We help Missouri women rebound from trauma. Everyone deserves the same | Opinion

“What are you willing to give up for recovery?”

That’s the question I ask every woman who applies to live at Sisters of Solace, a two-year residential program in St. Joseph that helps women get off the street and into a loving environment where they can begin to heal from a lifetime of addiction and trauma.

I ask this weighty and thought-provoking question for two reasons. First, as the founder of our program often says, it’s not as easy to get off the streets as people think. Decades of abuse, addiction and neglect condition women to believe that they aren’t worthy of a different life.

Second, I ask because the women we serve must be ready to put in the work. They are savvy and they are survivors, but breaking a lifetime cycle of trauma requires stripping away everything they’ve known and rebuilding piece by piece.

I would know, because I had to break the cycle in my own family after enduring hardship as a child.

Many aren’t ready to take that step of faith, and in those cases, we meet them where they are by providing basic care and resources until they are ready for our program. For some, this means restoring dignity through the purchase of personal hygiene items and groceries. For others, we help them find medical care and shelter until they want to get off the streets for good.

The women who are ready to pursue recovery move into the Sisters of Solace home, where everything is provided free of charge while they work on healing from their trauma and rebuild their lives.

We call the women who live in our home our sisters, and we work to build a culture of family and support among our staff and the women we serve. Our home provides a safe haven and peaceful climate for our sisters. We help them learn how to do everyday life skills, from developing budgets to preparing food to caring for themselves. We also provide job training and career readiness classes, and we even have our own boutique and coffee shop, called Solace, where women sell the goods they make and run the shop. In turn, they learn about entrepreneurship, managing a business and business etiquette.

We often find that long-term addiction and trauma have created many different types of barriers for these women, and we work closely with them to tackle every challenge head on. In one case, a sister in our home had a $500 court fine. Over several years, that small fine had required her to go to court approximately 50 times, and it remained on her permanent record. Sisters of Solace connected her with an attorney who donated his time to help her navigate the court system and pay the fine.

In other cases, we’ve helped women reunite with their children who were in the foster care system. In these situations, we provide the moms with the tools and material resources they need to parent and to set up a stable home for their children.

The demand for our program among moms is so great that we are now in the process of starting a maternity home solely for pregnant women who need recovery help. Our hope is that this program will equip women in our community with the wrap around support they need to start their parenting journey and care for their baby.

Since the start of our program five years ago, we’ve seen firsthand how creating a culture of support for survivors of trauma and addiction can lead to lasting change.

Every year, women leave the Sisters of Solace Home with a plan to create a life apart from addiction, knowing they have the tools and resources of our program to support them. This model has worked in St. Joseph, and we know that it can work for other communities that are willing to invest in the lives of women and let them know they are not alone.

Trina Clark is the executive director of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Sisters of Solace in St. Joseph.