Limited Options
“I had a pretty good upbringing,” Sherry remembers. Though her father struggled with alcoholism, Sherry says, “My mom was a fantastic mother... I was coddled a lot, and I was sheltered a lot.”
While in high school, Sherry became pregnant. Determined not to raise her son on welfare, she graduated a year early and began working. At 19, she had her second son and got married. However, her husband was abusive, and Sherry turned to drugs to try to cope with her circumstances.
After 3 years, Sherry divorced her husband, “that's when my addiction became very bad,” she shares. Due to her lack of education, employment options were limited. Sherry ended up working in a strip club to support her addiction. She says, “It was extremely hard on me.”
Sherry later entered treatment, but wasn't able to stay clean for long. She went back to her addiction, a struggle that would last 20 years. During her addiction, Sherry experienced periods of homelessness. “I never really slept in parks and stuff like that, but I have slept on people's couches,” she recalls. “I slept in the woods a couple of times.”
For Sherry, rock bottom came when “my mom told me I couldn't come back ... that she wasn't going to give me any more money, not to call her anymore.” She ended up in a hotel room, alone. “I had called a friend of mine,” she recounts. “I told her that I was done ... I never wanted to commit suicide. I always had hope, but... I was just absolutely miserable.”
“I'm just very grateful to Seattle's Union Gospel Mission”
Sherry eventually got clean, and remarried, however, her new husband struggled with addiction himself, and was also abusive. Fleeing the domestic violence, she entered Hope Place, our women's recovery program at the Mission. “I just wanted to figure out what was I running from and why.” she says. “What made me have such an addictive personality? What I really loved about Hope Place is that it taught me about my enabling, my codependency."
Sherry grew tremendously in her time at the Mission. “It gave me the strength to speak up for myself and just to set healthy boundaries and just believe that I have everything in me to make it, to be... independent and a productive member of society.”
Sherry graduated from the Mission's recovery program and later went back to school, earning degrees in human services. She will soon graduate from Seattle Central College with her bachelor's of applied science! Sherry now works as a recovery specialist, helping others who struggle as she once did. “I'm just very grateful to Seattle's Union Gospel Mission,” she says.
Most important to Sherry is her relationship with God. “God is everything to me,” she says. “I was the treatment queen. I had been to so many treatment centers, but I always knew that God was the only thing. God actually delivered me from crack..., God is the center of my life ... I depend on God for everything in my life.”
