After meeting Agnieszka on the day of the hearing, an idea for her transformation was born in our minds. Many people will ask why help an alcoholic who took such poor care of her child? She was convicted of “bad motherhood,” as her son Dominik’s lawyer put it. The court emphasized how badly she had harmed her own child, speaking of a relentless attack on his dignity, a lack of support and a lack of love.
Agnieszka accepted the punishment. She pleaded guilty, accepted the verdict and intends to fulfill all the obligations imposed on her: avoiding alcohol, continuing therapy, attending AA meetings and avoiding contact with people addicted to alcohol. No one, not even she, knows whether in five years she will be sober, employed, living a new life and maintaining good relationships with her children: her older son Dominik and younger Dawid, who was taken from her by social services in 2006. This is what she dreams of. It is also her son Dominik’s dream.
20-year-old Dominik is awaiting trial. Several months ago, he stabbed his mother in the stomach and killed her partner after once again discovering that they had sold his personal belongings to buy vodka. Asked how she assesses what her son did, Agnieszka says that she understands him. She does not hold it against him. “I don’t blame him for doing something like that,” she says calmly in an interview with istotne.pl. “I’m not saying I would have done the same in his place, but if someone kept stealing from me like that... I don’t blame him.”
Her life was not easy: alcohol was constantly present in her family, and her first boyfriend treated her disrespectfully when she became pregnant by him. She gave birth to Dominik, whom his father did not want, when she was 19. Her own father humiliated her as a woman and as a mother. Her next partner beat her. She had a second son with him, and social services took the child away from her. And yet the happiest day of her life was the birth of her second child. She had wanted a daughter, but she was overjoyed to have a son.
Agnieszka lived as she lived and did what she did. Several women decided to reach out to her at the beginning of a long and lonely journey. They would change her appearance for a while so that she could experience that she could also be this way. She can take care of herself; it is not too late.
We do not know how you will receive this. Will you condemn us, become indignant or agree with us? As women and mothers, we did not want to write Agnieszka off. Although, on a human level, we are horrified by what she did to her children while under the influence of alcohol. It is important for her children, too, that she be healthy. Dominik dreams of having a sober mother. For a moment in our transformations, Agnieszka is that way: well-groomed, healthy and sober. Why did we do this? Because it is difficult to climb up from rock bottom when no one at all reaches out a hand on the surface, but only says: die, because you are bad.