Turning Your Struggles into Gold

As posted on WELD website blog. View full article here

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Ready for a tear-jerker? Tammie’s story is the blood and bones of what Weld and the recovery community are all about. She is living proof that it doesn’t matter where you came from – your life has worth and your struggles can be used for good. Tammie has taken her experience with addiction and incarceration and turned it into gold for other people looking for a way out. Today, she’s found a loving way back to her family and is a valued, trusted employee. Indeed, her work changes lives for the better. But nothing we can say can really sum up the power and gravity of her experience, so we’ll let her tell it.

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“As a kid, I started drinking probably when I was 10, always sneaking a beer here and there from my parents. By 13, I was in my first treatment center and was kicked out of there and sent to a psychiatric hospital for three months. Then it was just a never-ending cycle of treatment centers. I think I've been to 16 different treatment centers. I've been to state prison twice, federal prison once, and spent over 25 years of my life in some kind of lockdown or treatment, if not more than that.

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I was a drug addict and an alcoholic. I was a sex worker. I was a criminal. I just lived and breathed destruction. I was a horrible, horrible person. ODs and seizures were a normal part of my life. I woke up on breathing machines because I had died and I just didn’t care. The things I did—when I tell people that they don't believe it, they're like “no way. That's not you.” And, and it's not—it's not who I am today.

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I didn't care once they pulled the thing out of my mouth. I just wanted to know who had dope in their pocket. It was horrible.

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I have six kids, two of them were born in incarceration and I had to send them out to family. Thank God my family took them.

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Life was just crime and getting over on people. It was all about me. I was so self-absorbed and chasing paper and drugs, and didn't matter who I hurt. But I was always trying to pretend I was okay, just to hold onto my kids. It was always just a big façade.

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It was hard to keep up with too. It was exhausting. I was always angry at everything. My thinking was so horrible. It's amazing how you can make chaos and destruction the norm and rationalize it to be okay.

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I think federal prison was one of the best things that happened to me. I had a 10-month program of cognitive behavioral therapy and rational. And they made me take rational three times. That's how messed up my thinking was. It was 10 months of that. And then when I got out, I still relapsed. But Weld gave me the structure of what I was missing. Weld topped it off, man. They polished me after that with the final things. The community and the support. My house was amazing.

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At that point I had some integrity and honesty was important to me. So when I was asked to do three recovery meetings a week, as much as I didn't want to do it, I did it.

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So I started going to the meetings, and I started doing the 12 steps, which I would've never done without Weld. I've been to treatment—I never did the steps out of all those treatment centers. Never had a sponsor, never, never did the steps. And those steps really were the icing on my recovery. I have 29 months clean and sober.

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And my life is completely amazing. I got my license back. I got my kids back. I got my family back, which I hadn't had for years. And I work. I was disabled, living off of SSI for years plus whatever other scam I could do.

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And finally, once I got clean, I realized, I can still work, you know? That I have these issues, but they're not something that I need to be on SSI for. I took some re-entry classes and I finished the program. I met some people there and they helped me figure out what I liked. They referred me to a job at a nonprofit as a Youth Counselor and in a homeless shelter for adolescents or young adults.

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My job is to help others. And because of all the struggles I've been through with mental health, drug addiction, early childhood trauma, and sex work, I can reach a lot of these clients. I build rapport with them so quickly.

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The organization is sending me interns! I'm like “I have no college degree. I have no letters after my name.” I have a bunch of numbers, D.O.C., and a federal number! 

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Well, I do, I take that back: I have a Washington state peer support counselor certificate, which I'm pretty proud of. I worked on that when I was at Weld and they gave me the extra nudge on that because school scared me so much. I was so afraid of this class. It overwhelmed me, but we just chipped away at it.

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And then I got it! You have to overcome mental health and drug addiction to get one, and it's not like not everyone can have one. You support people. You teach them how to help themselves, find resources, and just simple life things.

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For example, maybe they need someone to go to court with them. Maybe they need someone to go to a psychiatric appointment with them or to the doctors, or they need help hooking up their cable. Or they just need someone to sit with them and that's what I do. And, yeah, it's amazing.

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Family Matters

Since I was 13, I've given them nothing but hell. They've picked up my slack with my kids. My oldest daughter is 34 and was raised by my mom. My son was raised by his sister's grandparents.

My aunt raised my other son. Another daughter was raised by her father's side and then I had my youngest. And it was just a hard relationship. They had planned my funeral so many times. They dreaded night phone calls. They were happy when I was locked up because they knew I was safe from myself.

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It was a hard relationship. And when I did come around, I was just obnoxious, disrespectful, and entitled. Like they owed me something, you know? Never accountable for any of my actions or even grateful for what they did, helping my kids. Before I went to federal prison, I had no relationship with my family.

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They didn't want nothing to do with me because I was a nightmare. I was a nightmare. But now I get invited to everything - all the family stuff. They trust me in their house, it's awesome. They ask for advice. They're just there emotionally and it's like they never missed a beat. It's awesome to have my sister back, my mom back. My dad's just always happy to hear from me.

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Living Sober

When you're on drugs you create this new norm of misery. What's scary and what's not. Robbing a place didn’t scare me. Going to turn a trick at some house in the middle of the night wasn't scary. I didn’t know what this person could do, but that wasn't scary. But oh my God, applying for a job! That’s scary. Making a doctor's appointment was scary. Simple, normal life things were just so scary! It's really crazy how my life has changed. I have people that count on me now.

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At my work, people have all these degrees. I think degrees are really cool. But they come to me for advice or resources, or for information on how to navigate different systems because there's not a system I don't know how to navigate!

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I learned this through life experience and it's just amazing. All my struggles are flipped and now I get to use them to help others. With my clients at work, I look at them and they're like little mirrors of different parts of my life.

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It doesn't matter what their thing is. Re-entry, drug addiction, sex work, or just massive trauma. I am able to see them and it's just so rewarding,”

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Tammie – we here at Weld are beyond honored to have a footnote in your story. You are evidence that healing flows outward and touches everyone who crosses our path. We are glad to be walking with you!

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