Cindy's Story

"We're creating new memories"

Cindy and Bob are celebrating recovery and their new life, thanks to you.

At first, it didn’t seem like a big deal. When she felt any minor discomfort, Cindy would take a pain pill. Her husband Bob had dabbled with drugs when he was younger, but when his brother suddenly passed away, he began to use them regularly to avoid dealing with his grief.

Together, Bob and Cindy were powerless to help each other when each grew more dependent on drugs to cope with their problems. They would buy pain pills off the streets. But when that became too expensive and prescriptions for pain pills got harder to get, their addiction quickly turned to heroin and meth.

Before they knew it, they were completely out of control.

“Everything was just about how we could get drugs. We were both just doing stupid stuff to get drugs,” Cindy says. “We went from living in a new house on a golf course to living in our car within a matter of five years,” adds Bob.

But harder than losing their jobs and home was seeing the effect their addiction was having on their children.

A family torn apart

While Cindy and Bob were reduced to living in their car, their kids went to live with their grandmother. “They were sad, obviously,” Cindy says. “They just weren’t sure what to do. They just went day to day. We would see them for a little bit after school and then we would leave and go be in our car. And we were really just using the drugs at that point to numb everything.”

Homeless, addicted, unable to provide for their children, not knowing where to go or what to do — for Bob and Cindy, it was their lowest point. So with her two youngest children, Cindy came to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. As for Bob, Cindy says, “The biggest blessing that happened to him was getting arrested and having to go to treatment.”

A place for hope

Cindy says being at the Mission was a little nerve-wracking at first, but she remembers “it was the first time I didn’t feel judged.” She says, “I was with people who had been going through the same thing I had gone through. Hearing their stories I felt like, ‘well, maybe there is hope and maybe I can turn this around.’”

While Cindy and the kids were at the Mission, Bob was going through treatment separately. “It was the right thing to do,” Cindy says. “I think we both just needed to work on ourselves rather than worry about what the other one was doing.”

Thankful and so blessed

After they each completed treatment, Cindy says, “We started reconnecting and were able to spend weekends together with the kids. It was cool because we had been married for 25 years, but we were starting our relationship over again and spending time together as a family. We’re creating new memories with them.”

Last February, Cindy, Bob, and the kids moved into their own apartment. Thanks to the classes and support she received at the Mission, Cindy is working again and both she and Bob were going to be involved as coaches in their kids’ sports before COVID-19 hit.

Cindy shares, “I think that we’re just thankful and so blessed that sometimes we’ll just look at each other and be like, ‘Can you believe where we were two years ago?’ It’s just amazing how God has worked in our lives.”