In our Victory Girls’ continuing weekend series My America, we take a moment to savor individual stories that truly bring out the best in us.

The opioid abuse epidemic is still raging through American communities. And while there are numerous political and social debates that swirl around the hows and whys of the ongoing widespread drug abuse, one thing that all people can agree on is that children are disproportionately impacted by the drug abuse of the adults around them.

In fact, Kentucky reports that they are continually in a severe shortage of foster homes, due to children being removed from their families for drug addiction.

According to Ron Bertsch, DCCH’s director of foster care and adoption, the need for families to open their homes to displaced children is more urgent than ever.”

“It’s always been a great need to have more foster and adoptive families,” he said. “It feels a little more critical now, over the last few years, because we’ve had a huge increase in the number of children entering home care.”

Bertsch blames the sharp year-over-year increase on the opioid epidemic. As communities across Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio grapple with the consequences of drug abuse in court, in jail and in residential treatment facilities, adoption and foster care agencies like his can become the only reliable safety net for children whose lives have been disrupted by a caretaker’s addiction.”

West Virginia, who began a lawsuit against Perdue Pharma in 2001, is also lacking foster families as children are continually displaced.

Nearly 6,900 children are in state care, double the number from a decade ago. Officials estimate that more than 80 percent have been impacted by the drug epidemic.”

For more than a decade, foster homes and emergency shelters have been short of beds. Caseworkers with sleeping bags and baby formula have shuttled children to overnight stays in motels or state offices. Billboards have gone up along the highways, calling on commuters to open their homes.”

In hard-hit Lincoln County, west of Charleston, caseworker Seana Harrison said she began to hunt for bed space in the mid-2000s and found herself driving children to foster homes that were hours away, their keepsakes in tow. One child took a stuffed bear, another a pillow wrapped in his father’s flannel shirt.”

“I have times when I am so angry I can’t see straight,” said Harrison, who worked at a private social service agency. “There are never enough homes. There are never enough beds.”

While the numbers are overwhelming, and the stories heartbreaking, and so many children need help, there was one little boy who was celebrating recently because he got his mother back from her opioid addiction – and now she has three years of sobriety under her belt.

Erika Hurt’s life changed forever when she was found overdosed behind the wheel of her car with her infant son in the backseat back in 2016.”

Police took photos of Hurt, unconscious in the vehicle and still holding the syringe in her hand. She had to be revived using two doses of Narcan.”

Hurt told ABC she first saw the photos while she was sitting in rehab, two days later.”

Three years later, new photos of Hurt and her son are going viral — for all of the right reasons. “I hope people see how low my bottom was and that they know if their bottom is not that far from mine, that they can come back too,” Hurt told Good Morning America . “I just think it’s really cool because I feel even more planted and stable in my recovery [today].”

For those who want to get better, there needs to be help and hope. Erika Hurt nearly died, and yet here she is, celebrating three years of sobriety – and her son is celebrating the fact that he still has his mother.

In America, there always needs to be a hand open for those wanting to beat addiction. There needs to be care and comfort for the children who are so terribly impacted. And in My America, there should be celebration when a mother and son are together, now sober and reunited.

Featured image via Pixabay, Pixabay license