Trisha’s Story

I thought I was going to work at Burger King for the rest of my life. Life was nothing. Just work and using. I grew up in Willmar on the same land my mom grew up on. I remember how clear the stars were and the long, wide vegetable garden we would grow every summer, but my childhood was shaded with abuse.

At 18 I started smoking marijuana and then at 20 I was introduced to meth. It took over the next three years of my life. I lost my older children to the system before they reached their second birthdays. Addiction cut off dreams of a bigger life and narrowed my options down to getting the next high.

Addiction eventually cornered me into a jail cell, high off meth and hallucinating. I was arrested five months after I gave birth to a stillborn baby boy, locked in a holding area for two weeks, delirious and imagining I could crawl through the little slot in the jail door. I had tried to kill myself in the weeks following my baby’s death, but my sister found me, and I survived. There was a reason I was still alive. I had to get sober to figure out why. 

I was kicked out of my first treatment center when they discovered I was pregnant. I arrived at Wayside Family Treatment and the support I felt was immediate.