Casey Moore Part 1

Casey Moore Part 1

Never Underestimate the Power of a Lie

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KELLY

Never underestimate the power of a lie. You and I have been lied to countless times and we’ve seen the damage play out in our lives. But when Casey Moore was just a teenager, she heard a lie spoken by an inner voice. This one lie - that she was not good enough - led her down a path of destruction and heartbreak for years.

CASEY

I had been a let down and so I really just had a terrible self image that just kept creeping up and creeping up and creeping out I just never I can’t started gaining weight I couldn’t find I couldn’t find a comfortable place in my own self

What is a negative self image?

KELLY

But here on Qavah the Podcast, our stories are always about hope. What makes Casey’s story powerful is that she eventually chose to reject that lie and start believing the truth. If you were to meet her today, you would never guess the things she has overcome in her life. And because she’s an overcomer, Casey can pull other people out of the same pit that almost swallowed her alive.

CASEY

It’s funny now I look back and I’m like wow like I need to write a book I mean meth attic to preachers wife

Welcome to a new episode of Qavah the Podcast.

What is an ideal childhood?

KA I’m here with Casey Moore and Casey, tell me what is your first memory

CM I would say my first memory as a child is probably traveling we traveled a lot we never flew anywhere we drove everywhere so lots of long road trips we went skiing we did a lot of things like that we weren’t necessarily a wealthy family we just my dad always worked very hard he’s a financial planner my mom was a homemaker and we just took a lot of family time looking back when we went skiing we usually stayed in peoples cabins That we knew or things like that but we had a lot of fun on road trips road trips were a real family bonding time for us I have an older sister in an older brother and I am the youngest by seven years so I was in down the line I don’t know if I was a surprise or not but anyway so we had a lot of bonding it was fun traveling was always a good memory for me a very good memory my mom was like the best traveler in the world so she would like have a have a bag with gifts that she would bring out a little games or things that she would bring out like every hour and a half so it would never be you know it always be something new and fun she was a great traveler so

KA she was a smart Woman

CM Yeah yeah she did well with that because we didn’t have no movies in the car no phones you know we played a lot of games we sang a lot of songs and I did a lot of paper dolls that’s what I did a lot of

KA So you’re the baby of three

CM I am

KA So where did you grow up

CM I grew up in Mesquite Texas

KA oh 

CM Yeah grew up right there in Mesquite...my parents move to Mesquite from the Waco area a year before I was born I was born in 1970 so I am 50 years old this year.

KELLY

Casey lived to see Mesquite, Texas, grow from a gentle town outside the big city of Dallas to a sprawling suburban center. Her childhood was marked by church, road trips, and a tight-knit family that always made her feel safe. 

Tight-knit Family

KA Oh that’s fun see you grew up did you graduate from

CM I went to North Mesquite high school graduated in 88

KA OK and then what did you do

CM And then I went to college at Howard Payne University here in Brownwood I went to college out there and I loved it

KA So you graduated did you graduate

CM No I didn’t graduate from Howard Payne 

What happens if you are pregnant in college?

My my let’s see in 90 I got there in 88 the fall and in 90 I got pregnant with my son Carson and so I ended up coming home from school at that point and I just I don’t know it was it was a real mess it was just a mess I just was devastated you know I grew up very much a churchgoing child my father was a deacon and my mom taught Sunday school and it was pretty pretty much rocked our family when I found out I was pregnant and so I came home and it was I had Actually Decided to place Carson for adoption and so we met people at Hope cottage in Dallas met different families and actually chose a family and great couple got to know them while I was pregnant and stayed really close to them the whole time. And then when Carson was born I ended up having a really long labor 

KELLY

Casey was so embarrassed to find herself pregnant outside of marriage. Even though her family supported her, being pregnant in college and coming from a church-going community made her feel like a black sheep. She didn’t know what to do, so she and the father decided to place their baby, Carson, up for adoption.

But God was not quite done with little Carson’s story.

