What $25 Buys
With her fresh faced and innocent looks, I had a hard time visualizing Charmain driving a getaway car. She didn’t look old enough to have a daughter that could rob anything, much less a convenience store.
Charmain started drinking before she went to kindergarten. She remembers sitting on her father’s lap sipping his whiskey. Her father later died of cirrhosis of the liver. Her drug and alcohol use exploded when her husband died in an alcohol-related car crash on Labor Day many years ago.
A few things set Charmain apart. In her months at Liberty Manor, Charmain didn’t complain about being there or rush to move on. She didn’t forget the past that brought her to Liberty Manor nor past incarcerations, stints at Willard—a three month shock camp for chemical dependency—or previous failures at treatment. With discharge approaching, she didn’t withdraw, even when after claiming she wanted independence she hooked up with a new boyfriend, also in recovery and with prison time. After discharge, she called me as planned so we could meet for lunch.
We sat on the balcony of Aladdin’s on Monroe—a place to get healthy and reasonably priced food—and a common hangout for Jimmy and me and friends. I had picked her up after her interview at the Red Cross where they will allow her to volunteer, even with her record, so she can return to her career as a phlebotomist. We ordered the Chicken Kebab Pitas and split a baklava with coffee, talking for nearly two hours, as the sun and clouds wrestled for prominence.
I raised the topic of the boyfriend, and surprisingly (from our experience with others) she said, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” We discussed why women with addiction so quickly hook up with men again, often the same one but with a different name and face. Distracted from the work of recovery, the new relationship often precipitates a relapse. She uncovered wisdom she didn’t know she had and learned skills to discern the health of relationships.
Knowing that we learn from what doesn’t work, I queried Charmain about the weaknesses of our program—she couldn’t come up with any, which of course is affirming, if a little overrated. Most helpful was the work on self esteem and confidence, the learning how to breathe and center, which we call living from a different place. Sitting at the end of the breakfast table one morning, she and two other “old-timers” decided not to let the negative energy of others drag them down. They chose to be energy changers instead. “Is it okay that we used your motto, ‘Changing the world, one woman at a time, by changing the energy within, between, and around’?’” Okay, indeed!
After lunch Charmain proudly showed me her new apartment, still with unpacked boxes as she scrubbed—and I mean scrubbed—the apartment from top to bottom.
Our next step is to develop a follow-up program for women after Liberty Manor to continue to develop their newfound self esteem, confidence and skills. Charmain will play a major role as she both desires to continue in Project Empower and is willing to help organize the program at the YWCA.
So, thank you for taking Charmain to lunch. It may seem like a small thing to us, but in taking her to lunch, we moved her from the “addict” to the “human” category—a worthy lunch partner and friend. We have chosen to support her long term recovery and the recovery of other women like her.
Published with Charmain’s consent