Sunrises, Gratitude and Peace Make Recovery Bright
(Trigger Warning: This story includes references to domestic violence, sexual assault, trauma and alcohol use. It follows a person in recovery from alcohol use disorder. Please read only if you feel emotionally safe and grounded enough to do so.)
No matter the weather, time of year, or outside temperature, Jessica steps onto her front porch every morning to watch the sunrise. She thinks back to where she was one year ago. And even on those days when the sun doesn’t shine brightly and clouds fill the sky, Jessica knows that her crystal blue eyes and her life now, in sobriety and recovery, are shining the brightest they’ve ever shone.
“I am so happy, lifted, and energized,” Jessica said. “I am going to be OK.”
She’s come a long way. Looking back on Jessica’s life, she’s experienced lots of things where she didn’t know if she would be OK.
In the early 2000s, Jessica and her daughter, just a toddler at the time, moved from Oregon to escape her abusive partner with whom she shared a daughter. Over the years, Jessica and her daughter’s relocation efforts to hide out and start a new life would take them to Arizona, Washington and Idaho, eventually ending up in Noble, Oklahoma, around 2010 to be with one of her sisters. But no matter how careful or discreet Jessica tried to be every time they relocated, he would always find them.
“I bought a car and a map and went to Arizona,” Jessica said. “There was a domestic violence shelter that had just opened up. I was their first client. I got a job and an apartment. He found me after a year. I learned a lesson about keeping in touch with people. That’s how he found me.”
No matter where she and her daughter settled, “He kept finding me,” she said.
Threats of violence often followed those frightening encounters. When he returned when their daughter was 18, he told Jessica he wanted to know his child. Jessica knew she couldn’t let that happen.
It was during all these years of dealing with domestic abuse and the fear of being found that Jessica’s drinking began.
“In my 40s, I started drinking, binge drinking, every so often,” Jessica said. “One time I went three years without binging.”
Jessica, born in 1962, described her three-day drinking binges as consuming one pint of vodka on day 1, two pints on day 2 and a pint or two on day 3.
“I was at home and would go to sleep. You do things you don’t remember,” she said.
“My drinking started during the domestic violence. Toward the end, I didn’t drink daily, more like binge drinking,” she said. “When I was with him, he drank, so I didn’t want to.”
Before escaping the domestic violence horrors, Jessica’s family never understood why she stayed in the relationship.
“‘You’re choosing to stay,’ they would say. They were just horrible. It was the hardest thing to accept and the biggest shame. How could I let that happen to me?” she said.
“I didn’t want to lie to cover up my addiction. I wanted to be honest. Walking in those doors was a little hard. But I did it.”
Fast forward to a few years ago when Jessica entered the empty nest chapter of her life. She felt lost and no longer knew what her identity was.
“My daughter moved out at 23,” Jessica said. “Who am I, what am I? How do I become me again? I was all alone.”
Even though they no longer lived together, her daughter could sense that something was going on with her mom. It was the challenges of dealing with her daughter moving out that made Jessica’s binge drinking worsen. She reached a point where she knew her life needed to change. Her lowest moment came in December 2024 when she received a driving under the influence (DUI) criminal charge.
“I had been thinking about getting treatment six – 12 months prior to getting my DUI,” Jessica said. “I would get overwhelmed, my mom was dying, I would drink. I had panic attacks and anxiety, pressures of daily life. The DUI opened my eyes. I didn’t want to destroy the relationship with my daughter.”
How did Jessica find The Virtue Center to help her overcome her alcohol addiction? She did her due diligence with researching facilities because she had heard horrible things about treatment. She even asked for a little divine intervention in finding the best treatment facility.
“God, please send me to where I need to be,” Jessica prayed.
She called The Virtue Center and came in for a screening and assessment.
“I had no idea what to expect at my screening,” Jessica said. “I didn’t want to lie to cover up my addiction. I wanted to be honest. Walking in those doors was a little hard. But I did it.”