Carson’s father who I’ll talk about that in a little bit but he really definitely wanted to do the adoption thing and I did too I mean that’s what I felt like was the best thing for us and for Carson more importantly and so that was the plan but just before what I went to the hospital to have Carson his father just decided that he just couldn’t really handle it and so he went out of town with friends and so but my brother was already my couch I mean he’s already gone with me to all those things so he was gonna

KA Your brother

CM My brother yes my brother yeah

KA That is precious 

CM He’s amazing yeah he was in the medical field so it felt good someone in the medical field to help me out and all that and on a sidenote it’s kind of funny because we were go to these classes these birthing classes and so we had the same last name so people are saying we were married but we were not lovey dovey he was not like wrapping his arms me rubbing my belly.  And people would give us the worst looks like he is so inconsiderate he’s not even caring that she’s going through this because we were just like you know we just can’t have this distance between us but anyway he was awesome so I had Carson I had a long labor end up having a C-section it was kind of a difficult delivery and I just started wondering if I could do it if could I really parents alone because I knew what his father wanted which was to go through it and so I also knew if I chose to parent then I would be doing it alone and it was strange leading up to that because I went to some support groups and things like that I hope cottage with other girls and women that were pregnant and they were a few that were married they were still placing for adoption due to all kinds of reasons maybe financial or things like that but most of them are really young and I was kind of in the middle I was let’s say I was 20 at the time so but no one had support there, like no one had family support nobody had any supporting them.  And I had all of this crazy support but but I they wouldn’t tell me what to do like my parents would not tell me what to do and I was just like Anna I remember driving to Fort Worth with my mom one time in in the front seat of the station wagon and I just was begging her like tell me what to do and she was like I just king it you have to be the one in secretly on the inside they were just staying over this thing they just couldn’t they did not want me to give them up for adoption but again it had to be me. So I think what kind of brought sort of turned the corner there my caseworker from home cottage came up who was such a wonderful woman and she was just like this Hass to be right for you you know so what are you gonna do but it Hass to be right for you and there’s no pressure on our side although my heart was in pieces for the family he was waiting on a baby so it was a very difficult thing but what I think turned the corner for me was we were supposed to leave the hospital that day

We were plan was to go straight to Hope cottage with Carson and placed in for adoption at that point and the doctor came in and said he has a little spot on his lung so he’s gonna have to stay but I had already bagged and stayed I think I’ve stayed four nights already and he said but you have to go home today and I was like oh my gosh like leave him here I can’t so I went home and it was just kind a like foreshadowing of what my life would be like and I just decided I couldn’t do it so we got back up there the next day magically the spot was gone so I really feel like that was kind of a God deal like letting me feel what it would be like 

Placing a baby for adoption

KELLY

Casey had a terribly hard decision to make. The only thing that made sense was to put baby Carson up for adoption. She had made no plans to be a mom. She had promised her baby to another family. But everything inside of her was pulling her toward this tiny little life who had just been born. 

but even still I waited for hours they put us in this little storage kind of room they brought a rocker in there and I had Carson with me and I was just like I felt so incredibly guilty that that family that I almost placed in for adoption because I just felt terrible for them so after hours hours of waiting and trying to figure out what to do I finally just said I can’t you know I can’t do it I’ve got to keep I’ve got to keep my child and I mean I think we were in the car with it in five minutes we were just like that we had nothing we had no nothing for a baby and me because I wasn’t going to keep the baby so we had nothing so it was kind of a whirlwind the next few days and all of the  everybody helping and bringing stuff and you know finding a crib and borrowing this and borrowing that and so I was living with my parents at the time and so we brought them home from the hospital and you know kind of started this crazy journey and I do know backside that that couple ended up getting a child like six months later which made my heart really happy because they were wonderful people

KA Had you already named him

CM That’s what they were going to name him Carson

KA Oh wow so you continue that

CM So I called him Carson in the hospital I had him with me that was the other problem I had them with me for five days I mean other than work at night they would take him to the nursery but other than that I had him with me all the time so but I think in that I know in the end that I made the right decision for us and as hard as it was for that family and devastating I’m sure they were my social worker kept me kind of just posted on them because I was really heartbroken she said you know they got a baby you know so I was happy about that but

yeah

KELLY

Casey was all in. She picked herself right up and, with the help of her family and friends, began life as a single mom. But even with the help of so many people surrounding her, she felt like her feet were constantly slipping out from under her.

