With help, she’s sober and happy

Opinion

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This article was published 02/04/2011 (5272 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO — At 34, Janey was smoking crack in a public bathroom when she learned from a dollar-store pregnancy test kit she was pregnant with her third child.

“I’m totally not proud of this,” she said, more than a year later.

“Here I am at the worst point of my life,” the tall, slim, fair-haired woman recalled. “I didn’t know if I wanted the baby. I kept using,” she said. “A week and a half later I freaked.” She was bleeding, and feared she was losing the child. “That’s when I knew ‘I want this baby.’ ” She called a detox line and got a hospital bed. “I just knew this was the end.”

 

Fortunately, she was in Toronto and got help from Breaking the Cycle. The one-stop shop for moms like her, on Queen Street downtown, had all the services she needed in one place. And it offered the nurturing she never received from the seemingly “good” home she ran away from at the age of 12.

“This place has helped me out so much… They’re so non-judgmental.”

More than a year later, she’s clean and sober and caring for her happy, healthy baby boy.

“He’s my blessing,” said the woman, who didn’t want her name or photo published. She’s articulate but speaks slowly as though she may be a little punch drunk. Given the drug abuse and physical violence she experienced, that could be the case.

The incest survivor ran away from home and ended up sexually exploited on the streets of Toronto, she said. She had a baby at 15 and gave it up. At 22, when she was in an “extremely abusive situation,” she had another baby she couldn’t keep.

For a time, she got it together. She went to college and art school and got a good job. On the surface, she appeared a success.

“The money was good. My place was good.”

But she had never healed from her early pain.

“That’s when I started my downfall.”

First it was cocaine. Then crack. Things got worse. She lost her job, resorted to prostitution to feed her habit and was in one abusive relationship after the other.

In her early 30s, she got pregnant again, but this time it was different. She was ready for help and an outreach worker from Breaking the Cycle took her under her wing.

“I loved my pregnancy. I gained 110 pounds… I felt beautiful.”

When her son was born, “He looked like an eagle, with his arms stretched out and he screamed. He’s been awesome. He’s the best,” she said.

“He’s perfect. The doctor thinks he’s perfect.”

Now she has a support network, decent housing, nutrition and on-site child care while she gets addiction counselling, mentoring and training to be a good parent. There’s also a corrections worker and a pediatrician who work out of the centre on certain days so the women don’t have to find sitters and run all over the city for appointments.

The program is run out of a retrofitted old church and nurtures the street women who never had a safe place to call home. There are mothering women everywhere. The kitchen and dining area are adjacent to the play area for the children. The counselling rooms are walled with photos of moms and babies.

“We work here together, not in an office,” said executive director Margaret Leslie. The moms and kids come to them in a homey setting, and everyone on staff gets to know them.

If the mom relapses and the kid goes into care, the staff at Breaking the Cycle stay in contact with the child, said Leslie. Kids who disappear into the system are at risk, she said.

Staff members have been there for years — and have become touchstones for the children and the women who’ve lacked stable, healthy relationships.

“You get attached to them,” said Joan Sailsman, who has cared for close to 2,000 kids in the last decade. She’s taught their moms how to be moms.

In parenting classes, she sees women who don’t make eye contact with their babies. Nurturing is a skill that sometimes needs to be learned, Sailsman said. The grandmotherly child-development councillor will speak for the baby and ask the mom to hold the baby and look into their eyes or sing to them or rock them.

The federally-funded program nurtures but, from a cold and calculating perspective, it’s also a wise investment, said Leslie.

For every one dollar spent on prevention, the system saves $7 down the road in treatment, incarceration and the aftermath, the program’s executive director said.

Breaking the Cycle got its start in 1995 after an inquest into the deaths of Toronto children who’d fallen through the cracks of the social safety net. The kids were born to parents who grew up with neglect, addiction, poverty, crime and abuse. With government funding and support, workers in addictions and child welfare, health care and corrections got together and came up with Breaking the Cycle to stop family histories from repeating.

Now Sailsman is starting to see some of the babies growing up, getting off to a good start, and coming back for a visit.

“When they come back, we’re happy to see them.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca