Choices.
The first night Julianna could leave the Dove House for an overnight pass, she faced a choice.
Her cousin had overdosed and been taken to an Evansville hospital. He wasn’t expected to live.
But Evansville was an open door to a past she was attempting to overcome through the Dove Recovery House in Jasper.
Temptation tempts, but choices hold the power.
Julianna wondered if she should go with these family members who were her friends; she knew it would bring her within touching distance of her previous choices. Repercussions of those choices she continues to heal from.
She called the House and said she was cutting her night off early–coming home.
Making a new choice.
In recovery, decisions dictate outcomes.
For many, the first right decision is to come to the Dove House.
The insidious nature of substance abuse is in its inexplicable strength to sway you into thinking you can stay in control while alienating you from anyone who can help.
At 18, with another arrest connected to substance use, Nicole wasn’t going to graduate with the rest of her Jasper High School class. She could see the well-worn path before her. “I had been in and out of juvenile institutions my whole life,” she admitted. “I was just mean, angry all the time.”
In the clarity of missing that graduation milestone and losing her freedom, Nicole knew she needed to make a different choice.
“I didn’t want to live the rest of my life doing the things I was doing,” she said. “I decided to come here and get the help I really needed.”
Walking into the Dove House on June 12 was a step into a new story for her future. She was met with the words, “Welcome home,” just like every other woman entering the home for the first time.
Nicole’s family had just been greatly expanded, but just like every Dove, she still had some healing to go through before she would accept this new family.
“Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.”
“A Painful Case” by James Joyce.
Substance abuse disorder leads many to an existence mirroring Joyce’s character in this sad story. It is a life lived in the third person.
“Most of the people we work with, their average age of first use is 13. Some as early as 9 or 10,” Megan Durlauf, director of the Jasper location, explained, adding that most of the women have experienced trauma as well.
Those factors curtail their continued mental and emotional maturity. They stop experiencing life in the first person and the essential moments that help people develop an identity are missing.
“When you are living in a place of almost complete dissociation, you are not creating a personhood,” she added.
Coming to terms with yourself is an essential step in recovery. How can you forgive yourself if you don’t know who you really are, much less love yourself?
The first phase in the Dove House is designed to remove paths to escapism. No cellphones, no leaving the house, limited access to the outside world through a shared landline downstairs. It is 30 days designed to push participants inward. Moving them from living life in the third person to experiencing it firsthand.
It also allows the brain to heal enough to clarify their thinking.
Through this self-examination and with help from the staff, they can allow themselves a bit of grace.
It is also when most Doves say they are going to leave.
“I joke that you’ve never lived in a Dove House unless you’ve said you were going to leave in your first week,” said Dove Recovery House clinical manager Dana Wood.
She works with the Doves during this time to help them deal with their past traumas and overcome the stigmas of their decisions.
Breakthroughs begin to happen when a Dove realizes they hold the power over their own lives. Their wanting to leave is usually the catalyst for that realization.
“No one is keeping you here. The door’s unlocked, you can walk out the front door,” Wood tells them. “It is your choice. This is your choice.”
Many times, she sees a power shift take place with the women at that moment.
“They realize, ‘Oh yeah, no one is forcing me to be here. It is my decision,'” Wood said. “When you render that power back to the client, that’s when you see that shift.”
Waiting for them to love themselves enough to want to take control of their lives is difficult. When it happens, though, it is so rewarding.
“It’s all in those first 30 days,” said Durlauf. “That’s why we say all the time, ‘I’ll love you until you’re ready to love yourself.’ And everybody gets to that point where they’re like, ‘I get it now. Thanks for loving me because I’m ready. Now I can love myself.'”
Once that occurs, it becomes easier to have healthy relationships. And in the commonality of overcoming past traumas and substance abuse, the family forms.
Olivia used to blame everybody else for her choices. Now, she understands that sobriety is a personal choice; she made those choices before, but she’s making better choices now.
“I wish that people could love you into sobriety, because I would have been sober a long time ago,” Olivia said.
She grew up around substance abuse and began drinking at around 15 years old. At 16, she started smoking marijuana. She was in and out of school until she finally dropped out altogether.
“I had no stability in my life,” Olivia said.
