What has CHD’s Grace House meant to Brenda M.? “This place has allowed me to become a mother again,” she said. “I came here after not having my 11-year-old daughter for four-and-a-half years.”

Grace House is one of the few residential treatment programs designed for mothers in western Massachusetts. Brenda, who graduated from the program with her daughter in August, came to the house a year ago in early recovery.

“I was only nine months sober when I got here,” she continued. “Grace House allowed me to be in a safe environment to continue sobriety.”

The Springfield native began drinking whiskey heavily after she was in a relationship marred by domestic violence, and then her mother took custody of her daughter. Brenda was a “barely functioning” alcoholic who “quit jobs or got fired when they figured out my secret.”

Brenda’s drinking caused health problems—to put it mildly. Her liver enzyme levels were over 500, indicating significant inflammation, she had extremely high blood pressure, jaundice, and she suffered from seizures. “I couldn’t drink alone, because sometimes I had a seizure from just one drink,” she said. On her fifth emergency room visit, she asked to be taken to Holyoke Medical Center because she knew it had a psychiatric unit. “I had yellow skin and yellow eyes,” she recalled. “I was killing myself.”

After 30 days at the psychiatric unit, she secured a bed at a halfway house, and her counselor there referred her to Grace House. Brenda has been sober for nearly two years now, and she said it took a residential program with the proper supports to accomplish this. “We’re like a family at Grace House—you get extra support from the other mothers. My daughter got stung by a bee once, and she came running to me, but she also had five other moms come over to make sure she was OK,” she said with a laugh. “It’s a great community of moms.”

At Grace House, Brenda attended a daily recovery meeting—and still does—and she and her daughter enjoyed field trips with fellow residents to places such as Look Park, the Holyoke Children’s Museum, and the beach at the Daughters of the American Revolution State Forest in Goshen, MA.

Getting ready to move into an apartment with her daughter in Berkshire County, she left Grace House with “mixed feelings” because “it’s like moving away from a family. I didn’t know what to expect when I got here,” she said. “I cried a lot, but I knew I needed time to heal in a safe place—to be able to be a mom, but still be held accountable. I wouldn’t be where I am now without Grace House.”

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