Trish Wilkinson determination, Heroes, Overcoming Adversity, Success Stories, tenacity

Getting Past the Grief that Led to Addiction

By Charles Watson on behalf of a staff member at Sunshine Behavioral Health. Special thanks for her sharing in the hope of offering encouragement to others.

 

It isn’t uncommon for people to lose valuable things in their lives—homes, cars, money, a member of the family or a friend. In fact, on some occasions, people even lose themselves—often while trying to find something.

Well, that was how I felt 10 years ago.

It started with the death of my firstborn son. In my thirtieth week of pregnancy, I was on leave as an associate professor for literature at a community college in California. I still remember clearly, opening the fridge at 4:15 in the afternoon to prepare a meal when a contraction ripped through my abdomen, almost too painful to bear. I called 9-1-1, and the rest became a blur.

Little Frederick, the name of my angel, was stillborn. He died of asphyxia inside my womb. The cord connecting the two of us had wrapped around his fragile neck. The doctors cut me open, and I didn’t know it then, but they took a part of my soul when they removed my son’s lifeless body. My husband Jeff took off from work and rushed to the hospital where he attended to me for days.

The power of grief

Our lives took a great turn the moment I got out of the hospital. We both mourned the loss of our child, but Jeff had no idea the unimaginable sorrow within me. Doing the simplest tasks could be overwhelming.

I tried to go back to teaching, hoping that being busy in school would distract the hollowness I felt. But if household chores were exhausting, how did I think I could teach literature to college students? My ineptness grew increasingly obvious, and after a few months, the department supervisor advised me to take a leave of absence. I didn’t tell my husband.

The sadness of losing my son had swallowed me. Whole.

I gave birth to a dead child.

My body killed my baby. 

These thoughts played over and over in my head. There had to be a reason why Little Frederick died suddenly — and someone to blame.  I could point to no one but myself.

Even without me saying a word to Jeff about my deepening despair, he knew I was  sinking into depression.

“You need to get help,” he’d say. “You know that.”

“I’m okay. I just need to sleep,” I’d tell him.

He insisted that I shouldn’t blame myself nor should I let the incident affect my work—and I loathed him for it. I told myself: My husband only thinks that because Frederick didn’t die inside of him. He is clean, and I am not.

Jeff tried to talk me into getting help from our family doctor but I refused. I said he should not belittle my capacity to overcome problems. Lying to myself as much as Jeff that I could deal with my grief on my own only made things worse for our family.

Since then I’ve learned sometimes we are given good options, but our anger can diffuse our will to fight to regain ourselves. Instead, I succumbed to the pain. I nourished it.

Photo by © Gustavo Alfredo Schaufelberger Pirron

I didn’t go out of the house and stopped talking to my colleagues. I pretended not to have read their emails. A glass of wine now and then numbed my anguish a little. Before long, I consciously kept count and mentally justified the number of the bottles I drank, well on the road to alcoholism.

Jeff would come home from work to find me dozing on the floor, on the stairs, in the garage, or inside the room that was supposed to have been Little Frederick’s nursery.  He would patiently wake me or carry me to our bedroom. Drunken afternoons became our new normal.

Deciding to get into rehab

At some point, I began to notice the strain on Jeff’s face and realized his misery was my fault. I felt so guilty and embarrassed that I asked him for a divorce. He pleaded for me to go to a rehab program. The idea sounded ugly, but I knew I had to do something to take control of my life again.

Jeff brought me to a center for women where I had a session with a counselor who told me of the loss of her family at the hands of a drunk driver.

“They were out to pick me up from work because it was my husband’s birthday,” she said. “Suddenly, another car changed lanes and rammed into them.” Her voice didn’t crackle. She didn’t cry. But her eyes looked really sad.

I worried for her. “How have you gone on without your whole family?” I asked.

“I decided to help other people not lose theirs,” she said and smiled.

Finding hope in therapy

I was admitted to a 30-day rehab program. Inside the center, I saw women fighting to get out. Some of them found ways to sneak out. Others would hide their medicines and opt not to take them. Often, I heard how they felt like they were in prison.

Honestly, at first, I felt the same way. But during one of my one-on-one sessions at the center, I realized that there are things we cannot control, but we do have the power to deal with our emotions, which gave me hope.

