Meet Barbara!

Barbara was born in Seattle into a nice middle class family in March of 1966. By 1979 while she was still in her early teens she had started to experiment with crack cocaine. While keeping it somewhat under control during her early teens things started to spiral shortly after starting high school. It all started hanging out with friends and using drugs at parties but by then she was already becoming addicted. After having her first two children at a young age and multiple attempts at getting clean and sober it seemed that things were only getting worse. Unfortunately, the addiction only became stronger and threw her into a world of poverty, abuse, neglect, and homelessness that spanned over 42 years and 6 children.
In April 2020 with the continued use of crack and meth her health began to decline and her leg had to be amputated. After the amputation she made the very hard decision to reach out to family for help getting clean and putting her life back together. During a short stay with family she heard about Community House and the CHESS programs and decided that she wanted to give it her best shot.

In October of 2020 she was taken into the CHESS program and never looked back. During her stay at CHESS she stayed on top of and utilized every service available to her including mental health and substance use disorder treatment as well as building back the relationships with her family that had been broken for decades. She also regained control of her life financially with the help of the CHESS program assisting getting her enrolled with SSI along with a consistent budgeting plan that allowed for savings. With learning these new skills she only continued to progress even beyond her own expectations. With a lot of hard work and ups and downs she graduated from her substance use disorder classes in October of 2021. Just one month later she received a housing voucher using the assistance of her housing specialist at CHESS.

December of 2021 she found her very first apartment and with much excitement moved out of the CHESS program and into stable housing. Since moving into her own place she has continued to utilize the skills that she learned over the previous year to maintain her sobriety as well as mending past relationships. She has also continued to take the opportunity to give back by volunteering her time to helping people still in the shelter and handing out hot meals to the homeless on holidays.