“People tell me I shouldn’t be so hard on my mom,” says Austin’s Brenda Velarde, who says her mother was so neglectful she sometimes went for days without eating while her mom got high, often in front of her. “They act like I’m the bad guy if I tell the truth about my mom. What’s weird is they don’t say the same thing if I talk about my dad. If it’s your dad, it’s like it’s okay to hate him for hurting you.”