The detox process was not easy though. I would crave a drink or any drug to help ease my loneliness. Thankfully, the 24-hour monitoring makes it difficult to take the easy way out — which actually means not recovering from addiction.

The patients who tried to sneak in contraband would have to start at step one again. And again. Until they finally decided they wanted help to manage their addictions.

I told myself that I had to finish treatment if I wanted to become better. After detox and the one-on-one sessions, I joined therapy groups and went to lectures on coping with addiction. We attended seminars on how to recognize our triggers. I particularly liked the meditations and yoga where I learned about mindfulness. In time, I started thinking more clearly.

But the realizations came in trickles. There were countless times when I would revert to denying losing my child and then myself. When I first joined group therapy, it had taken the whole session for me to describe my guilt and pain.

I was happy when I successfully finished the program. Jeff showed me he’d turned Frederick’s nursery into a library filled with my books. I remember feeling so excited to come home.

Ongoing recovery

Therapy opened me up to a lot of real stories of people with substance addictions who inspired me to move on. Losing my Little Frederick, my unborn child, had been devastating. But I met mothers and fathers who had lost several children, their homes, and more, under horrendous circumstances. I shared their pain and cried with them. And I began to feel less isolated.

I wrote my thoughts daily as well as letters to Frederick and Jeff. Several I read aloud during sessions with the recovery group. Again, I found hope, writing and talking to people who understood. I also learned to listen and support them in their recovery. Slowly, I realized that losing Little Frederick, and my old self with his death, had become the path for me to discover the things I cared about most.

I returned to teaching—not at a local college, but at a private facility for young people recovering from mental illness and drug abuse. My pace picked up, and the void inside me began to fill. I knew then that whatever pain I experienced prepared me to become a better teacher and parent. If it weren’t for Jeff, I would not have been able to find myself.

Today, my day starts at 6:00 in the morning since I take the kids to school before heading to teach my class. At 3:00 in the afternoon, I pick them up and take them home. I practice yoga from 4:30 to 5:30, and I write in my journal after dinner. Before bedtime, I read books with our two kids — Michael and Roger.

Yes, I was given another chance to have kids, and I am grateful they came on my path to long-term recovery. They have had a better mom to care for them.

Sometimes, things don’t go the way we plan, but now I know we have the ability to decide how we’ll proceed into our next life-chapter. 

 

Charles L. Watson is the head content writer for https://www.sunshinebehavioralhealth.com. Thank you for sharing your colleague’s story  with Tenacity to Triumph.

Readers, if you have an experience of grief or recovery to share, we would love to hear from you! Your comment could be the spark that ignites someone else’s healing — begins their journey to eventual triumph.

 

Trish Wilkinson determination, Heroes, meeting goals, Mentors, Overcoming Adversity, Success Stories, tenacity

Meet Jayne, Whose Son Saved Her Life, and Running Saved Her Marriage

10500351_541207862712808_5131535543680842341_nJayne Rodosevich grew up in Ridgecrest, California, a small town in the Mojave Desert – mostly on her own. Her dad, a chemical engineer for Searles Valley Minerals, worked a lot of hours, and her mom, a registered nurse, spent much of the time at the local hospital. Until Jayne turned 15, she practically raised her younger brother and sister when she wasn’t training on uneven parallel bars, the vault or balance beam, or learning floor routines for the next gymnastics meet.

Then in her sophomore year of high school, her mom decided to go back to college to become a nurse anesthetist – in Los Angeles, about a three-hour drive from Ridgecrest. Her mom took Jayne’s siblings and invited their grandmother to live with them to take care of the little ones. A refugee from Thailand who didn’t speak English became the housekeeper for Jayne and her dad while Jayne finished high school and competed in gymnastics meets.

Gymnastics and homework kept Jayne out of trouble. She brought home trophies and earned straight As until she graduated from high school and went off to the University of California in Davis. Jayne went from little to no contact with her family, and she no longer had time for sports. At age 19, she worked in a clothing store, back-bussed at a local bar, and poured coffee as a barista to pay for tuition, books, food and rent – and Jayne was exhausted.

Her husband, back then her 21-year-old boyfriend, introduced Jayne to crystal methamphetamine to give her the zip she needed to get through the day.

And she got addicted.

So did he.

