“It’s been life changing.” Jessica’s journey from addiction to supporting peers

Jessica Newman recalls experiencing “a lot of trauma” as a child. She felt like there was no one willing, or able, to truly listen to her when she tried to express what she was feeling. The isolation was painful.  “I think when people aren’t being heard, they will outsource [to] anyone who will listen,” she reflected, “and the people that would listen to me were using drugs.”

She turned to drugs as a way to escape the hurt she carried, spending the next 16 years living in addiction.  After years of being told that she was weak, she decided instead that she was a “warrior,” and sought help at the Bert Nash Center. 

She felt empowered in group therapy where she finally had the space to share openly about her experiences and vulnerability. But it was joining the Bert Nash Center team as a Peer Support Specialist and using her lived experience to help others navigate their own challenges that brought her to a new level of recovery and healing.

“I spent a lot of years feeling lonely,” Jessica said. 

Today, she is determined to make sure everyone who needs to hear it knows they are not alone.

She calls her work with clients – something she never thought she’d have the opportunity to do – her “heart and soul.”

She still marvels at the full-circle concept of working at an agency that was “so dear” to her heart and helped her rebuild her life.

“To be able to see that love every day,” she added “it’s been life changing.”