Katherine Marsh referred to it as “the Dad speech.” It was a frank talk with her father, who certainly wasn’t mincing words. He told her she was on the verge of prompting the state to take custody of her child.

“He sat me down,” she said. “He told me, ‘You’re doing it again. And if you keep it up, you’re going to lose Gabby.”

Marsh was 42, and in her past she had to give up her five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter because of her drug use. At present, those children are living with her ex-husband’s parents, who ended up adopting them. “I was going down that path again,” she said. “After my father talked to me, I cried for two days straight. Then, by the grace of God, I found this place.”

CHD’s Grace House, one of the few residential treatment programs designed for mothers in western Massachusetts, enabled her to get her life back together while living with her three-year-old daughter. “At the time, I didn’t even know Grace House existed,” she said.

Marsh had neurodevelopmental disorders growing up, including ADD and ADHD, and there were substance use problems in her family. Her father gained custody of her when she was eight years old because of her mother’s alcohol and cocaine use. By any standard, Marsh has experienced much trauma, with her husband passing away, a live-in boyfriend dying by suicide, and another boyfriend fatally overdosing. She had dabbled in drugs in adolescence, including LSD, ecstasy, and cocaine, but then a boyfriend turned her on to heroin. “I was hooked,” she said.

She did have stints of sobriety, including periods of four years, two years, and a year, but by the time her father had invited her and Gabby to live with him, “I was causing a tornado in my life,” she said.

However, at Grace House, while Gabby was in daycare on weekdays, Marsh could focus on her own mental health and sobriety during the day, and participate in such groups as Anger Management and Art Therapy—refreshing, compared to her experience at other agencies, which consisted of “nonstop programming” from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.—“worksheets all day and not much else,” she said. “Plus, the staff at Grace House are really available. In other programs, you have to put a request in to talk to somebody, but here you can just knock on their door. If you need Liz [program director Elizabeth Finn], you can just go talk to her.” She also mentioned Grace House outings to local farmer’s markets, the library, and the beach at the Daughters of the American Revolution State Forest in Goshen, MA.

Marsh, who graduated from Grace House in August, is on the verge of getting her driver’s license back, and entering the Medical Billing and Coding program at Springfield Technical Community College. Her situation is a far cry from where she was when she heard the “dad speech.” But she’s glad she listened to her father. “I was in a downward spiral,” she said. “And when it starts spiraling, it spirals fast.”