They were each other’s bad influence in perpetuating the crystal meth roller coaster of manic highs and devastating lows. Jayne managed to downloadget through six years of college classes, working three jobs, using speed to keep her going. Eventually, though, paying for tuition and living expenses became too much of a burden. Sadly, she quit attending UC Davis 30 units short of graduation, and they moved to the San Francisco Bay Area.

In the next 10 years, drug use whittled Jayne’s body down to 90 pounds. Her muscles, once robust from thousands of hours of gymnastics training, atrophied into saggy strands hanging off her bones. One cigarette after the next incinerated between her fingertips. Her teeth became mottled with black rot, a side-effect from crystal meth use, and still she and her boyfriend partied.

“We had one rule,” Jayne says. “You could never [mess] up at work.”

Life had become a cycle of self-induced bipolar disorder. Then three months after Jayne and her boyfriend married, she discovered she was pregnant.

Jayne’s life took a 180 degree turn.

Quitting her drug habits had seemed impossible until fear for her baby’s safety became a factor. For the first time in a decade, she put downWk14_Belly_02 the smokes, turned away the frenzied high she craved, and started eating regular meals that included produce and protein. Soon she plumped into a healthy weight, and eight months later, she delivered a healthy little boy.

(Since their son was born, over the last twelve years, Jayne has spent more than $20,000 to fix her rotten teeth.)

But Jayne continued eating the same after she stopped nursing her baby and gained 80 pounds. Her husband, too, blew past his optimal weight, into jumbo jeans.

“Crystal meth messes up your metabolism,” Jayne explains. “Your body holds onto fat in case you decide to starve it again because you don’t feel like eating when you’re using.”

Her husband cut his drug use way down, but it took a couple years for him to beat his addictions. Jayne focused on being a mom to their son and tried to be patient. After all, her husband never had the urgency of a human life growing inside him to fortify his will power.

Eight years ago, they moved from California to Bend, Oregon, where her husband was diagnosed with Type II diabetes, a bi-product of his arrested addiction and current eating habits. He knew if he didn’t do something to improve his health, he would get sicker. Since Bend is known for its mountain trails, and runners populate the bike lanes as often as cyclists, he put on a pair of cross trainers and started logging the miles. His weight began to drop, and he began to feel better.

183122_465327160203974_827085630_nBut Jayne worked graveyard shifts at Village Baker in their son’s early years, so she could be with their little one during the day. Constant sleep deprivation made cat naps more crucial than cardio workouts.

During this time, her mentally ill mother-in-law, estranged from her husband since he was a child, got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had nowhere to go.

So Jayne and her husband brought his mother home to live with them.

Jayne struggled to be a mom to their son, caregiver to her confused mother-in-law, and co-provider for the household for a nightmarish year-and-a-half before the woman passed away.

Jayne needed an outlet, a way to deal with stress, yet she didn’t know how to squeeze physical exercise into her busy life. Knowing her competitive nature, honed from years of competing in gymnastics meets, her husband teased her for two years, saying she couldn’t run for reasons that had nothing to do with time, alluding to her weight. Then Jayne and her husband both changed jobs, switching schedules, him working nights as head chef at a swanky restaurant, and her working days at Whole Foods Market after their son started school.

“I started running because [my husband] told me I wasn’t capable,” Jayne confesses. “I wasn’t going to let him be right.”

Getting regular sleep and living in daylight allowed Jayne to join a runners’ training group for a half-marathon through FootZone, an apparel 13346501_10208477979963824_4632028197835674607_nstore in downtown Bend that cultivates and nurtures the local running community. She made lasting friendships with people who supported each other in reaching their fitness goals. That first year, she not only became an excellent runner, Jayne lost 60 pounds and has kept them off ever since.

Three years ago, Jayne got a call from Christina Stavro, a training group coordinator at FootZone, who asked if Jayne would be willing to mentor other runners in the half-marathon group training for the race in Silver Falls, Oregon. A free pair of running shoes sweetened the deal, and Jayne has been mentoring groups ever since.

10433144_450950215071907_7800429536368401572_nIn fact, Jayne has been my knowledgeable, patient, supportive running mentor in both the Silver Falls Half-Marathon and Bend Marathon training groups through FootZone. I’ll be forever grateful for her gentle motivation, talking me through sore glutes, hips, and hamstrings, encouraging me to the top of steep roads and trails that seemed would never end.

In the meantime, Jayne’s marriage secretly suffered from her and her husband’s opposite work schedules. Last year, they had drifted so far apart, they became little more that roommates.