Then, her dad offered her a pill.
“I just wanted that connection with my dad I guess,” she said about that moment. “I knew that that was the only way to get it. He just wanted friends.”
She continued using different drugs, and at around 24, she tried meth. “It was like really downhill after that, you know,” Olivia said. “There was no going back.”
Relationships crashed, she crashed, lost her children, lost everything. She never tried to take her life, but there were times she didn’t want to live.
“I would do anything that was offered to me drug-wise,” she said. “I would have been okay if it (death) happened–which I’m so glad it didn’t.”
She was at a low point, sitting on her dad’s couch, when she decided to give her pain to God.
“Me and my dad had just gotten into a really big fight,” she said. “I was just miserable. I felt like I was tearing apart every relationship in my life.”
She just told God she didn’t want to live like this anymore.
The next day, police stopped by to follow up on the disturbance from the argument. She ended up in jail, and her toddler son was placed into foster care. Olivia was devastated.
“It might not have been the sign I wanted, but it was a sign that I needed,” she admitted.
Crying in her jail cell, she said there came a moment of peace as she resolved to get sober. Then, the DCS caseworker mentioned the Dove Recovery House would be opening in Jasper soon. She applied and walked through the door on opening day.
Welcome home had little meaning for her as she entered. She struggled with relationships, a symptom of years of the isolating effects of substance use. Trusting others was tough. But through the love of her son’s foster family and the women at the Dove House, she slowly healed.
“Besides my family, this is the first time I’ve ever felt unconditionally loved,” Olivia said. “It was very overwhelming at first and very uncomfortable.”
Through a relationship with God and the people pouring into her life, Olivia was able to come to terms with her past–a continuing process– and gain a new family.
Strengthened by the resolve to stay on this new path, Olivia has faced down temptations outside the safety of the Dove House and made better choices.
On November 26, 2023, a little over a year after entering the Dove Recovery House, Olivia received her one-year sobriety chip in a room packed with new and old family and friends. Her sponsor told the crowd she had never intended to pass along the one-year chip she had earned years ago. But they say you know when it is the right time to pass it on, she admitted before handing it to Olivia.
“I’ve never really finished anything in my life, you know,” Olivia said. “Doing this gave me the confidence. I don’t ever want to go back to that life.”
Olivia transitioned from the home into her new apartment in December. She misses her family at the Dove Recovery House. Leaving the nest is hard, but she knows someone else needs her bed.
Many of the Doves share that their favorite time is in the evening as they gather in the common room downstairs. Simply being together around the table or on the couches. Those communal moments around food and conversation open up more and more as those walls of distrust come down.
Nicole revels in the women around her. As the youngest in the home–but with the wisdom that comes through wrong choices–she respects their insight. She understands that her choice to go to the Dove Recovery House has changed her path in life.
After going through her 30 days, Nicole reached out to the high school and completed the classes necessary to earn her diploma. The Doves held her graduation at the house, complete with streamers, a gown, mortarboard, tassels and “Pomp and Circumstances” playing as she accepted her diploma.
Choices have repercussions.
Julianna’s cousin didn’t die.
A few days after leaving the hospital, he and his girlfriend reached out to her. Julianna used to be the one they came to for drugs. This time, they were seeking recovery.
Julianna passed along the packets for them to apply to the recovery programs. Her cousin was recently accepted into Behind the Wire–a men’s recovery program based in Loogootee and expanding into Jasper.
Durlauf said Julianna’s choice that night potentially changed two more people’s lives. The journey to sobriety is made up of individual choices, but that journey has its rewards along the way for the Doves and others around them.
Durlauf and the rest of the staff at the Dove Recovery House have the privilege of walking alongside these women, traveling companions for the journey and witnesses to the treasures uncovered in their lives.
They get to see things like Olivia reconciling her relationship with her father before he passed away, Julianna being baptized with her cousin at Behind the Wire, Nicole looking forward to culinary school, women getting their children back, obtaining their driver’s licenses, receiving their first paycheck and learning to love themselves and be loved.
All this and so much more through the house of better choices.
Below are some photos from this year’s Christmas Celebration. A celebration made possible by donations from businesses and groups throughout the community.
