So my life before finding recovery and finding Oriana
House was
pretty hectic
and hopeless. I spent
a decade
in active addiction.
And so I spent over two years in county jails. I had over 15
charges in five different counties,
felonies and misdemeanors, and I was homeless for most of that time.
I was at a place where it was going to be death or find something different.
And um
that was when the light came at the end of the tunnel,
I was the first client of PIVOT Drug Court.
And when I came into pivot and I met um my caseworker, Jamie Opp
and
the people in the PIVOT program,
they
were the first people to really tell me,
we know you can do this
like we know you now and we believe that you can do this and hearing that from people in
essentially a position of power to me,
Um
I felt like I could and that changed everything for me.
That was just that moment of clarity.
I needed, like, maybe I can do this, maybe I can recover.
So the PIVOT program was really designed
to be like an all around recovery experience.
So there, I spent a lot of hours at
Rigel Recovery and I think that in the beginning being there so much,
really, I didn't think about other things.
I was thinking about recovery all of the time.
They really challenged me to look back at my years of us and what
was I really doing it for? What were the reasons that I was feeling so empty and
how can I fill it in another way?
And obviously there is accountability there with all of the Oriana House programs
and knowing that I was gonna be tested and checked on in the evenings also helped.
So that was a big part of the program and
there was just no way around recovery for me at that time.
I felt like it was everywhere I looked. I was getting so much encouragement.
I just, it was a really exciting time for me.
Now, six years later,
I own my own home. I am married, I have a family.
I adopted a child in 2021
and I gave my children up for adoption in
early addiction because I could not care for them.
Which was the best decision for me.
But
in my recovery,
I have now reunited with my children. My daughter is 17 and my son is 13.
I learned so many different resources and tools while
I was growing through my program in Oriana House.
So I try to take all of that and
spread it out into the community any time I can because I do know what they're
going through and they do feel comfortable talking
to me about it because I've been there.
So that's why I'm always sharing.
We're always sharing because it's like there is hope.
Even if you don't think there's hope, even if there's no hope, there's still hope.
There's a little bit of hope always.
And as long as you know that you, it's the, it's the possibilities are endless.
So that's why we're always sharing our stories.
We do have the services here at Oriana
House that can help you make that light grow.
And when you do,
you'll be glad you did because it's beautiful. There is life after addiction.
There is,
there's a recovery there and
you don't wanna miss that.
I am so glad I didn't.