“I wasn’t afraid for him to leave,” Jayne recounts. “I’m not dependent on him anymore.”

At the brink of separation, they decided to carve out running time together, and their relationship began to grow again.10394615_10152840328548189_2315796588886067072_n

“We’ve realized we do better together,” Jayne acknowledges. “He’s my best friend.”

They’ve finally become a good influence on each other. Since March, they’ve trained for and competed in two races together, and she sees many others in their future. On July 9, Jayne will run her first ultra-marathon, a 50K (31 miles) at Mount Hood in Oregon. But her husband won’t be participating. He and their son will be cheering for Jayne as she crosses the finish line.

Thanks for sharing your story with our Tenacity to Triumph readers, Jayne!

 

Readers, can you relate to Jayne’s story in some way? We’d love for you to leave a comment.

Here’s to bad asses everywhere!

Trish Wilkinson,

Author, Writing Coach, Freelance Editor

Trish Wilkinson determination, Overcoming Adversity, Success Stories

How Valerie W. Found that Minding Her Own Business Could Lead to a Great Life

alcoholism-metaphor-sketch-23920506“Terminally unique.” That’s the term I learned in a 12-step program for those of us who think we’re the only ones trapped in the quicksand of someone else’s addiction. Yes. My story is mine alone, but it is somewhat textbook. We grasp how to operate in relationships early, usually by observing our biological parents. From mine, I learned codependency. I also married my father. Not literally, but my husband was my dad in many respects, and he concealed the Hyde to his Jekyll in those years before we gave birth to two beautiful girls.

My mother endured years of physical abuse from my drunken father before my parents 79166763divorced. I was three years old, and my sister was seven. While I was in college, at age 19, my mom died of cancer. It had formed in her chest around her heart, as if her anger toward my father and her parents literally suffocated her. She was only 48.

After putting myself through college, with the help of student loans, I volunteered with AmeriCorps, a domestic form of the Peace Corps. The organization sent me to San Diego, California to train tutors who would help struggling elementary school-aged children improve their reading skills. Being a small town girl, new to the big city, I filled out a survey that arrived in my mailbox from a dating service.

A few months later, Mike requested a date with me. I accepted after seeing his shy,images humble demeanor in his video. He was classically handsome – resembling Patrick Swayze in the “Dirty Dancing” years. Although Mike wasn’t college-educated – a “must have” on my preference list – he owned his own plumbing business, which meant to me that he was motivated and financially stable. We met the following day and instantly hit it off. By the time he took me home after a holiday party the next evening, I was off the market. I knew I had met the man who was destined to be my partner in life.

We bought a home together before we married and entertained often. Then came the wedding. A year-and-a-half later, we had a baby girl. Our lives together seemed right on track. Except his drinking steadily increased, and his anger would flare. I began walking on eggshells. He raged over what he perceived to be my eyes on other men. My connection with certain friends, even my relationship with my sister set him off.

66When we fought, it often became physical. By then I was teaching high school, and I went to class with bruises and scratches more often than I like to remember. I lived a double-life. At work, I was a dedicated, empathetic teacher. I felt purpose in my work and strove for excellence from myself as well as my students. My friends saw me as a successful career woman, mother, and wife. I wanted nothing more than for everyone to believe that I was juggling my responsibilities with ease. But at home, Mike and I were drowning in our disease.

He drank nightly, and I kept a watchful eye on how much alcohol he consumed. If his mood turned irritable, we sometimes ended up in a brawl. I always fought back. No way would a man beat me the way my father had beaten my mother. I used my fingernails as weapons to push him off me, and I slapped his face. The police were called a few times. Mike was booked for domestic violence twice. The following day I would go pick him up from the downtown jailhouse and tell the police I didn’t want to press charges.

After our second child was born, Mike’s drinking escalated. He passed out on the couch more often than he slept in our bed. He blamed myimages (1) breastfeeding our baby in the middle of the night, but I knew his beer meant more to him than sharing space with me. Sex became routine and uneventful, a chore. As our daughters grew, so did the frequency of drunken nights.

