AUDIO – NPR STORYCORPS –

Aug. 2, 2024 – Irene Montoya is the owner of Sunflower trucking in Cheyenne, Wyo. She drives a dump truck. She’s also raising her 14-year-old son.  15 years ago, her life looked very different. She addicted to methamphetamines. She came to StoryCorps with her son to talk about how becoming a mother was the turning point in her life.

IRENE MONTOYA: When I first had you, I was so scared that you deserved to be with, like, a better mom. There was a time when you were little, and we ended up in a pretty bad apartment. Like, we had cockroaches, mice, bed bugs, and then the ceiling caved in. It was terrible. I didn’t know what to do. So we were just driving around ‘cause I didn’t have nowhere to go with you. We slept that night in the car. And when you woke up in the back in your car seat, I looked in the rearview mirror, and you were the happiest little baby. You just were with your mom. That’s all you needed. I knew that I never wanted to live that way ever again. I threw my meth pipe in this dumpster, and it shattered. The spell was broken. I wanted you to just remember me going to work, you going to school and then us going home, making dinner, and that’s how life was. So it was up to me to change.

GIANNI BOOTH: What’s something you wish you had known at that time in your life?

MONTOYA: That everything was going to be all right ‘cause sometimes people just need to hear that. We ended up getting out of the bad apartment into a good one.

CONTINUE@YPR