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Recovery in the News
Taking Steps to Restoration; Women's Residences to Help Recovering Substance Abusers
Adam Parker
The Post and Courier
May 6, 2007
Chinique Brown wasn't always a Christian mentor and role model. She used to be a drug addict. She used to be lost.
And for years she denied it, barely getting by, ignoring family members' pleas even as she relied on their generosity and patience.
But now, after working through much anger, sacrifice and pain, she is making a better life for herself and her 7-year-old daughter, Chakezra. She is working. She is teaching and telling. She is coping with loss. She is taking care of others.
Chinique Brown has been found. And she has found herself.
It was the women of Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church's Step Ahead ministry who met her halfway and invited her into a new world of faith and support and love. The Step Ahead ministry works in conjunction with the Step Ahead program at the Charleston Center of Charleston County, which provides treatment to addicts.
It's one of two new Lowcountry initiatives designed to serve women recovering from drug and alcohol abuse, initiatives that come in the nick of time as the Charleston Center, coping with budgetary challenges, abandons its housing program at the end of June to focus on treatment.
The women of Mount Moriah hope to open the House of Ruth this summer, a transitional residence for recovering women and their children.
And on June 1, the Rev. Marilyn Powell expects her facility, the Magdalene House, to begin the process of - as she puts it - returning these women to wholeness.
Stepping ahead
Mark Cowell, director of the Charleston Center, said a federal grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development helped him sustain for years the residency component of the county agency's addiction recovery program. But that grant expired last year, and a different HUD grant sought by the Lowcountry Homeless Coalition fell through.
But funding was only part of the challenge, Cowell said. Counselors were spending too much time on household tasks and not enough time treating the women in their care. A change of focus and close coordination with faith-based residency programs such as Magdalene House and the House of Ruth could produce improvements that benefit all involved, he said.
For example, the county program could devote more resources to the therapeutic child unit, where some children suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, developmental problems and psychological trauma, Cowell said.
"Sometimes we're helping women understand basic skills," like expressing love and embracing their children, he said.
The Step Ahead program serves about a dozen women and their children at a time and lasts about three months, during which most women find employment and move into safe housing, Cowell said. Because recovery is a long-term process, the program serves only 40 to 50 women each year. But Cowell said he hopes to increase those numbers as other residency programs step in to meet the transitional housing needs. Vans will transport women between the Step Ahead clinic and their living quarters.
"The goal is to treat a lot more people," he said.
State of grace
The Rev. Powell sits on the Charleston Center's Community Advisory Board. She ministers to prostitutes and drug addicts serving time at the Charleston Detention Center. She has years of experience, both personal and professional, battling addiction. Powell, 82, is a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for 21 years. Others in her family have succumbed to the influence of alcohol and drugs. Powell knows what it's all about.
A deacon at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, she is driven not only by sympathy but by the Christian imperative to feed the hungry and care for the widows and orphans.
"I've always been that way, I don't know why," she said.
Magdalene House is a ministry of St. Stephen's, and it's based on the accomplishments of the Rev. Becca Stevens, who founded the first Magdalene House in Nashville, Tenn., 10 years ago.
Stevens started with one residence for women with criminal histories of prostitution and drug abuse.
"We wanted to be a witness to the truth that in the end love is the most powerful force for social change," she wrote in an e-mail. "We now operate five houses and a cottage industry (bath and body-care products) that helps generate an annual budget of $700,000."
Residents commit to two years of communal living and benefit from no live-in staff or federal or state financial assistance, Stevens wrote. About 70 percent of her "graduates" successfully abandon prostitution and recover from their substance abuse.
Powell expects to open the doors to the Lowcountry's first Magdalene House on June 1. She knows it will help.
"I minister to women in jail, and as soon as they're out, they go back to their boyfriends and husbands dealing drugs," she said. It's a vicious circle that might be broken if these women have an alternative destination to go to, a halfway house, a refuge where they can confront their demons and disassociate themselves from the destructive forces in their lives, Powell said.
"Our goal is to love these women until they can love themselves," she said.
The owners of the Noisy Oyster donated a house, and several local businesses provided furniture, carpeting, interior painting and appliances. Grace Episcopal Church gave $2,500, and Circular Congregational Church will pay the utilities the first two months, Powell said. A director soon will be hired.
On Saturday, St. Stephen's is hosting a house tour, auction and garden party to raise money for its ministries, especially Magdalene House. Items at auction include a Rhett Thurman painting, authentic Persian rug, lunch at The Sanctuary, classes at Charleston Cooks!, antiques and jewelry, legal services, massage and acupuncture sessions and various getaways.
Powell said raising money sometimes can be challenging. "Prejudice causes misperceptions," she said.
Potential donors need to be reminded that they are not helping to pay for prostitution and drug abuse; rather, they are helping to stop it.
The purpose of Magdalene House is to provide a spiritual environment, not a religious one, Powell said. Preaching the gospel is not part of the plan, and that has troubled some churches who otherwise might provide support. But she stands firm: The project can succeed only if all women, regardless of religious affiliation, are welcomed. Love and respect are paramount, not Christian ideology, she said.