Mike hid bottles of Bacardi in the garage. He drank on his drive home from work to get a beer down before I could see him. I began all the classic co-dependent manipulations to get him to stop – I threatened to leave, I pleaded, I cried, I yelled. I thought if I made his life miserable, surely he would make a change. Which he did. He spent longer days on the golf course with friends and returned home sloshed. More often than not, when he walked in the door after work at 5 o’clock, he was already wasted. When he saw disappointment on my face, he shouted at me and called me names. Our children would cry and tell us not to fight. I would call his mom, who lived six hours north of San Diego, and plead for her to talk with him.

Once, I called to talk with his mother after a fight, and I got his stepfather instead. His stepdad told me to try Al-Anon, a 12-step program for friends and family of alcoholics. Desperate for help, I went to my first meeting in December 2008 with my disease at its height. I was a nervous wreck, trying to control everyone in my life. I vigilantly assessed what everyone else was doing, saying, and thinking. I couldn’t socialize without being hyper self-aware, scanning others to figure out what they wanted me to say and be. Friends told me I was overbearing and pulled away from me.  Everything felt like a chore. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I was only 33 years old.

7_9caa2793658f3cc387f216157300b1ce_mMike allowed me to attend weekly meetings because he saw a positive change in me. He said I had been softer and friendlier. He didn’t know I was trying to practice detachment; that is, learning to keep my attention off others and on myself. This included self-care and how to avoid creating a crisis, while not trying to prevent one either. I got reacquainted with spirituality and was reminded that I had a Higher Power who I could lean on. I came to understand that the alcoholics in my life had their own Higher Power and had to walk their own paths. I learned about humility and how not to take others’ choices personally because it wasn’t all about me, which was a relief as well as a blow to my ego. All these things helped me to let go of trying to control all aspects of my life. It was a 180-degree turn from what I had been taught.

I had always believed the old American adage: “When it doesn’t work, try harder.”

Now I was trying to practice: “Let go and let God.”

I got a sponsor within six months of being in Al-Anon and we worked the steps together. She was kind and gentle and loving. She didn’t wince when I told her my shameful secrets. I learned to trust God and another human being. I learned to trust myself. I made amends with my father who immediately recognized the eighth step. He had also been working a program in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I began to pray for a sign to show me whether I should leave my marriage. Mike’s drinking was getting worse. He kept passing out on the living room floor. I took pictures of his drunkenness, so I could prove in court that he was unfit to take care of our girls if I left him.

IR wireless flash 3The last time I took one of those photos, he was laid out in the hallway, snoring in front our children’s bathroom after a spring day of golf. The flash woke him, so I sprinted to our bedroom and locked the door. He yelled obscenities and threats and banged on the door. Then suddenly it was quiet, and when I mustered the nerve to peek outside the bedroom, I found him on the couch, sleeping off the drunk. The following morning, he was waiting for me on the other side of the door, and he attacked me. I called 9-1-1, reported the abuse and obtained a restraining order. After that day, Mike was no longer allowed in our home without a police escort.

Today, our children are eight and eleven years old, and they call me on a cell phone if they believe their father has been drinking. They know their father loves them, but he has a brain that tells him to consume alcohol as a form of medicine. When our youngest was asked by her counselor whether or not she believes her father might stop drinking if she were a better-behaved child she replied, “Of course not. He has a disease that has nothing to do with me.” When asked if she thought his drinking is a reflection of his lack of love for her, she adamantly disagreed. She knows her daddy loves her; he just has a problem.

I realize my daughters have learned these things from me, but I can’t take credit. These responses are typical of Al-Anon’s teachings and11054852_887171214681896_4915416769333871011_n healing. I would never have discovered these concepts on my own. My children will grow up with a different set of tools than I had before Al-Anon. They will know about the disease of alcoholism and how to not engage in codependent behaviors with alcoholic friends and family members. Hopefully, they will refrain from attracting this kind of relationship in their futures. In the meantime, we pray for their father daily and put him in God’s hands because we have to mind our own business and take responsibility for ourselves.

It seems so simple: “Mind your own business.” We hear those words all the time. Now, I can honestly say I know what they mean.

(If someone reading this post would like to get in touch with Valerie. leave a comment, and I’ll make sure she gets your email address, so she can offer her experience, strength, and hope.)

Trish Wilkinson determination, meeting goals, Mentors, Success Stories, tenacity

Former Prison Inmate, Barbara Baker, Helps Women to Recreate Their Lives

Barbara at work at the Center for Women in Transition
Barbara at work at the Center for Women in Transition

My childhood in St. Louis, Missouri was a happy one. My mother had seven sisters, and when they began to have children, they continued to live at home with my grandmother.   Four of my first cousins and I grew up together. We were normal kids who played and got into trouble sometimes, and when we got out of hand, my grandmother was the one who punished us.

