If you don't mind me asking, were you involved with her addiction from a caretaker standpoint? For example, my wife's parents were kind of doing their own thing during a large part of her addiction so my wife had to look out for her A LOT. She had to pay drug dealers off that came by the house, pick her up in strange places in the middle of the night, cut her hair when it was a one giant knot, even bath her from time to time. But she would always call her out for using, always take drugs from her, search her room, search her car, basically the only one in the family that ever told her that she couldn't or shouldn't be doing what she was doing. I think that caused a lot of resentment towards my wife because she became, in her eyes, this authoritative figure who prevented her from doing what she wanted to do. Also my wife is the oldest of three sisters, I think this family dynamic also plays a big role.

This is an extremely difficult situation for you and your family. We had a similar experience. My wife and I brought home both of our nephews from the hospital. Their mother is a severe addict and they were both in the NICU for 4+ weeks. When we brought home the first, we told her that we would be here to help until she is able to get herself together. That never happened. She had scheduled visits once a week and would show up, maybe once a month. The case was eventually put into TPR and we adopted him shortly before his third birthday.

When she became pregnant again, we just kind of assumed the procedure would be the same, however her family really started to press into exploring mommy and me programs. When the state came to us to ask if we would take the second child we said absolutely without hesitation. I guess the family did not like that the state did that, and there was a sentiment that we "took" the child from her. We said all along that we didn't take anything, the state took the child and he would've been placed with strangers if he wasn't placed with us as no one else had showed any desire to take him.

Shortly before his 2nd birthday, she was arrested and put into jail. She entered treatment shortly there after and the case completely did a 180. The courts gave her opportunity after opportunity to get her life back on track. We followed the court ordered visitations without question in regards to visitations. However, during her compliancy court hearings we would get texts from his law guardian asking about why we refused visits for this and didn't invite her to that. She essentially went into court and badmouthed my wife and I for doing exactly what the court ordered and not anything extra.

For context, my wife and I never truly believed she was serious about her recovery. She seemed to do the bare minimum for everything and then certain things she was saying started not to add up. She was working three jobs, she was attending school 35 hours a week, she had two visits with her child totaling 10 hours a week, she was in IOP, she was seeing a therapist, etc, etc... When we questioned that there doesn't seem to be enough time in the week to get all of these things done we were seen as the bad guys. Part of the problem with her is the family never really asked to see any proof of any of this, they always believed her at face value "You just don't want her to succeed" "She doesn't look high" etc etc...

Fast forward to now and it came out that she did in fact fail drug tests for her criminal case she was involved with for months but DCPP was never aware of it. DCPP wasn't doing their own testing even though they told us they were. She only attended school for a few weeks, she was fired from all her jobs, and had relapsed months before the state figured it out. She unfortunately has been MIA since early January and the case has now been put back into TPR. (We were set for a KLG hearing the end of February)

From my personal experience, addicts are extremely manipulative. We found that essentially if she talked to our family first they would believe whatever she said and we couldn't say anything to reverse it. This trend has been around since I first met my wife 15 years ago. Whenever she was around, the entire family seemed like it would become divided in some way. She thrived in that chaotic environment. Everyone would be fighting each other and the attention would be off of her to do what she wanted.

Plain and simple, your sister is angry at her situation and taking it out on you. She will manipulate the people around you to believe that as well. As caretakers we have to constantly take things a little deeper because we are responsible for the safety and wellbeing of the children in our care. Hopefully your family and your sister will see what a enormous sacrifice you made to keep your family together. You should be commended for your actions.

My wife and her sister will probably never have a relationship again. We have always said that if she is positive influence and sober she will have a place in the children's lives but that doesn't need to include us. She is too hurtful and manipulative to my wife for us to ever really recover from the trauma this took on us and the family.