What our past clients said about St. Anne’s Home
Saint Anne’s literally saved my life! I came in to this beautiful house as a very broken and scared woman. But, by the time I left, miracles had already begun happening in my life! Saint Anne’s provided me with a safe environment, filled with caring and knowledgeable staff members. I found hope here, and I developed the willingness to do whatever was asked of me, because I saw it working in other people who had come before me. My AA sponsor referred me here because she said she had seen other women complete this program and come out completely different from when they started the program. She was right! I would highly recommend this program to anyone seeking to find sobriety and change their lives! God is definitely present in this home!
St. Anne’s is a beautiful place with beautiful women, and thanks to all of them, I am now ready to face the world. I am so blessed to have lived there, learned there, grown there, and begun my journey of life being sober.
I’ve been told that getting to come to St. Anne’s is a calling from God and that there are angels working there. I know that to be true. Being there at St. Anne’s helped me get to the core issues of my disease.
My life changed when I walked in St. Anne’s front door.
Prior to St Anne’s, I was hopeless. I had gone to detox four times and was on one vicious cycle, spinning in circles. I was about to die from alcoholism and was off my meds for being bi-polar. I looked for a dual diagnosis center on the Internet and called a facility in Boston. The Boston facility told me about St. Anne’s and gave me the phone number. They said it was a great place. I called St. Anne’s, and in the process, received positive feedback. St. Anne’s proceeded with my assessment, and the recovery process began for me. God blessed me with a wonderful place, which gave me hope and a chance for change. It was a new beginning for what once seemed hopeless.
When I arrived at St. Anne’s, I was in despair and full of self loathing. I was terrified of everything and everyone. I had been completely detoxified , by that time, completely drug and alcohol free for 3 weeks, but the prospect of life, sober and clean, was something I didn’t know how to achieve. I was emotionally raw. The counselor at St. Anne’s helped me, starting with finding a sponsor, one who told me to follow all the rules at St. Anne’s. She said “breathe, put one foot in front of the other.” I followed their rules and made it through some very painful discovery of the pain that my addiction had caused others and myself. I faced, to the best of my ability, the childhood issues. I learned the importance of having a routine and responsibility. There were financial classes, rape crisis counselor visits, daily 12 Step meetings. I became accountable for many of my actions and became open and honest, in a room full of women. I completed a very thorough Step 1, and by the time I left I was on Step 3, I shared my life story. It felt like a refuge there, and I finally, for once in my life, felt a genuine relief that I would be able to live clean and sober. I finally stopped dreading being alive. My life today is much different. I have a loving bond with my daughter. I love being alive and free. It is amazing and miraculous that I have my career back. I was on a strict monitoring program with my state licensing board and now have been asked to serve as a state advocate for other recovering nurses in my city. I am returning to school to advance my degree. I am improving the relationship with my parents, a little at a time, and I accept the love they have for me. I am making amends to others whenever possible. I no longer see myself as a victim or a worthless person. God continues to work miracles in my life, and when a storm comes, I cling onto God, my rock. I also cling to the sponsor that God sent to me while I was at St. Anne’s. I feel like I can not only get through life sober, but also sometimes, I soar! Thank you St. Anne’s for turning my life around.
To share my whole story would require me to write a book. This is, however, a short and condensed version. Addiction came over me I like a thief in the night. At one time, I was a respectable career woman, a mother of four beautiful children, married, owner of a large home, and a couple of vehicles. The disease of addiction robbed me of virtually everything, and rather quickly. I no longer was pulling up in my driveway after a 12 hour shift caring for critically ill children. I was the one in critical condition. As the addiction progressed, I found myself on foot and living alone in the woods. I was, at best, living in a tent. Besides the material possessions that I lost, I also lost custody of my children, my nursing license, and my self respect and dignity. I was abandoned by my family and my husband. Most of all, I had abandoned myself and my God. My road to recovery was very long and nearly fatal. Recovery took me through dangerous situations and left me with seemingly unbearable feelings of shame, guilt, and hopelessness. I had given up on ever having my nursing career back. I accepted that I would have to continue to live within my addiction, with no way out. At 3:00 am on one February morning, I was walking down a road in Alabama, and I was offered a ride by an angel. He gave me a ride and gave me a book, titled “Have you felt like giving up lately?” Tears fell, oh boy… had I ever. God had sent this angel to me. I later understood why. By the next September, I had found my way to St. Anne’s Home. The same stranger that had picked me up on the side of the road paid for my treatment the first six months at St Anne’s. Initially, I was desperate. I had to first surrender to overcome the addiction and win my battle. I was in need of a heart transplant; not in the literal and physical sense, but my heart was in need of a major evaluation and reconstruction. Immediately, I began to see a counselor at St Anne’s. With ongoing counseling, I was able to process new feelings, old feelings, fears, and a hope for a brighter future. Counseling helped me understand that my guilt could roll away as I healed. Recovery, for me, took not only being abstinent from drugs and alcohol, but individual therapy and self-examination. I am forever grateful for the service that I received at St. Anne’s. Today, I am out of the woods. I have my own transportation, visitation with my children, and I have regained my nursing license. More importantly, I have self respect and a peace that does surpass all understanding. This was all possible due to St. Anne’s Home and their counseling, the 12 step program, and God’s amazing grace.