12 February 23-March 1, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Mothers’ Helper Dania Carter helps Dal- las mothers reunite with and have the re- sources to raise their children with her non- profit Heart of Courage. BY DESIREE GUTIERREZ W hen Larissa Retchless left Parkland Hospital’s labor and delivery ward in 2017, she left alone. She had barely laid eyes on her one-week-old daughter, Ken- nedy, let alone had a chance to hold her. And she didn’t know when or even if she would ever be able to. “They [hospital staff] told me once I left the hospital I couldn’t come back and see her in the NICU,” Retchless says. “That was it.” Retchless was a methamphetamine ad- dict. She had relocated to Dallas from Wich- ita Falls the day before her daughter was born. She was fleeing a life of addiction and seeking rehabilitation at Nexus Recovery, where she planned to enter treatment with her daughter. Her plan was to finally get clean and to raise her daughter. “I knew that I had made mistakes while I was pregnant and I waited too long to go to re- hab,” Retchless says. “I naively thought, ‘Oh, I’m gonna have her and they’ll let me bring her back with me.’ That’s not what happened.” Kennedy’s birth was chaotic. Retchless experienced placenta abruption, which cut off her daughter’s oxygen. The lack of oxy- gen caused the baby’s brain to bleed. She needed to be resuscitated immediately after the delivery via Caesarean section. The newborn received three shots of epineph- rine, a drug administered during CPR to re- verse cardiac arrest. A week after being discharged, Retchless returned to Nexus. She was emotional, con- fused and hopeless. An employee of the re- hab referred her to Heart of Courage, a Dallas nonprofit founded by Dania Carter. “I had nobody around; it was a really hard time for me,” Retchless says. “A couple of days after I returned is when I actually met Dania. She became really [instrumental] for me, she was one of my main support systems when I was in Dallas.” Heart of Courage, an organization dedi- cated to supporting and advocating for mothers who have lost custody of their chil- dren, was founded in 2013. Carter had spent over a decade in corpo- rate America, but her calling was in commu- nity service. In 2013, she was prepared to take a leap of faith. She had her own family and ailing mother to care for and needed to make sure her family was secure before she stepped into the nonprofit space. As she re- searched, she was alarmed by the number of children in state care and the lack of re- sources available to mothers trying to get them back. “The stereotype is that these mothers have abused their children, and honestly, I think that’s probably such a small percent- age of what actually goes through the child welfare system,” Carter says. “The biggest issue in the child welfare system is neglect. Neglect is such an umbrella-type definition because that could be domestic violence, homelessness or addiction, which is the mother’s own addiction.” In Fiscal Year 2022, 2,845 children in Dallas County were in the care of the De- partment of Family Protective Services (DFPS), according to the agency, which also says 3,240 children were removed from their homes in DFPS Region 3 of Texas, which includes Dallas County. Many of these mothers are met with crit- icism and often stereotyped. Carter says people have told her to “leave the kids alone” and that they’re “better off in foster care and getting adopted.” “That’s not even remotely true,” she says. Carter says most of these mothers are mi- norities. The issues they face are genera- tional. Some have aged out of foster care themselves, and most have been in the child welfare system at one point. Their abandonment issues can trigger po- tential problems with drugs and crime, creat- ing a cycle that can simply continue for generations to come, Carter says. “We have mothers that are saying, ‘I want this to stop at my generation. I don’t want my kids to have to go through what I went through,’” Carter says. “And where’s the support for this?” Carter and her staff of eight meet each mother’s individual needs. The process begins with a self-suffi- ciency assessment. Heart of Courage ana- lyzes everything from transportation to education to employment. The nonprofit looks at legal issues, child care and back- ground, then creates priority goals based on this assessment. These priority goals are paired with a plan with CPS, to help the mothers become self-sufficient. Mothers are assigned a peer advocate, many of whom are also mothers who have successfully gone through the Heart of Courage program. “The goal is for mothers to no longer ever have to deal with CPS ever again, or be in- volved in the child welfare system,” Carter says. For Retchless, one of the first Heart of Courage participants, this advocacy and support was hands-on. “Dania [Carter] helped me find a place to stay and she gave me rides to work,” Retchless says. “She lived like two hours from where I worked and she would take me to work and pick me up. She had re- sources that I didn’t have readily available to me.” Carter went to court with Retchless and helped her understand legal jargon and to make sense of the court’s demands. “She’s ‘Mama Dania,’” Carter says. “She just played that role for me while I was go- ing through it all. I still call her that.” The nonprofit’s vision includes incorpo- rating a 12-step program that helps mothers with the process of getting their children back and transitioning into a sustainable productive lifestyle with their children in the home. Heart of Courage was one of 20 non- profits to receive a grant directed at non- profits addressing racial inequity in Dallas. The organization received $10,000 and will use the funds to hire two addi- tional peer advocates, pay a stipend to cur- rent peer advocates and pay for peer specialist certifications. Life is still chaotic for Retchless, but in the best of ways, she says. She now lives in Indiana. Kennedy is 5, spunky and a proud big sister to her three-month-old brother Noah. Retchless is a stay-at-home mom with a loving partner who supports her. Their family is happy, healthy and flour- ishing. “It’s a different life today,” Retchless says. “I still have moments where I can’t believe this is my life. I’m grateful and I’m apprecia- tive and even on my worst day, it’s still better than it was before.” ▼ Culture Hunter Lacey Dania Carter (left) trains a peer advocate. www.dallasobserver.com/signup go to WEEKLY EMAIL D SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY EMAIL LIST for feature stories, movie reviews, calendar picks and more!