The first school I remember attending was Laclede Elementary, which was in walking distance from our house.  In third grade, I got suspended because I hit another student when she refused to give my cousin a piece of candy. I was afraid to tell my mother, so I left for school  the next day as I normally would and walked around the neighborhood. This lady asked why I wasn’t in school, so I told her what had happened. She offered to write a letter to get me back in school, and I left her as happy as I could be. When I got school, though, I found out she had written that she did not know me, but I had been walking around outside by myself, and she was concerned. Of course the principal called my mother and told her to come pick me up. I can’t remember if I got a spanking, but I do know I was glad to return to school.

I liked school, but I couldn’t resist being the class clown and getting into trouble, even knowing that my mother would whip me for it. As a young child, I liked to skate, run, dance, play baseball and volleyball, and meddle with adults. Why, I don’t know, but upsetting them made me laugh. At any given time, I always had a bag of something sweet, mostly candy. In fact, looking back, I realize candy was my first addiction. If my mother or someone else in the household did not give me money for candy, I would steal the change laying around the house, or I would cry and throw a fit until I got it.

When I was 11 or 12 years old, my mother met a man who would later become my step dad. I did not like him and did not want him as part of

Pruitt Igoe Projects, St. Louis
Pruitt Igoe Projects, St. Louis

our family. Although he was a good person, I did not realize that until many years later. He worked hard to support us, but I wanted nothing from him. To this day, I do not know why I did not like this man, except that he and my mother moved us to the Pruitt-Igoe housing projects. I fought tooth-and-nail to stay with my grandmother, but in the end, I had to go with my mom.

In time, I grew to love the projects. I met other teens who were as confused about life as I was. Around the age of 16, my friends turned me on to cough syrup with codeine and weed. I loved the way I felt like I could take on the world if I wanted to, and we could just walk into any drugstore and buy this cough syrup. Then the FDA began to require a prescription to buy it. I guess I was about 18 when this happened, and someone suggested we get some heroin because they said the high was the same as the syrup. Like a fool, I tried heroin and my life was a roller coaster from that day on.

Addiction caused me to be in and out of jail until I was about 45 years old. Drugs had such a grip on me that sometimes when I got locked up, I would be relieved. I was caught in a revolving door where I would get out of prison, get a job, get a house, get my children back, and then relapse again.  I wanted to be drug-free but had no idea how to make it happen. Treatment was not talked about at that time. The mindset was that addicts chose to use drugs, so they had to suffer the consequences.

In my mind, I was not a bad person because I did not steal from my family. I had given myself permission to steal from stores, my rationale being that stores were insured, so no one got hurt.  After going to prison for the third time, I started to look at myself, but I still had no idea that I was an addict or what I needed to do to change.  When I went back to prison for the fifth and last time, I knew I had to do something different.

The day I had been arrested, my family was in the process of moving on a Saturday morning. While my son and daughter, who were living with me at the time, went to get the second load of belongings to take to the new house, I decided to run downtown to Macey’s. I was dope sick and could hardly help with the move, so I had planned to steal something quickly, so I could get my fix.

But I got busted.

inside prisonMy daughter had no job to support her two small children. When she came to see me in jail, I told her that I had violated my parole and would not be getting out. I could see the fear and hurt in her eyes. She didn’t know how she and her children would survive. The pain in her eyes that day, along with my desire to escape from the revolving door, finally got me to seek the help I needed.

I wanted to change and make a better life for myself.  My daughter and grandkids were also a big factor as well as the prison warden. I worked in administration as the Institution Activities Clerk in the same building as the warden’s office, across the street from the prison.  She and I would talk about my life, my children, and my addiction to drugs. She respected me and the way I carried myself while I was doing time.  We met the first time I landed in prison. She was about 5 feet tall, very intelligent, and she dressed smart. She talked to me plainly so I would understand in lay terms what she said to me. Don’t get me wrong. I was not a goody-two-shoes in prison, but I kept up the appearance that I was.

