Sarah Kanowski

And that was when it became permanent.

I think I would have been seven or eight when that happened.

And that was when it was like, OK, this is where we live now.

Well, we did in parts, but because of my mum's drug habit...

She was on the run pretty much from that time for whatever reasons involving dispersing drugs or taking drugs or possession of whatever it is.

She was always on the run, so...

Like her coming to see us would mean that there's potential that someone, the police could be there to arrest her or something like that.

Or us going to see her would mean that she's known where she is and so she was constantly moving around on the run and we were just told that we wouldn't see her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think between 10 and 12 years old, we found out that mum was going to jail.

And well, I think we were told like my memory now, like I've got obviously I'm 39 now.

So I'm sort of combining the what I heard when I was 10 to 12 years old and what I found out when I was like 20.

And what I heard, I think, was she's going to rehab to work through a drug problem.

And then later on in conversations I'd had with my mum long after that, when I was in my 20s, she said, no, I never went to rehab, I went to jail.

I was in jail for a couple of years and this is what it was like.

It was, yeah, definitely at first.

My auntie was with a man at the time, as my auntie and uncle, as I knew them.

And so we had like what I would think was like a normal childhood, you know, like between the age of seven and...

11 I think it was pretty normal normal is a weird word to use but like you know you you go to school you have a few issues with money here and there but largely you have an income you have a roof you don't have as many concerns around rent and you know where are we going to live tomorrow we had a house that we were renting for two years we were there for the whole time