Cassandra’s story didn’t begin with addiction; it began with chaos masked as normalcy. She grew up in a home where alcohol flowed freely, where parties were constant, and where dysfunction was prevalent.
“We were as dysfunctional as a family could be,” she recalls. “My parents sold alcohol, so the house was constantly full of people… but for me, it was normal. I didn’t see anything wrong with it, ’because I didn’t know any different.”
As a child, Cassandra learned to compartmentalize trauma, quietly burying painful memories—including molestation and a violent attack by her mentally ill stepfather that left her family scarred and her younger brother dead.
“Again, put that on the back burner,” she says. “Don’t think about it anymore. At some point in your life, this stuff comes out.”
Despite the turmoil, Cassandra excelled in school. She was reading by age three, entered kindergarten early and graduated as valedictorian. But beneath the surface, the trauma remained unresolved and untreated.
In college she was introduced to drugs. She didn’t finish her degree, a pattern to which she had grown accustomed.
“I’ve never completed anything,” she says. “I would go full force… then get bored and quit.”
For a while, her life stabilized when she became a wife and a mother, but eventually, instability and addiction reigned—this time opening the door to crack cocaine.
“The life I had become unrecognizable. I lost my house. I lost cars. I lost job after job.”
When her daughter confronted her after yet another eviction, guilt finally began to pierce the denial.
In 2009, Cassandra turned to Healing Transitions. “I went because I had no other options,” she admits. She completed the educational piece of the program and her commitment, but soon after, made the choice to visit an old drug house with the intention of sharing her recovery.
“The people I last used with… were still there”, she shares.
She had a return to use that day and the next six years were darker, she recalls.
“I got arrested twice. I had never been to jail. I did things I never imagined I would do… just to get that next one.”
In 2016, Cassandra returned to Healing Transitions truly broken. “My pride almost let me walk out the door that night,” she says. In detox, a staff member told her, “I’ve been praying for you for years.” That moment was a turning point.
This time, she got honest. “All that baggage I talked about earlier. I never disclosed any of it the first time. This time, I told everything. Once I disclosed it, it no longer had life.”
As she worked the program, something shifted: “I was able to realize that a lot of the things that happened in my life that I carried guilt for—I had no control over.” Her healing deepened, and her relationships began to repair. Her children, who once debated pressing charges, welcomed her back into their lives.
Cassandra returned to working in childcare, then took a leap into recovery work as a Recovery Engagement Specialist. For three years, she helped women navigate the early days of recovery, giving them what she had once been given: a glimpse of hope, love and accountability. Her presence helped save others—and saved herself in the process.
“They keep me sober”, says Cassandra when reflecting on the symbiotic relationship between her and Healing Transitions participants.
Today, she’s an Administrative Assistant at the Healing Transitions’ Women’s Campus and continues to manage a recovery house. She helps women build real lives—getting jobs, paying bills and reuniting with loved ones. “I see myself in these ladies,” says Cassandra, who celebrates their wins extra hard because she knows what it feels like to accomplish what you thought was once impossible.
Nearly eight years clean, Cassandra says, “Life is good.” The rewards, she says, are endless. As she puts it, “finding recovery so late in life–I thought my life was over but it had only just begun.”
To those still struggling, she offers this: Take an honest look at your life. Think about how things could be different—because you deserve it. Just give yourself a chance.