As a person in long-term recovery from using opioids for more than three decades, including 16 years as a Medication Assisted Treatment client, I have been watching with great interest the progress of The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) of 2015 through the legislature. According to Faces and Voices of Recovery, “this is the most expansive federal, bipartisan legislation to date for addiction support services, designating between $40 million and $80 million toward advancing treatment and recovery support services in state and local communities across the country, which will help save the lives of countless people.”
We featured a post from The Person First Project in March. The organization has been busy since then, posting many stories of people who have been homeless or are currently homeless in Washington, D.C. Today, Threads is sharing three stories of powerful women interviewed by this project.
Before I joined the Center for Social Innovation, I worked at a residential treatment program for adolescent girls with behavioral health issues. All had experienced severe or recurring trauma. Most were neglected or abused by a person close to them. For some, their childhood trauma included periods of homelessness. They had spent time on the streets, in shelters, doubled up with friends or family members, and in unstable housing where they were one crisis away from another bout of homelessness.
I can no more remember
What brought me here
Than bone answers bone in the arm
Or shadow sees shadow—
—Billy the Kid, Jack Spicer
The other day I said to someone, The thing about trauma is that it just puts you in this place of chronic mourning. You just spend a lot of time mourning losses that were a long time ago and what you will lose in the future as a result. I was thinking about a time I was sitting in my therapist’s office and felt like crying when I said, What would I be capable of if I didn’t have to spend so much energy managing my own mind? Who could I have been?
