involved in drugs. She got pregnant again by the maintenance man from the apartment complex, and chaos completely took over our lives.

I stopped being a child.

I became another parent.

I stayed up in the middle of the night feeding babies while my mother disappeared for hours… sometimes days.

I remember one morning begging her to come home from her boyfriend’s house because I needed to go to school and someone had to watch the younger kids.

She looked at me and simply said:“Just miss school today.”

I honestly don’t know how I passed fifth and sixth grade. I probably attended school once a month.

At one point, Child Protective Services interviewed Alicia and me at school. Nothing ever came from it.

No one saved us.

That summer, I finally broke.

I told my family I wanted to go home.

Alicia still desperately needed our mother’s love, so she stayed behind for a while. But things got worse fast. My mother ended up homeless, living in a car with the younger kids, before eventually going to jail.

Back in California, my grandmother’s house was already overflowing with foster children, so Alicia and I moved in with my Aunt Debbie and Uncle Mark Aune during my eighth-grade year.

That year changed my life.

For the first time, I experienced peace.

I attended East Avenue Middle School in Livermore. I got involved in church, made good friends, went to girls camp, attended dances every Saturday night, and finally started feeling like a normal teenager.

For the first time, I felt safe.

Eventually, Alicia and I moved back in with my grandmother. Life wasn’t perfect, but it was stable.

And then, when I was sixteen years old, I met Anthony in PE class.

From the very beginning, we clicked.

I dated a lot in high school but never seriously. I still remember my grandfather constantly warning me:“Jennifer, you marry the people you date. You need to date a nice LDS boy.”

I would laugh and tell him:“Grandpa, I’m sixteen. I’m not going to marry this guy.”

I was very wrong.

The first year Anthony and I took things slow, but eventually we became inseparable. Every free moment was spent together.

Then, during my senior year, I found out I was pregnant with Devun.

And suddenly everything changed.

I had never seen my grandmother so heartbroken.

Ironically, it was my own mother who forced me to tell her. She cornered me on Thanksgiving and said:“If you don’t tell Grandma today, I will.”

I think part of her enjoyed watching me disappoint the woman who had spent her entire life trying to save us.

My grandmother fell into a deep depression after learning I was pregnant.

And then, just as she was beginning to recover emotionally, my grandfather suffered a massive heart attack.

It completely blindsided our family.

He spent a month in intensive care, and we all believed he would pull through.

He didn’t.

For years, I carried crushing guilt. I truly believed the stress from my pregnancy had contributed to his death. I eventually needed counseling just to work through that grief.

Anthony and I briefly separated during my pregnancy, but toward the end he came back.

On July 8, 1999, Devun was born.

He was absolutely beautiful.

Even the nurses couldn’t stop talking about him — his thick dark hair, his olive skin, those big eyes.

A few days after he was born, Anthony’s mother came over, looked at the baby, and immediately announced that Devun could not possibly be Anthony’s child because Anthony had been born blonde.

So that was fun.

We ended up taking a DNA test just to prove he was her grandson.

When Devun was four months old, my grandmother decided to move to Utah. Suddenly, I felt forced to choose between my family and the man I loved.

I chose Anthony.

I moved in with him and his parents, and when Devun was nine months old, Anthony and I got married in Utah.

A year later, we moved there permanently, and in 2002 I gave birth to Marissa Mae Durst six weeks early.

She weighed barely five pounds and spent two weeks in the NICU.

Those were some of the hardest days of my life.

I drove constantly between the hospital and home while trying to care for Devun too. My grandmother moved in with us and helped carry me through those exhausting months.

We thought Marissa would be our miracle baby after trying for months and months to get pregnant only to have a miscarriage.

Then, nine months later, I found out I was pregnant again.

Surprise.

Anthony and I hated the Utah snow and eventually moved back to California after my mother and her third husband offered us a place to stay temporarily while we got back on our feet.

At first, things went okay.

Then the fighting started.

Anthony and I quickly realized we needed our own place, so we moved into a tiny condo in Concord.

On Christmas Eve 2003, I gave birth to Zachary Joseph Durst… in that condo.

The hospital had actually sent me home earlier that night, insisting I wasn’t in labor.

But once I got home and climbed into the bathtub, Zack’s head was already crowning.

Anthony delivered him himself.

Marissa stood nearby watching the entire thing.

Zack spent time in the NICU because of blood sugar complications and eventually needed a blood transfusion.

Not long after his birth, I spiraled into severe postpartum depression.

One day, my grandmother sat with me while I cried uncontrollably and finally said:“Jennifer, you need to go back to church.”

Within days, an old friend knocked on my door and invited us.

Little by little, things started changing.

On August 8, 2005, Ava Rose Durst was born.

The moment my grandmother saw her she laughed and said:“Oh no… you’re going to have your hands full with this one.”

She was absolutely right.

Then, in 2006, Anthony joined the church.

On November 11, 2006, Anthony took me and our children — Devun, Marissa, Zack, and Ava — to the temple where we were sealed together for time and all eternity.

It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

In 2007, Aubrey Elizabeth Durst was born two weeks early after complications with my blood pressure.

She was the easiest, happiest little girl

Then came May 14, 2008.

The day I lost my grandmother.

She had been struggling for years and was finally ready to go.

I stood in her hospital room as the nurses removed life support. They told us we might have an hour left.

Her heart stopped within seconds.

I remember feeling like her spirit was still there in the room even after her body was gone.

I helped dress her afterward with my family, and she looked peaceful… happier than I had seen her in years.

As much as losing her shattered me, I also knew she was finally home — reunited with the people she had spent years missing.

I’m forever grateful that just days before she passed, I got to spend Mother’s Day having dinner with her and simply enjoying her company one last time.

She saved my life in more ways than I can count.

And even now, all these years later, I still cannot wait until the day I see her again.

Now another chapter of our lives is beginning.

Anthony passed his test to become a general contractor, and we’re waiting for his license to finalize. I know this next season will change our family’s life for the better.

And someday, I’ll sit down and write the rest of the story too.

Because there’s still so much more to tell.