A team of ministers
Mount Moriah 's Step Ahead ministry consists of a team of 15 women led by Dr. Brenda Nelson. The ministry is one of more than 60 at the 3,300-member church and works closely with Mark Cowell and his staff, helping to reunite families, offering spiritual guidance and "holistic healing." The ministry team, though focused on bringing women suffering from addiction closer to Christ, does not ignore material and physical needs, Nelson said. The church maintains a food pantry and provides limited emergency financial assistance.
When they received word of the changes under way at the Charleston Center, the Step Ahead ministry team members decided to step in and ensure that housing continued to be part of the recovery experience, Nelson said. The plan for the House of Ruth, named both for the Ruth of the Old Testament and for the wife of Mount Moriah Pastor A.G. Robinson, quickly was hatched.
Nelson said "Ruth" also serves as an acronym for Restoration and recovery, Uniting families, Treatment that's spiritually based and Healing that's holistic. It is no coincidence the themes of the Book of Ruth and the House of Ruth - restoration, loyalty and the love of God - are shared.
A story of redemption
Chinique Brown was born in New York City. When she was in the sixth grade, her parents divorced, and her mother, Sallie, took her and her five siblings to Branchville, where Brown endured a tumultuous adolescence. Attached to her father, Ezra, who stayed in New York, Brown found the separation trying. She was angry at her parents for propelling her into such changed circumstances.
"I had to stay with her, but I wanted to be with him," she said. "I wanted them to be together."
Brown, 39, is the youngest of the six children, and in Branchville, it was the older siblings - especially the three boys - who received most of their mother's attention, she said.
Her self-esteem plummeted. She began to smoke marijuana. Though she excelled at volleyball and other sports, athletics seemed to offer her little consolation.
In high school she tried powdered cocaine. Then crack.
"I had been getting high since I was 8 years old," she said.
But on Aug. 14, 2002, her life changed. Her brother, Keith, called the previous Monday to tell her he was coming that weekend to take her baby away.
Others had threatened to do so before, she said, but this time was different. "I knew he was serious." Keith had been enduring constant pleas from their mother to intervene, to do something about his sister's addiction, to help save the child.
Brown felt as though her family was twisting her arm, so she drove herself to the Charleston Center "to get Mom and Dad off my back." She said she got high every day that week in anticipation of the forced abstinence soon to come. She spent all the money her father sent from New York on drugs. She barely had enough gas in the car to reach the clinic. She was still in denial.
"I never knew I had a problem, I didn't think I was an addict," she said.
Her parents were "great enablers," she said, keeping her afloat, supporting her financially. "I didn't hit the bottom I should have hit long ago because they always bailed me out."
She spent two unhappy months at the Charleston Center before learning about the Step Ahead program. At her father's insistence, she joined it and spent Thursday nights at a women's Bible study class sponsored by Mount Moriah. Soon, she was living each week so she could reach Thursday night. Nelson became a mentor, showing Brown that she was not alone, that God's redemption was also for her.
Her father visited, though he was sick with cancer. He visited his daughter when she was at the clinic, and he visited her when she was living in the Step Ahead residence.
In September 2004, Brown traveled to New York. Two days after she left, her father died.
In November 2004, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Brown visited her in Branchville the next month and took care of her until her death in March 2005.
Less than a year later, in February 2006, Brown's sister, Vickie Hills-
man, was badly injured in a car crash. Hillsman spent six months in a coma, then died.
Throughout this period of loss, Nelson was there, offering Brown support, bolstering her faith. The other women of Mount Moriah were there, too.
When Brown was caring for her mother in Branchville, she never missed a Sunday service at Mount Moriah.
Today, Brown is the mentor. She started a 12-step recovery program at the church and hosts a candlelight meeting on Monday nights and Saturday mornings. She understands the importance of a support system. She is part of one now.
Nelson said she hopes to find property soon so the House of Ruth can be opened this summer. A financing plan is in place, and the church has enough resources to furnish the house, hire a small staff and make sure residents are fed, she said. Initially, the enterprise will be wholly sponsored by the church, but Nelson and Robinson said the goal is to spin it off as an independent nonprofit.
Brown serves on the board and might eventually become the facility's director, Nelson said.
"It's just all a miracle," Brown replied, clear eyes open to the world, her face expressing struggle and grace.
Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.
By the numbers
From 2003 through 2006, the Charleston Center helped about 110 women in the Step Ahead program recover from drug addiction.
--89 percent moved into safe housing by the end of treatment.
--66 percent obtained employment.
--100 percent retained or regained custody of their children.
If you go
WHAT: House Tour, Auction and Garden Party.
WHERE: St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, 67 Anson St., downtown Charleston.
WHEN: Saturday, 2:30-6:30 p.m.
COST: $25 in advance, $30 at the door.
For more information, and to buy tickets, visit www.ststephens-charleston.org or call 723-8966.