Alumni Perspective: Using my Journey to Help Other Women Find Theirs

It has not been an easy road getting here. After many attempts at staying sober, losing everything I ever cared about and loved, including my children and my marriage, I finally gained enough of what I now know is humility to work an honest program of recovery. I needed the humility to throw away my old ways of thinking and commit to keeping an open mind while working through the 12 steps. I came back to AA after an 8-year relapse, broken and hating myself. With this commitment I learned about my old coping skills and the “nature” of my wrongs and how they were truly blocking me from any spiritual relationship.

I began to follow the instructions as outlined to me, made amends to those I have harmed, especially my children and family, truly “coming to believe” in a power greater than myself as I experienced the outcomes of these actions, and watched my life and relationships transform. I took responsibility for my life and my happiness, and sought outside help for my trauma. I watched my children begin to trust me and also take responsibility for their life. They watched me and began changing too. I went back to school to get a placement where I was hoping to gain some current experience working with young offenders, planning to return to my first career in corrections. But the program I enrolled in was also a program for addictions and the only placement I could get was at Renascent. I haven’t left. My higher power truly chose my path for me and have been with Renascent for almost 7 years working as a full-time counsellor in the female inpatient program.

I became a Registered Psychotherapist. I help women who are like me, and with the combination of experience and education I have been able to touch the lives of many women, often identifying and many times helping them find their own hope and humility. I help them identify their own negative coping skills, and give them some new ones, while guiding them into the first three steps of recovery and encouraging them to continue in 12-step fellowship, finding their freedom through these twelve steps. I have seen broken women become true advocates, families reunited, women facing huge obstacles overcome them one by one. I have also heard about those who do not make it, knowing these lives have not been taken in vain, never wasted, just more proof of why I need to continue helping women who want it and reaffirming for myself the reasons I am in recovery and do this work. I am a proud employee of Renascent and an even prouder woman in recovery. Thank you.

Martha Williams BSc, ACSW, RP
Addictions Counsellor