The last time I got high was in prison, and that is where I made the final decision not to get high again, and to this day I have not. I made this decision because I was on work release and close to getting my good time to get out in three years rather than seven. Then me and two other women had used heroin and crack on a Friday, and the next Tuesday I was asked to give a drug test. I prayed as hard as I could asking God not to let those drugs still be in my urine. Cocaine and heroin can clear in 72 hours if you just use them once. Well, I did not drop dirty, and I was grateful.

I had told my roommate I was never going to use again when I got to the streets, but after risking four more years of incarceration, I told her I was not using again in prison either. When drugs came my way, I passed them on to another friend. Had I known what I know today about addiction, I would not have given the drugs to anyone else either.

I came home October 3, 1995. My family would always welcome me back with open arms each time I got out of prison. Like so many families, they hoped I would stay away from drugs. Before this, their dreams had always been dashed when I had gotten involved with the same old people, places, and things. But they never gave up on me. They always did what they needed to do for my children. When I disappeared, they hoped and prayed that the phone call they would get would be that I was in jail and not dead.

That October in 1995 began a new way of life for me, though, because I joined a support group called Let’s Start which is dedicated toletsstart_logo assisting women in transition from prison life to society. I began to find out what I needed to do to stay clean, and I learned about myself and my addiction. I finally let go of those old people, places and things. No one besides positive people and family members knew how to get in contact with me.

After eighteen months of sobriety, my family gave me a birthday party. A woman in my support group had told me to stop counting the days, so I had not realized that I had been out of prison for that long. The most painful thing about getting clean was to learn that my children had suffered the most from my addiction and incarceration. My son is a heroin addict, has been to prison, and is now on probation. My daughter stayed away from drugs, but she struggled as a young single parent who could not depend on her mother for help in any way.

For the first two years, I had an apartment out in the country, so none of my old influences would find me. After I felt people knew I was serious about changing my life, I moved back into the city. During that time, Let’s Start taught me how to approach judges, legislators, probation officers etc. I had no idea how I was going to use any of this information at this stage in my life. I was just desperate to stay clean and out of jail. My way of life had never worked for me, so I listened and took suggestions. I’d always known the God of my understanding had a plan for my life because I survived two overdoses, so there must have been a reason for Him to keep me around.

Then I was hired by the Center for Women in Transition and was given an opportunity to use my past to help other women struggling withlogo-side-gold3b addiction and advocate for alternatives to incarceration. I did not come out of jail with an ideal that I was going to work with other women who had been in my situation, nor that I would become a role model for them. I am so comfortable in this job. This had to be God’s plan for my life. No one could have told me that I would have judges calling to ask my advice about clients, or that judges would reschedule clients’ court dates to accommodate my busy schedule. The God of my understanding has blessed my life so much. I could not be here without His grace and mercy.

My future goals are to live a simple life and be there for my grandchildren. I can’t get back the special times and events that I missed in my children’s lives, but I can give back through my grandkids. I turned 64 at the end of April and am getting close to retirement, however, I still plan to continue to help women get their lives back on track. Supporting other mothers in recovery means that fewer children will have to go through what my children experienced with me drifting in and out of their lives.

“My motto is: A closed mouth don’t get fed.”

             My Advice: If you or a family member struggle with addiction, don’t hesitate to ask for help. I don’t care how well you know a person, when their addiction is active, you are not dealing with or talking to that person. You are talking to their addiction, and it won’t hear you. You have to be ready to show tough love. Don’t get caught up in the fear that if you put them out of the house, they will die out there. If you let them stay and they continue to use, one thing will surely happen: death, jail or another institution. Addiction affects the whole family, but the fact that someone in your family uses drugs has no reflection on you. We can give our children the best upbringing possible, but we have no control over the paths they choose. Tough love is not saying, “I don’t love you.” It is saying, “I’m here to support you in getting help, but I will not watch you DIE.”

If you are using and trying to stop, it can happen, but there are things that you must do.

  • Get involved in some type of support group.
  • Change people, places and things. You can’t have a relationship with anyone who is still using. You won’t get them clean. They will get you high.
  • Go to treatment and get a sponsor.
  • Seek out the help you need.  Look up resources on the Internet.
  • WE DO RECOVER.

In working towards your goals, no matter what they might be:

 

The links in this article provide lots of great information and resources. We’d love to hear your thoughts and welcome experiences you’d like to share. Your comment could be the tipping point in someone seeking help in dealing with a loved one or setting personal goals to recreate their own lives.