Emily
22, California
On the outside, Emily appeared to be a positive, bubbly young woman. She is very bright, and people enjoyed being around her. But inside, Emily was full of turmoil; turmoil she desperately tried to escape.
“I started binging and purging when I was 10. I started smoking, drinking, and abusing diet pills when I was 13. I started doing hard drugs when I was 16. Until I came to A Friend’s House, there was never a time in my life when I was not involved in at least one of the aforementioned behaviors.”
She had a successful first year in college, but the following summer was terrible. “After three years sobriety from alcohol and drugs, I started drinking almost every night. Before I knew it, summer was gone and I was supposed to return to school. I made a promise to myself that I would not continue to drink at school, but I broke it within six hours of arriving there.” By the middle of that semester, Emily was spending more time at off-campus parties then in her classes.
“I decided that the only way to break the cycle would be to remove myself completely from the environment. I left school and returned home, and though I managed to get the drinking under control, my depression continued to get worse. I knew that I needed a lot of help if I really wanted to change.”
Emily found A Friend's House, and called to get information about the program. “Staff made me aware as an applicant that participating in the program here would be hard work, but the truth is that the work started when I filled out the application. In order to complete that vital step, I had to be brutally honest with myself about the state of my life. I also had to risk being vulnerable with people I had never met. Perhaps most frighteningly, I had to commit to spending about a year of my life working on issues that I had been trying to avoid for a decade.”
Emily was accepted into the program, and moved in. After six months in the program she started to recognize how much she was changing. “One of the best things I learned here is to change the way I think. One of the groups we do here focuses almost exclusively on acknowledging our distorted thoughts and changing them. I really hadn’t ever realized how much of an effect my own thoughts had on me—I hadn’t even taken the time to acknowledge what my thoughts were. They were playing like a record on repeat in the back of my mind for so long that I was actually surprised when I discovered just how much negative self-talk I was engaged in at any given moment.”
She also stopped using her unhealthy coping skills, which is good, but she realized it’s not just about coping skills. “It’s about coming to terms with my past. It’s about learning to treat everyone with love and mercy, myself included. It’s about mending some relationships and letting go of others. And it’s about discovering that these are things that sometimes have to be repeated day after day, and that that’s okay.”
Emily graduated from A Friend's House just less than a year after entering. She moved back to her home state, has an apartment and a job. She is doing well, and loving life.
“I honestly don’t know where I would be right now if I had not come to A Friend’s House. For many years, I just sort of accepted that I may never be truly happy. Even at the times when I was hopeful that someday I would know what it meant to really experience joy, it was mostly just a distant dream. Coming here has shown me that joy is possible.
For the first time I can remember, I am genuinely excited about life—not about upcoming events, but about simply living. A Friend’s House is the instrument that God used to show me that joy is a reality. For that, I am eternally grateful.”
