Cynthia’s Story
By: Micaela Meyer, Marketing Assistant, Center for Human Services
“I was used to chaos,” said Cynthia Stanfill. It was what she knew growing up, and she wasn’t phased when she encountered it in treatment. With her mom and dad in and out of prison, her grandmother raised her and her four siblings. She began drinking and smoking marijuana at around the age of 15, and found herself in an abusive relationship at 17 and with 2 children shortly thereafter. The weight of the hurt she experienced in the relationship led her to use harder substances, and she became homeless on the streets with her two children until CPS took them.
It was 10 years ago that Cynthia sought residential treatment at Nirvana for 60 days and then went into The Redwood Family Center’s Sober Living quarters.
“It was very hard at first. It can be a lot of chaos in a setting where there’s a lot of women. I was used to the chaos and loudness,” she said. “I feared getting in a fight with another woman or getting kicked out. I’d been kicked out of so many places before. That fear of not belonging was there a lot. I honestly didn’t see myself making it through or getting my kids back when I first started.”
A pivotal moment in her time at Redwood came when she became pregnant with her third child one year in. Despite being one year clean, CPS took the child. “That is when I realized that either I needed to be the mom that my kids deserved or they weren’t coming home to me. I had been doing everything I was asked, but I hadn’t seen myself doing it longterm and didn’t know what that would look like for me in the future.” Through the doubt and fears, Cynthia began to see the benefits of her time at Redwood, and her life began to change for the better. In her time at Redwood, she spent 18 months in sober living and 2 years in Redwood’s graduate housing. She also took part in the First Step Program for about a year.
“I learned to communicate with others,” she recalled. “I learned to be on a schedule. I learned that I wasn’t gonna get kicked out just because I had a bad day. I could have a bad day, and they were gracious, loving, and understanding.”
By 2015, Cynthia became a mentor mom for Sierra Vista Child & Family Services, and by 2017, she began working for Center for Human Services as a Substance Abuse Counselor. She works at Patterson FRC part of the time, and she does evening and Juvenile Justice groups at the Center for Human Services main office. Today, she lives with her spouse and her three children. She goes to school and works full time, and she recently bought her first home.
In summing up how she is today, Cynthia said, “I feel at peace. I feel like all of those things that I couldn’t imagine my life being have come true.” With greater structure and stability, Cynthia looks forward to seeing what the future holds.