By Yvette Harding –
Cassie Blanko was smoking and drinking on a daily basis, putting drugs above her children.
“My mom and dad were literally parenting my children,” Cassie Blanko recounts on her YouTube channel, ItsCassieBlanko. “That’s how much of a piece of c___ mother I was.”
Blanko had her first child at 18 after losing her virginity to a man she was dating at the time. She didn’t want to keep the child, but she also didn’t want to abort it. So she ended up giving the child up for adoption.
“It wasn’t until after the adoption that I ended up telling my mom,” Blanko recalls. “I even graduated high school when I was pregnant, and no one even knew.”
The family that adopted her baby had been trying to have a child for over 10 years without success, so to them Blanko’s child was a blessing.
“I have a lot of guilt about this whole thing but a part of me feels a little bit of comfort in knowing that I was able to be a blessing in a time where I felt guilty and ashamed.” Blanko says.
After her first pregnancy, Blanko got into drugs and alcohol. Very depressed about her situation, she contemplated suicide.
She moved to LA and continued a lifestyle of drinking and smoking.
Now 20, she met a guy covered in tattoos. “I did not see the red flags in this guy,” says Blanko. “He ended up becoming very abusive.”
She got pregnant and they had a son they named Cyro.
The final straw that led her to cutting ties with this man was an incident that involved physical abuse in a movie theater because she fell asleep.
“The police come, they see me covered in blood, immediately arrest him.”
A few years later, Blanko found another man worse than her ex. Her pattern of choosing the wrong men continued. “He was like my ex – on steroids,” says Blanko. “At this point I’m a broken girl who didn’t learn her lesson.”
She got pregnant with another son, Cardier, but the father never recognized the child as his own.
At this point, Blanko was seriously considering having an abortion, but her friends talked her out of it.
She’s now happy that she didn’t go through with the abortion because she loves her son and can’t think of life without him.
In 2020, when the pandemic hit, Blanko was still out smoking and partying with friends, usually leaving her two children with her parents.
She started getting into psychedelics and witchcraft, buying crystals and manifesting spells. She tried tarot card readings on herself.
In 2021, Blanko got close with her neighbor’s niece, since they were about the same age.
When her new friend went on vacation, she sent Blanko a surprising message. “She texts me and she says, ‘hey I’m going to fly you here, God told me to send you here’ and in my head I’m like, huh,” says Blanko. “Okay free vacation, cool.”
Before she got on the plane Blanko started drinking at a bar in the airport.
“I’m texting her like ‘yo we’re gonna have so much fun, we’re gonna get lit’, and she texts me going ‘we’re not going to be drinking.’”
Blanko got irritated by her response, and thought she might drink alone in the hotel room after she arrived.
When they landed the friend showed her a video of a sermon on her phone.
“This was the first encounter with the holy spirit that I’d ever experienced.”
She felt the spirit of God touching her heart with a love she had never known, and she began to cry.
“I just remember feeling in that moment so much loving conviction,” Blanko says. “I was bawling my eyes out, crying for hours.”
God healed her in that moment, showing her things she cannot explain.
After this experience she was scared to go home and back to her daily life.
She didn’t want to fail God by going back to drinking.
“The last time I got drunk was at that airport,” says Blanko. “A couple months later, I ended up fully getting rid of smoking, like cold turkey.”
Blanko experienced the love of God on a spiritual retreat her friend took her on. She surrendered her life to Jesus, was born again, and has become a new creature in Christ.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here
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About this writer: Yvette Harding studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy near Century City, CA.
