“I had no more desire to live anymore. I was a desperate woman, drowning, unable to bring myself back up anymore.” That’s how Bernadette describes her life before coming to CityTeam. “I needed a new way to live,” she says. “I was tired, and I was just hopeless, just living in the dark.”
Bernadette struggled with addiction for more than 20 years. Drugs had taken over her life, damaged her relationships with family, and stolen her desire to live. She spent countless days high and countless nights in sleeplessness — all the time freeloading off of friends, couch-surfing, and wasting her life away. Bernadette acknowledges she wasn’t raised that way by her conservative parents and now regrets abusing their patience and forgiveness. “I would just take advantage of it,” she says. “That was the addict in me. They could no longer control me. I was already lost.”
Since coming to CityTeam, Bernadette has been able to take advantage of a wide array of services at CityTeam, including classes that helped her recognize and work on her codependency with others, manage her anger, be a better communicator and parent. And through our CityTeam @ Work program, she was able to find employment.