Being a single mom

KA So you’re your home with the baby at your parents and is the biological father still away

CM He was at the time and he basically it’s kind of when I think back I’m trying to think how it all happened but basically he signed his rights away and he went to school he went to A&M to school and he signed his rights away and I never asked for any child support or anything like that I just kind of just wanted the break to be a break and so we moved on without him involved yeah

KA So you’re a single mom

CM Single mom and you know my my family was real supportive but there was also like you gotta go to work you got to do this so I started looking for a job trying to find a job and found a job and started working in a little accounting firm in Dallas as a receptionist and had a little baby hour we had at first the next-door neighbor kept the baby then I didn’t really want my mom to keep the baby I mean she was the grandma and we live with them so I really just didn’t want that and I don’t think she wanted that either I mean it’s kind of a lot so I really wanted someone to care for the baby who actually cared for Carson the longest until he went to tell he was in light preschool age was happened to be our friend of ours and it happens to be Amy Wilson Amy Anderson’s mom

KA Oh wow

CM Yes so she Carol cared for Carson and she was wonderful so yeah so it was comfortable to have her and I’ve known her my whole life and she was she was really great so she kind of jumped in and cared for him in anyway but it was really I had so much shame and guilt from it so I just carried so much of that for so long it just was a difficult thing I never could really land on my feet with life I mean I just was constantly searching for some thing into something else

I think for me it was more like I don’t know like I had really poor self image after that and I think it was because at the time I just felt like wow you know here I’ve totally disappointed my parents and yes I have this baby who they left all of that but I had been a let down and so I really just had a terrible self image that just kept creeping up and creeping up and creeping out I just never I can’t started gaining weight I couldn’t find I couldn’t find a comfortable place in my own self and I had a lot of support which was weird and I remember mom just like Kacie what like she literally help face me and from the mirror it was like what do you say what do you say that is so wrong you know because this is what I see you know I see a survivor I see you know woman that is trying her best for her child do you know these are the things I say I say beauty I see and I just couldn’t see any of it 

KELLY

The lie - that she was not good enough - was planted firmly in Casey’s heart. Over the years, it would grow like a cancer, dominating her life.

She was not good enough

and I’m looking at her like who are you looking at who are you looking at and it it pained me for years for years so I think that led to a couple of bad relationships and things like that and around that time I Carson‘s father came back and said he wanted to be involved

KA Oh wow how old is Carson

CM four about four and I was like you know OK well I guess this is a good thing you know his parents his mom was a very kind person and you know maybe this is a good thing you know so they started seeing he started seeing Carson and spending time with him and their family and things like that and so then they said OK we want to get the rights back and you know all that kind of stuff and he paid me back some back child support and we were in the process of getting his rights back and he wanted to do a DNA test and I said OK fine well as it turns out he was not the father.  So whole new like set of punches in the gut for that one and I knew in college that I had had I wouldn’t say like slept around but I knew that there were other that there was someone else that it could be, but Carson‘s father who I thought was was my boyfriend from home and I had spent lots more time with him and I thought now there’s no way it has to be and it wasn’t

KA wow

CM So that was I was already feeling very down and that was just a huge blow

KA So did you know that other person

CM I did. And so Carson was maybe four or five when we found all this out and I was just like nope I am not going back to him (biological father) I’m not gonna I’m not doing it my car since older I’ll help him find him but I’m not going through that again right now I’m just not doing it I just kind of buried my head in the sand in my parents were they were OK with it they pretty much left it up to me I don’t know you know we never really talked about it I don’t know if they had another opinion about it and if they thought I should or shouldn’t but I didn’t and so I just waited and you know that lots happened but then later on down the line you know that that’s a whole Nother story from after a bunch of other stuff happens so

