By: Micaela Meyer, Marketing Assistant, Center for Human Services

On an afternoon in March of 2017, Annika Lindstrom sat in a car on the way from the Modesto Gospel Mission, where she had been staying, to The Redwood Family Center. “Are you done?” a Redwood employee asked from the driver’s seat, firmly but compassionately.

At the time, Annika was addicted to pills, heroin, and meth. She had been kicked out of multiple rehab centers in Fresno, and she had been turned away from Redwood a week prior because she could not provide a clean drug test. She wasn’t ready before, but this time would be different.

“I felt safe,” she recalls. “And I felt like it was time.” As the car came to a halt in front of Redwood, the employee said, “Welcome home.” Though Annika didn’t know it at the time, those words were prophetic. She walked up to the door, her arms sore and her wrists indented from the handles of the trash bags she carried her belongings in. Her step through the doorway became a step toward the new life that lay ahead of her.

“I was completely lost, desperate, and exhausted,” she remembers. “And I was tired of using, tired of living that life, tired of having nothing, and tired of having zero relationship with my family.” Annika spent 2 years in Redwood’s program, progressing through the stages of recovery from detox, to treatment, to sober living, to the grad house. It didn’t come easy, and she faced setbacks along the way.

“They made sure that I had the opportunity to get it together again right away,” she said. As she relapsed, she was offered grace and a chance to start over. Through the hardships that came with detoxing, she found encouragement from those who were further along in recovery and current employees who had worked through Redwood’s program themselves.

“You feel terrible, but you’re also seeing the people who have made it through detox and are feeling better.” She thought to herself, “If I keep going, I can get to where they’re at.” Annika describes the recovery process not only as quitting a habit but as building an entirely different life. “We forget how to live like normal human beings when we’re in active addiction,” she said. “We use drugs to get rid of any negative feelings, avoid responsibilities, and numb our minds, bodies, and spirits of any kind of pain or trauma. It’s a lot of self-medicating but also detaching from ourselves.” A main component of the healing process was learning how to apply healthy coping techniques and regulate emotions–all at a manageable pace and in small steps.

“It’s so helpful to move a little bit at a time. By the time you get to normal life, you’ve learned how to deal with emotions, handle stress, pay bills, be responsible–and do all of those things clean.” After moving out of Redwood, Annika moved in with two other women in recovery. She had been working at a grocery store while in treatment, and she said, “I was ready for something that fed my spirit and felt like a passion of mine.” She returned to Redwood with a new purpose: giving back to the agency and community that had supported her. Beginning with a graveyard shift and moving into the day shift, she found that her story could provide hope for her clients and that she wanted more than anything to approach them with love, compassion, and empathy.

“We want to fight for those women when they don’t have the strength to fight for themselves. We want to love them when they don’t love themselves. We want to build them up until they are able to take steps forward on their own.”

After working at Redwood, she began taking classes at Modesto Junior College studying Human Services and Chemical Dependency, and seven months ago, she took a position as a Substance Use Disorder Counselor in Center for Human Services’ Youth Opioid Response program. In this role, she educates youth on addiction and comes alongside them when they are ready to seek recovery. Though she was sad and nervous to leave Redwood, the place she called home, she said, “I could tell that people at CHS were happy, taken care of, and cared about each other. That eased my fears.”

Today, Annika is three and a half years clean and has a car, a roof over her head, a career, and goals to continue her education. “I haven’t arrived, and I don’t think I ever will. And I’m actually really okay with that,” she said. Though she proclaimed “I’m done” to addiction, she sees recovery as a continuous process. This has translated into a growth mindset in other areas of her life. Wherever life takes her next, she knows one thing: “I don’t want to ever stop pushing forward, learning new things, or working on myself.”

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