Jessica’s treatment includes one-on-one therapy, group sessions, a prescribed medication and a referral to vocational rehab with a job coach. She lets nothing stand in her way of attending her sessions and joked that she’s often at The Virtue Center more than she’s at home.
Of all the life skills and coping mechanisms she’s learning in treatment, she laughed when saying, “I’m running with it like I stole it!”
The first time she said, “I am an alcoholic” in a group session was “so freeing. I was safe and not judged.”
Two notable experiences from her group sessions stand out in Jessica’s mind. One was an exercise where they had two pieces of paper. One had a picture of a toolbox, and Jessica had to fill her toolbox with the coping tools/skills she’s learned at The Virtue Center. The other paper showed a plate, and Jessica was asked to list all the things in life she was dealing with. The visuals of both exercises left a big impression on her. Jessica’s other memorable experience was hearing another client in group point to her say, “I want to be like her.”
Jessica’s therapy at The Virtue Center has uncovered years of trauma in her life including never feeling like she belonged in her family and always being treated differently, like an outcast. She’s one of five children, having three older siblings and one younger.
“My experience here has been so great... It feels so safe here. I have excitement when I walk in the doors.”
In addition to always feeling unloved and unworthy by her family, Jessica experienced sexual assault as a child and teenager.
In dealing with her mom’s passing earlier this year, she felt relief and then guilt. Jessica has learned through therapy that the way she was treated was on her parents and not her.
“How they’ve treated me my whole life says everything about them and nothing about me.”
“My therapist Ashley told me that addiction is a symptom of your trauma,” she said. “Addiction and trauma go together. It all made sense. It was a lightbulb moment. I discovered in therapy that I’ve been in survival mode for years.”
In almost a year of being a Virtue Center client, Jessica’s trauma level has gone from 75 to 20.
“My experience here has been so great,” she said. “I can’t say one negative thing. It feels so safe here. I have excitement when I walk in the doors.”
“I know without a shadow of a doubt that God put me here,” she said. “He gave me the people I needed.”
While Jessica feels the word “work” is daunting to those wanting to become sober and live in recovery, she said people have to be willing to accept and use what they learn at The Virtue Center.
“Recovery has not been hard for me,” she said. “I use the tools – keep the peace, be grateful, change my self-talk, be grateful you’re sober, you’re mending with your family. Just show up. The formula here works.”
At the time of this interview, Jessica had just passed her 10-month sobriety anniversary. Dec. 22, 2025, will be one year for her. What would her daughter say now about her mom?
“I have my mother back,” Jessica said, smiling.
Jessica is most proud of herself for taking that first step to get help for her alcohol addiction.
“I chose to fix my addiction,” she said. “For an addict to do that, that’s so hard. The best day of the week is when I visit The Virtue Center. My step is lighter. My heart is lighter. I feel so good when I walk out of here. They gave me the freedom to choose what works for me here. I can self-advocate and make choices, and they encourage it. The peace and dignity I have found…my confidence is back as is my self worth. I have nothing to hide anymore. I can be me again. To feel that freedom to be me is quite amazing.
“Besides my daughter, this has been the best thing I’ve ever done. There are no words to tell what it’s given me and what it’s done for me. I’ve never been supported. Here, I’m being supported and believed in. I cannot see myself ever going back.”
She added, “I never knew what living in the moment was until I came here. I was set free the first time I said ‘I am an alcoholic.’’’
There, but for the grace of God, go I…these words came to mind when Jessica thought about where she was, where she could have been and where she is now in sobriety and recovery.
As Dec. 22, 2025 approaches, Jessica may or may not have a big party planned to honor her one-year sobriety anniversary. But her day will more than likely include watching the sunrise, saying a prayer and giving thanks for the peace she’s found these last 12 months.
“Recovery is a beautiful thing,” she said.
Photography by: Joseph Singleton | Turning The World
Jan S. Astani
Board Member, and Contributing Author