KA So did Carson ever like ask

CM He did and growing up and I always you know told him that I would help him find him and so in the in the interim I had met someone at church and we dated for gosh we dated for a long time I think we met and like we met when Carson he knew I was with this guy when all this was going on with Carson so I started dating this guy when Carson was two and said this was all happening when he was like four or five so anyway so I knew you know I was dated him for a long time

CASEY’S FIRST HUSBAND - Not Carson’s father or who she thought was the father

And then we ended up getting married

KELLY

Still carrying this lie in her heart, Casey entered a marriage with a man who was a breath of fresh air. He was not Carson’s biological father or the man who treated Carson like his son. He was not connected to Casey’s past, but had walked with her through some of it. He adopted Carson as his own son. But no matter how hard Casey tried to stay afloat, she kept sinking into self-hatred.

She got married

 when Carson was seven we got married so he can was the fill in sort of but it was a pretty it was looking back you know he was raised like I was raised in church raised by good family but I always felt insecure around him and just he was really very handsome he worked out all the time and I was overweight and always felt like I never could measure up and I felt very even almost worse he was like a price for me because I felt like he was so much over you know better than I was but it almost made it so terrible for me to to to live there because I just felt in adequate you know all the time I felt like he always wanted some thing more than what I could give him you know and so I can just the same kind of huge painful self almost like loathing in a way and that that really precipitated a lot of that bad things at that point probably Carson we’ve been married a couple years Carson was maybe 10 and he had a son for a previous marriage.  He was a year and a half older than Carson so we had them and I just kept getting worse into how I felt about myself 

KELLY

Desperate for change, Casey reached out for anything she could find. She heard rumors of an antidote for her misery.

and so I I met someone who was like losing a bunch of weight and doing really well so I was like hey what’s that what’s the deal and so she finally told me that she was taking an illegal drug to lose weight but that she was managing it in working and she just was doing it for a little bit lose weight and quit and I was like that is exactly what I need even though I’ve never been a drug user I had dabbled in smoking pot and things like that but never been a hard drug user or anything like that and I felt like I could do it in fact I went home and my husband was a director at counseling at Richland College at the time and I went home and I told him exactly what she said he said what is it and I said I don’t know she didn’t say but it’s illegal and she could get it and he actually and I said but I could lose a ton of weight and he said OK and so I talk to her found out a little more about it didn’t know anything about it but basically it was myth but didn’t know anything really about it I knew it was bad I knew it was bad but I thought well if I do it for a period of time and I get this jumpstart then I’m gonna feel confident and I’m gonna be able to just put it down and do it myself so that’s really the direction that I went into that 

and very very quickly you know it became some thing that just over took over took me I did however I kept a job you know for a long time I would you know as it progressively got worse I would not lose a job because I would you know not go to work but then I would just go get another job and I was getting these fundraising positions like director of fundraising I was getting these really good positions and I would keep them and I would keep them and then some thing would happen and I would end up losing it in a rush out and get another job real quick and so this went on for years

KA. So what was happening that you would lose your job

CM I would quit going to work I would just would like to stay home and keep getting high and so I just would like myself in our room and after a year to my husband started doing it as well I mean it was like a year or two that I did it on my own and then he started doing it and he lost his job at the college and he just never worked again and I don’t think for a long time I kept working but he just it just really ripped him

KA. Wow were you able to keep your house and

CM For a while for a while we kept the house we ended up filing bankruptcy I don’t remember and some of this is so hard when I literally don’t necessarily remember the order of a lot of things that happened back in that time

KELLY

Casey found herself in a reality that she would never have imagined. It cut deep holes into her family, but her parents never gave up on her or Carson.

