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HJN local mobileMother’s Day hope: Sojourner offers second chance
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HAMILTON — This time last year, Delores Crawford would do anything to get her fix.
Prostitution. Stealing. Whatever it took to buy more crack cocaine.
“It pretty much took everything I had,” said the 31-year-old mother of five. “I had to either turn it around or it would get the best of me.”
Clean and sober now seven months, this Mother’s Day is full of hope for the Hamilton resident as she looks forward to graduating from the drug rehabilitation program at Sojourner Recovery Services.
She is one of dozens of women who each year either voluntarily or through a referral get a second chance at Sojourner.
The nonprofit organization, named after the 19th century former slave Sojourner Truth who pushed for women’s rights, has five residential facilities and an intensive outpatient facility in Hamilton.
The agency started in 1984 to provide aid to women, but now it provides services for men, teenagers and adolescents, and is the only residential drug-rehab program in Butler County, said Amy Henkel, women’s residential program director.
Completing the program, which in addition to counseling may include detoxifying and mood-stabilizing medication, is only the beginning for Sojourner clients.
“We make sure they have the tools necessary to stay sober,” Henkel said, “ But it’s up to them once they leave here.”
For Crawford, who since January has lived at the High Street facility with her 11-year-old daughter, Natasha, it’s a matter of making up for lost time and rebuilding relationships with her family.
“That’s the most unconditional love that I’ve ever seen in my life,” Crawford said of her children. “Their forgiveness was given so freely. ... They’re confident that I can go back to the person I was.”
Clean and sober mothers look to rebuild their lives
Drug addicts and alcoholics sometimes have to hit rock bottom before they decide to change.
For Amber Wilcher, that moment came on a bitterly cold night, when none of the “crack houses” that she frequented would let her in. Her mom had all but disowned her; the 29-year-old was pregnant with her fourth child and had two of her children in tow.
“At that point, I knew I didn’t want that life anymore,” she said. “When I went to jail I was happy.”
Despite using crack cocaine through half of her pregnancy, Wilcher delivered a healthy baby only days after getting released from jail. After years of “self-medicating,” Wilcher entered Sojourner Recovery Services and has been sober for more than three months. She said she’s finding out about herself.
“You kind of forget who you are. This place gave me an opportunity to stop,” Wilcher said while holding her newborn in the lobby at Sojourner’s women’s residential facility on High Street.
The need is great
Wilcher’s story is not uncommon, said Program Director Amy Henkel, whose compassion and empathy overflows when she hears clients tell their stories.
Sojourner serves 100 to 120 clients at any given time at their five residential facilities in Hamilton. They serve about 1,300 annually, including intensive outpatient services for teens and women.
But funding has forced cutbacks in recent years. Sojourner has lost $350,000 in the last three years, and “the need is greater than the capability,” Henkel said.
“There’s people dying on the street because we don’t have enough space,” she said.
Henkel echoed what many of the clients say about the counselors who lead one-on-one and group discussions at Sojourner. They’re doing it for the right reasons.
“The counselors get to know these girls and they care about them.”
Henkel said one of the biggest misconceptions about drug addicts is that they’re viewed as having something morally wrong with them.
“They’re sick people trying to get well,” she said. “It’s a disease that they’re battling with.”
Starting over
Leslie Brewer said she has a plan to stay sober. After graduating from the Sojourner program, the 27-year-old mother of four said she now has the tools she’s going to need, using mental reminders and a counselor whom she can call at any time.
“I’m going to take it one day at a time. I know what I want. I’m going to build on that each day,” she said.
Brewer said her crack cocaine addiction drove her away from her family, she said, and onto the street working as a prostitute. The day she regrets most, she said, was the day she left home and abandoned her two oldest daughters.
“That drug took over and consumed my thoughts,” she said. “I tried to (quit) on my own but it didn’t work.”
Brewer is close to moving out of the Sojourner facility. She said she’s looking for apartments and wants to go to college.
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