TW: this story discusses multiple forms of trauma, including prison and being unhoused.

Catching Recovery

I actually thought I could get it [recovery] by osmosis hanging around the rooms … never picking up the book, never getting a sponsor – and if I did I probably only called her once – never working the steps outside of a program.

Just going to meetings and hanging out with people who were clean and sober and thinking it will rub off on me. You can get a whole bunch of tools but if you don’t know how to properly use the tools then you fall like being an educated fool.

I want to say that my recovery and support program did not start because all of a sudden I wanted to be clean and sober and in recovery. I just didn’t want to go to prison again. My addiction led me into living in a tent on the street literally on my way back to prison. Desperation got me clean.

Driven by Wanting a Better Life, Supported by Faith

But I have always known God. Jesus is my God I have always known that he has looked out for me even when I wasn’t looking out for myself.

I was on my way back to prison and was in recovery court and God immediately started blessing me. I actually was trying to do the program and I got housing and that was the difference. It wasn’t even trying to be clean it was just I didn’t want to lose the housing because I have been on the streets for so long. God sent me an angel who gave me a book and my life just began to change.

I can say that I started by just wanting to keep my housing and not go to jail but quickly it changed into “wow my life is different”, “wow I have a better life”, “wow I don’t want to live like that anymore”, “wow this can happen for me a 54-year-old woman who thought I was too old to change or do anything different”. Someone who has been to prison and jail all of her life a person who was not a mom to her kids who was a “hopeless worthless helpless junkie.”

“The Whole House Started to Embrace Me”

It was this little lady I called my angel named Rosa. She’s about a 80-year-old little white lady who cornered me in a meeting and gave me my first book. She asked me why was I rushing out, asked me my name, shook my hand. Every time she saw me she would say,  “hi, how you doing” and it seemed like once she spoke to me the rooms opened up, it seemed like when she embraced me the whole house started to embrace me, the whole meeting started to embrace me.

Yeah, my life begin to change and you know it got better and better and better and better and God carried me when I couldn’t carry myself. Then I started doing the next best thing and today I have a sponsor and a grand sponsor. I have a great group of women in my life. I’m going on a retreat soon, I have a driver’s license, a job, I’m trying to open my own business, I volunteer at the place that helped me get my housing voucher. My life already is beyond my imagination so if I get nothing else I’m so grateful and thankful to recovery court, to God, to my sponsor. I have my kids in my life; not all of them but I have three of them. My mom calls me everyday. So you know everything is not peachy king and perfect but I don’t have any bad days because I’m too grateful for what I have everyday compared to where I came from. I’m not going to say it’s not hard, I go through my ups and downs. No, I’m not where I want to be but I’m dam sure not who I used to be and everyday gets better cuz I strive to be better everyday that I wake up.

As a black woman I think that society sees us as aggressive...maybe if they would listen more to us and what we say instead of always trying to judge us then they can understand us better. Click To Tweet