But I do you know I do remember you know a lot of like painful stuff you know I remember Carson just knocking on our door all the time I’d be like just a minute or I’ll do some thing for you you can’t see it it’s a secret you know just you’ll be excited just give me some time but nothing I would never do anything and so he went through that for a long time and I think he found some of our either drugs or something like that and he ended up telling my parents that my husband was doing it and they were like well what about Kate will bet your mom I mean he totally like covered for me the whole time and he was little like he was very young and so one day I get a call at work from my husband and he was like your parents are here and they just forced me to do a drug test and I was like how did they force you you just say no and tell them to get out of the house that is they cannot force you and he was like I’ve already done it and and I am they said I was positive and I told him it was this and that and you know that I was taking this over-the-counter and this prescription that’s what it did and I was like how could you how could they force you did they put a gun to your head and he was like no but your dad said I had to blah blah blah and I just was furious I was furious at my parents I was furious at him 

so basically my dad said he tested positive you and Carson are moving out or we’re taking Carson from you and I was like forget it I mean our marriage was already completely disaster at this point so we moved into an apartment Carson and I moved into an apartment and I remember I stop using for two months I completely stop cold turkey and I just started again I don’t know why I don’t know why and I began to use again and I mean so much of my life and the way I put myself out to people with such just a lie I was constantly living this huge lie all the time to everybody and if it didn’t do you know if it didn’t work I’d make up something to make it work you know if somebody started thinking some thing I would make up a story and I just I literally lived this crazy life I mean every day of my life I was lying to somebody whether it be work Whether it be my parents my son I mean friends I would make up these elaborate stories of what was going on in my life just trying to keep some kind of cover I was really happening it was just such so stressful looking back and looking back after being so deep in all of that it was like that’s that is a lot why I kept using because I had to quit thinking about the hole that I was in 

KELLY

She couldn’t bear to confront her reality, so Casey created a false one. She would explain this false reality to her friends, her coworkers, anyone who asked. For some time, she used it to hide the addiction that defined her life.

and I think for me you know when I think about all those times and just everything going on I just think why couldn’t I am just sad like help like I need help but I was so ashamed and I remember thinking OK Casey you’re a Christian because I became a Christian as a young person like just pray you know what to do just pray but I felt like I even couldn’t pray like God could not hear my prayer because I was so bad in my eyes I was so far from Christ and you know I was I just was and there was no chance he couldn’t hear me he couldn’t see me so I remember thinking you know I will die a drug addict I just keep praying I pray that my son wouldn’t find me or something like that was the biggest thing I just didn’t want him to have that paying for his whole life so I just you know once we moved out and I started using again it just got so much worse and same thing again with jobs and I would lose jobs and it was it was sad because I grew up in a in Mesquite and I remember I was working for the Chamber of Commerce and I was using every day you know working for them and I can’t remember how or why I got fired but I know that President of the chamber was a rotary with my dad had been in so he went to my dad I was like we don’t know what’s going on anyway they ended up firing me i’m looking back now I don’t even know why I can’t remember what I did I’m sure some thing

But I am and then I remember they found drugs in my desk after I’ve been fired and it was just I mean it was I was out of control I was spinning out of control at that point and I think at that point I was sort of just giving up you know but I still like Carson and my parents still I think they knew something was wrong but they didn’t really know and Carson was just adamantly denying anything and said they was it’s been a lot more time with him that would get him a lot more they will pick them up for church they were kinda be with him a lot more and then it just I started getting really sick and I think that’s kind of where it changed for me is I was very ill very very ill pneumonia I had my teeth were abscessed I mean I had blood infection it was I was very very ill

KA Was that all from using

CM It was all from using at that point I was just it was really close to death

KELLY

This lie - of not being good enough - had grown into a monster. All Casey had wanted to do was lose some weight and be a more attractive wife. Then she would be happy, right? Instead, this lie took her down a path that destroyed her marriage, her career, her family, and nearly her own body.

Find out what happens to Casey in the next episode of Qavah the Podcast