Welcome to strangers.

From KC at W in Radiotopia, I'm Leia Tau.

And first I want to thank you for all the messages and thoughts about the last episode.

It was a difficult one to hear, I know, and I wish I could say we had a lighter story for you today.

But while today's story is not on the same disturbing topic, it is also from a mother

facing a difficult and painful situation.

And it contains some disturbing moments, so you should not listen with children around,

and you should consider yourselves warned.

Here is Leslie Irvin.

I met my husband in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

He was over there as an attorney,

and I had a scuba diving business in the Red Sea.

He was very handsome.

He had kind of sandy brown hair, sparkly blue eyes, and a really big kind of impish grin.

Within 10 minutes of talking, he said, so how many kids do you want to have? I said, as many as I can, and he said, me too.

So, yeah, that first night, I think we both kind of knew that we had a future together.

It was basically we got married and in short order started having children.

I ended up having four kids in four years.

And it was beautiful. We lived in a villa, beautiful Bougainville, and we had transformed it basically into a kid's paradise. We had swings in our living room that Scott put in the ceiling. And Scott built four forts for them inside. I slept literally on the floor with the kids. We put four mattresses together. And we slept like puppies. Yeah, it was totally 100% for kids.

And Scott, he'd come home from work, and he'd read or play guitar for them.

It was just really, really sweet.

It was very sweet back in those days.

...