Cheryl’s Story
All of her life her father had tried to give her everything that she wanted. He wanted her to have the things that he could not have as a child. Cheryl’s mom and dad separated when she was four and divorced when she was 11. As most children in this situation, she was angry with her dad when he chose to remarry and did not respect her step-mom. She went back and forth living with both parents, if she didn’t like the way she was treated at her mom’s she’d move to her dads and vice versa. Cheryl began drinking when she was 14, and began doing crack when she was 17. She dropped out of school just three months before she graduated.
After high school, Cheryl held a job but would devote all of her money to feeding her habit. She continually missed work but she could always sweet-talk her boss into giving her one more chance. Her father owned a number of apartment buildings and she had always lived in one of these. If she didn’t pay her rent, her father would assume the cost, he thought that he was helping her. Her dad had finally learned that by doing all of these things for her he was enabling her to use drugs and not helping her stop. Her father was a friend with her employer and they knew that all the money she was making was going to drugs. Her father and her employer finally decided that she could not have any second chances until she got her habit under control.
It wasn’t until she was married and moved away that she realized how bad her addiction was. She had loved her children very much but her addiction was stronger than she was. She recalls hearing her baby cry downstairs while she was upstairs in another room getting high. She told her son who was about 10 at the time to take care of the baby, he told her they weren’t his kids, they were hers. She realized what a mess her life had become, but she couldn’t stop using so she would just sit there and cry and continue to get high. She had three children and didn’t have enough money to buy diapers for the youngest two. When she was growing up, she could ask her dad for 60 dollars to buy a new pair of jeans. She couldn’t even spare a nickel so her children could buy penny candies at the corner store.
She was staying at Devlac Hall in Bowling Green, when she heard about the Aurora Program. She knew she needed to do something to get herself together so she could be a parent to her children.
She stayed at the Aurora House for 4 months before she moving to step up. She was pregnant when she first moved into the Aurora House. All of her life she had always done exactly what she wanted to do, if she didn’t want to go to school, she would just lock her door so no one could get in and there wasn’t anything that her parents could do about it. One of the rules at Aurora is that everyone has to be up and around by 8am. She tried to use her pregnancy as an excuse to sleep in, she even asked her doctor to give her a note. He told her that she wasn’t dying; she was just pregnant, so suck it up and deal with it. She got caught sleeping in and instead of giving her a point her case manager made her write an essay on the importance of getting up in the morning. As a grown woman, she felt a little ridiculous writing an essay on getting up in the morning. Ironically, she learned a lot from writing this essay. This is when she realized that she was an adult and she had to act like an adult, and as an adult you need to get up in the morning so that you can take care of your kids and do something productive with your day.
Just after she moving into step-up, her husband, who was also in recovery, relapsed. His parents had just bought them a brand new mini-van and the very next day he drove it straight to his dealer and sold it for drugs. This was a very difficult time for Cheryl. The fact that her husband had used had always made it acceptable for her to use as well. Fortunately, Cheryl’s case manager and the rest of the staff at Aurora supported her through this time.
In the past, whenever something like this had happened she had always gone back to her husband. The staff at Aurora encouraged her, offered an open ear and open arms, and helped her realize that this was her chance to go forward. It was a very tough couple of weeks for Cheryl, but as she says Aurora helped her learn to respect herself and that gave her the courage to realize that she could go forward on her own, so that she could have the kind of life that she wanted for herself and her children. Her children were in CSB custody at this time, she had asked them for help with reunification and they were giving her the help that she had asked for. She had to prove to them that she was worthy of this help and ready to accept it.
Cheryl had abused drugs and alcohol for almost 20 years, but she is now clean and sober, in the step-up part of our program and has custody of her oldest son Devon, 12 and her youngest daughter Samantha, 5 months, who she had while she was in the Aurora program. She is currently working on reunification with her other two daughters and is working almost 30 hours a week.
