I am the last person anyone wants knocking on their door.
I grew up in Versailles. My parents divorced when I was young, and my dad moved away for work, but my mom kept us here. From the outside, it looked normal enough. But there were things happening in my home that were hard to carry, things that took me years to understand, and even longer to put into words.
I knew early that I was meant to help people. I was nine years old when I decided I wanted to work in mental health. I didn’t have the language for it yet, but I knew I wanted to understand why people struggle and how to help them through it.
After high school, I joined the Navy and spent six and a half years in service. It gave me structure at a time when I needed it. A therapist in the military once told me I was the most well adjusted person she had ever seen, given what I had been through. When I left the Navy, I used the GI Bill to get my degree in psychology.
I came back to Versailles because I wanted stability for my kids. My mom had built a steady life here, and my grandmother was still here too. I wanted my kids to grow up with all of that around them.
After college, I worked in mental health and case management. I stayed home with my kids for a few years.
Now I am an investigator.
People have assumptions about what that means.
It starts with a phone call. Someone has a concern about a child. A hotline call is not a removal order. It is a reason for me to show up. When I get there, I am looking at everything. I am talking to the family. I am trying to understand what is actually going on. Most of the time, what a family needs is support, not intervention.
I serve Morgan, Moniteau, and parts of Miller County. Farm towns and back roads. Places where the nearest grocery store might be forty five minutes away. On a long day, driving from one family to the next can take an hour and a half.
I see a lot of poverty. I see parents carrying things from their own childhoods, sometimes without even knowing it. I see mental health struggles and not enough places nearby to find help. I see families holding it together with very little.
I see families trying. Not always succeeding, but trying. Most of the time when I show up, people are frightened. I try to help them understand that I am not there to tear their family apart. I am there to figure out what they need.
I know I am not the person anyone wants to see at their door. Most people are afraid that honesty will cost them everything. My job is to make them feel safe enough to let me help them.
The days are long. And sometimes the nights are longer. My mom steps in when I can’t beat the bus home. I am so grateful that I have that support. A lot of the families I serve don’t. When I am standing on someone’s porch at nine o’clock at night, I am trying not to think about what I am missing. I am focused on what is on the other side of that door.
If I could give this community anything, it would be real access to substance abuse treatment. Transportation to get there. So many of the families I see are trying to climb out of something, and the tools they need are just out of reach.
I know what it is to be a child with something too heavy to carry and no safe place to put it down. I know that a whole family can change when someone finally feels safe enough to ask for help.
And when they do, I get to be the one who shows up.
Rebekah Middleton
Children’s Division Investigator
