From Lesley –
My earliest memories as a child were not too stable. I remember my mom always waiting on my step-dad and many beatings, running off nights and living from place to place.
Some of my earliest memories consist of me being fought over by my mom and step mom and I lived with my real dad and step mom for a period of time and that was my happy place. I did eventually find out they did drugs but they never showed a sign of it in front of me….
At my mom’s, the partying was never hid. It was a way of life. In my childhood years, I never knew stability or routine.
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Renewal House is a residential recovery compound for single moms and their kids in an old apartment complex on the northwest side of town.
And it’s amazing, a truly magic place where – over a year to 18 months or so — the hardest of hard-core drug addicts get clean, find jobs, find hope, find housing and find themselves. Just as important, their children get therapy and counseling, and the entire family can heal together and learn how to interact with each other when mom’s off drugs.
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My mom always told me that if I ever smoked pot to let her know that. She would rather me be at home doing it than in the streets getting something I really didn’t know about.
So when I tried weed for the first time with my friends about a week later, I told my mom and from that point on, my addiction began and progressed on from there. I met a guy. I was 13 years old, he was 18 years old, we was boyfriend and girlfriend for six months….
My mom and dad would still try and go in the bedroom and shut the door and try to hide the fact that they did cocaine but I knew what they were doing. One day, I asked my mom to leave me a little in the bathroom and she was so high and had so much, she left me a little line on the bathroom sink. And that’s when the hardcore drinking and drugging started full force.
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“In the beginning, I get to see and witness women who come in broken, who are seeking a new way of life and really don’t know what direction to go in, who to trust,” says Renewal House addiction recovery case manager Valerie Hardison, herself a recovering addict with 19 years clean.
“The transformation is when they begin to open up and allow staff here to help them heal in a direction of life worth living,” Hardison said.
Renewal House reaches out to the addicted moms who are afraid they might lose their kids if they get help.
“The idea is that moms can choose recovery and not either recovery or their children,” said Mary Beth Heaney-Garate, chief clinical officer at Renewal House.
Why a year to 18 months?
“Our population also has many other challenges,” Heaney-Garate said.
“Ninety percent are children of alcoholics and addicts. On top of that, there’s poverty, domestic violence, unemployment. 28 days is hardly a realistic kind of a thing.”
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I ran into the devil himself – crack cocaine. And the monster behind it, his name was Randy and he lived at a hotel and had a lot of prostitutes working for him. I got lured over to their room….
I was officially the dope man’s woman, but not prostituting until he shot someone over me and our drug money. [He] ended up going to prison and leaving me out there by myself in the streets, addicted, so I started selling my body.
My mom found me on a street corner and tried to drag me home but by then, it was too late. The devil had stole my soul and I was doomed and consumed by this disease. I walked Dickerson Road selling myself at 18 years old and that was my life, from place to place and one drink and hit to the next.
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At Renewal House, residents start with the basics. They get driver’s licenses or IDs, see physicians, get dental work done. Then there’s addiction treatment, treatment for other mental disorders, parenting classes, relapse prevention.
After that, there’s family therapy, parent-child interactive therapy, children’s play therapy.
“Those children are at very high risk for going down the same path mom does,” Heaney-Garate says plainly.
And most women need significant counseling around their own childhood or teenage trauma – physical abuse, sexual assault, verbal abuse and more.
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It’s a little fuzzy but I know a lot of bad things happened to me in the streets. I’ve been raped, stabbed, kidnaped, in blackouts and hit by a car. I’ve ODed twice and have survived. I don’t know how but by the grace of God that I’m still alive.
My life changed completely as my newest child being conceived and born in 2011. I made it back to [Meharry’s] Elam Center and got to keep my son. When I held him, my motherhood instincts finally kicked in and hit me from head to toe.
I thought I was done with everything and was for about nine months…. With my son to take care of, I thought I was cured and got a rude awakening by the disease.
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Renewal House gets most of its money from the government, from the Tennessee Dept. of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, to be specific. Other state and federal grants also fund Renewal House, as do community members who donate to the website or to various fundraisers.
And relapse is part of many Renewal House clients’ stories, as it is for most recovering addicts and alcoholics.
“There’s nothing more crushing knowing she’s walking down the hill and she’s going to use and DCS will come and get her kids,” Heaney-Garate said.
But, she adds, “We work hard so we don’t give up five minutes before the miracle of the next client.”
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I chose to come to long-term treatment and I’ve been putting this off for too long and I have finally made it. This has been a life-changing experience for me and I’ve done some of the most innermost work on myself.
I’ve been able to get out all of the bad stuff that has happened and replaced it so that I may add good stuff.
I thank the Renewal House for helping me and my child get a solid foundation today.
Now I have opened my mind and my heart to be able to do what it takes to stay sober and make a good life for me and [my son]. I have an excellent sponsor.
I go to meetings and do my part in my community to make a difference in the lives of my son and others around me. I have finally met me and it’s so good getting to know myself and the things I like to do. I respect myself and life today.
Lesley, 17 months clean, graduated from Renewal House in February
Thank you so much to Lesley — not pictured in this blog — for being vulnerable and sharing her story so that that others might heal.
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