Sarah Kanowski

I was like, oh, well, she's got to do what she does.

And now I look back on that, I'm like, far out.

Laughed it off, walked to my mum's room.

I think a lot of people tried to offer help.

I know my auntie and my nan, you know, both my aunties, her two sisters and my nan really did everything they could

to try and support us kids and to try and offer her help and try to get her off the drugs or get her away from the drugs.

And I think it was a combination of addiction and what it meant to leave the abusive men she was with that kept her trapped in that space.

You know, just fear and fear for her own safety and fear for what it meant to not be... not to have her drugs as a way to escape whatever it was that she was trying to survive.

And ultimately that help wasn't taken.

It was more or less rejected, I think.

And, yeah, it ended up in us being taken from my mum at... All four of us were taken by my auntie when I was seven, I think, six or seven years old.

Yeah, that was a, well, it was an interesting, it was a weird day because my auntie had come over and taken us kids multiple times just because, you know, she wanted to keep us safe and look after us.

And we just, we knew we would go to her house every now and again.

But that day was a bit different because instead of just like taking the clothes on our back and a couple of extra pieces, we were given a black garbage bag each and just told to stuff it with whatever clothes we could or whatever things we wanted to take with us.

Um,

And I think there was messaging around, you know, we won't be able to come back for it.

We won't get it back, that kind of thing.

And so we filled the bags.

We had a garbage bag each.

We put it in the car.