30 Oct Heather’s Story

Heather’s drug use began when she was young. “I had a lot of childhood trauma, so it was just a coping mechanism,” she says. “I didn’t know how else to deal with things. Drugs became my ‘go-to.'”

As she grew older, Heather’s addiction consumed her life and, sadly, impacted her son Bravyn’s early years. For more than three years, she lived in survival mode, moving from place to place, always wondering where she would find the next meal to feed her little boy. The unstable lifestyle traumatized Bravyn, who became withdrawn and began struggling with speech delays.

Heather realized the toll her destructive choices were taking on her son and she wanted desperately to change. But her attempts at treatment failed. Finally, she turned to the one source of hope she had left.

“Even though I didn’t have a personal relationship with the Lord, I would still pray, hoping He would hear me,” she remembers. “I needed something bigger than myself to stop me in my tracks.”

And her prayers were answered.

“I ended up going to jail,” she explains, “and that’s what I needed to just stop and think.” When she was released, she came to our Hope Center for Women and Children. “I knew that’s what I’d been missing.”

Today Heather is finding healing through our staff’s loving guidance and our faith-based classes and counseling. “This is the first place I’ve ever felt like I could trust people—that I could open up and fix the things that are probably the deep roots of my addiction.” Most importantly, she’s learning to rely on the Lord. 

Bravyn, too, is thriving in our love-filled environment and is also benefiting from professional speech therapy. “He’s happy all the time. He smiles all the time. He can say sentences now, and I can have a full conversation with him. That’s amazing!” Heather shares.

Heather is currently taking college classes, majoring in Human Services, and hoping to use her education to help others. “I’m looking forward to just living life. I went so long without the skills to do that. Before I came to Hope Ministries, I felt alone and just lost. Now I feel like I have a second chance.”

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