A parent of a resident at the Manor of Hope talks about her experience

Julia, a parent of one of the residents at the Manor of Hope share’s her experience with the program.  Julia’s son has been a resident at the Manor of Hope for over a year.  She sits down to talk about his battle with addiction, and why staying at the Manor has been so effective in helping him lead a life of sobriety.

From the video:

Having someone in your family that’s addicted, it’s like somebody’s died, because the person that you knew is gone. They’re not that person anymore. So the little boy that I raised was not there anymore.

I think that we first realized that Parker had an issue his senior year in high school. Going into his senior year he became more agitated, he would act like he was happy-go-lucky but I could tell that something was not right. You don’t want to let yourself believe that it’s gone farther than that but obviously it had at that point. 

Pulling up to the Manor of Hope when we dropped Parker off was like bringing him to stay with family, everybody was there to meet us and welcomed us and welcomed Parker. Steve  (Manor of Hope’s founder) took the time and had breakfast with us that day while Parker settled in. Jose and John and Matthew (Manor of Hope staff members) helped him settle in.

I think it worked this time because they’re not just addressing the addiction they’re addressing the physical, the mental, the emotional – all sides of it – the nutritional, all those things are being covered. He’s not one of 30 kids, he’s one of 12 and originally only one of two or three (Parker was one of the Manor of Hope’s first residents).  I think that the connection that he’s been able to form with the mentors here, with John and Steve and Matthew and Jose, that’s just been more help than anything.

Steve, when he would contact us – because Steve will contact you! He will text you, he will call, you he will hunt you down to find you when he has something to tell you and he’ll call you for the good stuff as well as calling you to let you know if he may have had a little bit of a bump. He called us and he knew things about Parker right away after spending only a couple of weeks with him and I thought, you know what, I don’t think anybody else has ever from any of the treatment centers you call and you leave a message you wait a couple days nobody’s called you back you call you leave a message nobody calls you back. Here if Steve doesn’t call you, Jose will call you and if Jose doesn’t call you somebody else will get a hold of you somehow so that you know it’s been addressed — “we’ve talked to Parker, we’ve got your back, we’ve got his back we know him,” and they do know him! 

I think we have hope for the first time that we’re going to get there because it’s very hard as a parent to not know how you’re gonna get from A to B because you can’t see that path at all and that’s what this is giving us… the path.