Twelve children and a fresh start: how Michelle Kauenhofen rebuilt her family alone

Michelle Kauenhofen was born in 1969 to a teenage mother in a Catholic prairie town, where the plan was for her to be adopted quietly. Her mother refused. Her grandmother put it in words Michelle has carried ever since: “even a dog doesn't give up her pups without a fight.”

Her childhood was hard. Her father moved in and out of prison, and she is also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. School became her refuge. She finished high school at seventeen, earned a criminology degree and sat the LSAT, set on becoming a lawyer.

Then she became a mother and married a man who struggled with addiction. Through eighteen pregnancies and twelve children she homeschooled, baked, taught and held a household together, convinced that willpower could break a cycle.

It could not. When the marriage ended she grieved it like a death, and then decided her family would live, not merely survive.

“There is a dirty little secret about starting over: the world does not pause to congratulate you,” she writes. She sold the house at a loss, put her children in school after years of homeschooling, found work and moved everyone to Calgary.

The family stopped numbing what hurt, and hung a plaque that reads “Family Forever, For Always and No Matter What.” In 2025 one of her children died, and she had to start over again.

Michelle tells her story in a chapter called Life Unscripted, written as part of the Start Over Movement, founded by Marco Robinson.

“Life is what you build, one hard decision at a time, one fierce act of love after another,” she writes. “I am proof, and so are my children.”

If anything in this story affects you, support is available. Samaritans in the UK and Ireland can be reached on 116 123, and in the US and Canada you can call or text 988.

Heroic Breaking News is run by Marco Robinson, founder of the Start Over Movement.