Rose - from Ragged to Restored

Rose (deceased) was a client who stands out in my early experience supporting the steep climb from trauma to a life of quality.  She came into a learning center that I managed for residential adults in recovery, a broken alcoholic.  Rose was older than most of the women; she wouldn’t give eye contact but was compliant.  When she turned in her required first assignment, “How My Life Became Unmanageable”, I learned her beliefs about herself, inhuman.  She blamed herself for every horrific situation, from childhood dysfunction through abandonment, addiction, homelessness, and years of prostitution.  She believed she was born defective.  

I’ll remember the long, painful road of her fight for sobriety and, more than that, her new identity.  

After many months of being open to change, insights, learning and practicing shifts to a wholistically healthy lifestyle, being consistently treated with respect, and being heard, a huge result was a moment when she realized, sitting across from me at the work station, one big epiphany, where she had always defended or excused bad behavior, she woke and referring to a former pimp said,“He was not my friend.” 

I’m skipping a vast majority of the micro steps it took to get to that moment. What it did, though, was open wide the door for the permission she had to take for herself to see herself differently, as a woman of value.  Rose began to dare for better: sustained sobriety, legit part-time work, reconciliation with her family and precious grandchildren.  

At the end of her program, she asked me to sing country western, something I’d never done or planned to do; Brave by Jamie O’Neal.  Rose spent the rest of her life working her garden, living released from her past.  She rewrote the rest of her story and walked it out, God inspired and equipped.  

When enough is enough, it will take what it takes, and the end, as it was for Rose, will be lit, fly, victorious.  It can be.