Taylor Sisk
PENNINGTON GAP, Va. — On a Saturday night in June, individuals of this rural area gathered on the historic Lee Theatre to rejoice the founding of Higher Ground Women’s Recovery Residence.
Author Barbara Kingsolver opened the power in January with royalties from her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “Demon Copperhead,” whose plot revolves round Appalachia’s opioid disaster. The residence gives a supportive place for individuals to remain whereas studying to reside with out medicine. Kingsolver had requested the ladies now dwelling there to hitch her on stage.
Kingsolver, who grew up in Appalachia, instructed the ladies share with the viewers what they have been most happy with having gained from their first weeks at Higher Ground. But she realized they have been extra wanting to brag on each other.
Supporters say Higher Ground supplies stability and a reentry level after leaving jail, jail, or a therapy middle. It gives a variety of companies and assist in an space devastated by dependancy to painkilling capsules and different kinds of opioids. Most basically, it’s a real residence, with one- and two-person bedrooms, a communal kitchen, and a den. Residents say they’ve discovered affirmation from a cohort of ladies who perceive how dependancy can demoralize an individual and estrange them from household and neighborhood.
Ronda Morgan, a resident, mentioned her household has all the time been in her nook. But whereas she was serving a jail sentence for drug possession, she instructed herself, “I’m sick of them having to do time with me.” She was prepared for restoration. Her daughter, who’s a nurse, instructed her about Higher Ground, the primary facility of its form in sprawling, rural Lee County. Morgan realized she may reside there for as much as two years to achieve the footing that had eluded her in three-plus a long time of dependancy.
What she didn’t anticipate was the kinship she cast together with her housemates — amongst them, Syara Parsell — and with Higher Ground’s employees.
Parsell, 35, one in every of Higher Ground’s first residents, mentioned that in her time there she’s obtained assist discovering employment and enrolling in neighborhood school programs.
From the employees and Kingsolver, Parsell mentioned, she has obtained judgment-free assist. “Together,” she mentioned, “we figure it out.”
Traditional therapy amenities sometimes function below extremely structured medical supervision. Recovery homes, like Higher Ground, supply a extra relaxed atmosphere, serving to transfer a resident “toward being an independent, fully functional, self-reliant human being,” mentioned Marvin Ventrell, CEO of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers.
“Recovery occurs in the community,” he mentioned. But reentry should be approached delicately. “When addiction occurs with a human being, it also occurs within a family social structure.” If an individual in early restoration returns to a household that’s unprepared, that particular person’s possibilities of success “are severely diminished.”
For Kingsolver, the opioid disaster grew to become a focus for what she hoped can be “the great Appalachian novel.” The epidemic “has changed so much of the texture of this place,” devastating households and communities.
Pharmaceutical firms targeted central Appalachia for gross sales of what they falsely claimed were addiction-resistant prescription opioids. Kingsolver needed to “cast my net back over all of the extractive industries that have come to this place, taken out what was good, and left behind a mess.”
“The way I put it is, ‘They came to harvest our pain when there was nothing else left,’” she mentioned.
In analysis for “Demon Copperhead,” she immersed herself within the tales of people that’ve navigated dependancy and people who care and advocate for them.
The novel has been an infinite success, having bought greater than 3 million copies and incomes way over her earlier works. Kingsolver determined to dedicate tons of of hundreds of {dollars} to deal with the disaster that has overwhelmed the area the place she was raised — and to which she returned full time in 2004.
Again, she set about listening. Drawing on a variety of experience, she decided {that a} girls’s restoration residence was the wisest funding.
Joie Cantrell works as a public well being nurse in harm reduction for the Virginia Department of Health, supporting insurance policies and practices to curb the adverse results of drug use, and serves as Higher Ground’s board chair. She had lengthy acknowledged the necessity for simply such a house.
“That was the part that was missing,” Cantrell mentioned. Too typically, when somebody would come out of a therapy facility or incarceration, “we lost them. They fell back into the same old patterns.” She mentioned the area sorely wanted a secure, secure atmosphere the place girls may recalibrate.
By August, the house reached its capability of seven girls. It’s proper on the town, “which is so important,” Kingsolver mentioned, “because in this part of the country we have no public transportation.”
Parsell has lengthy suffered from social anxieties; medicine have been her escape. Here, her housemates embraced her. They’ve provided the assist she’d by no means skilled.
“Every two seconds, someone’s like, ‘Syara’s here!’” she mentioned. “I’m very grateful for it.” If there’s a difficulty in the home, “one of the seven of us has the solution.”
Four residents are employed outdoors the house, one is enrolled in neighborhood school lessons, one is finishing her GED with plans to proceed her training, and everybody volunteers locally. Crafting lessons are provided. Family members go to.
“They’re living life,” mentioned Subrenda Huff, who was filling in whereas director Liz Brooks took maternity depart.
Morgan mentioned she achieved extra in a month at Higher Ground than she had in years. That contains making use of for identification paperwork, taking budgeting lessons, and looking for everlasting housing. It contains sharing maintenance duties in the home.
Such was Kingsolver’s imaginative and prescient. But, she mentioned, “here’s what I didn’t expect: The community embraced this with loving arms. I thought maybe people would say, ‘I don’t want this in my backyard.’”
Most of the furnishings was donated. Kingsolver’s quarter-million or so social media followers have been instrumental in that. “But it’s not just book clubs in Switzerland or in California; it’s people in Pennington Gap,” she mentioned. Church teams have donated “quilts, bedside lamps, things to hang on the walls just to make it homey.”
Before the power opened, native people volunteered to drag weeds, take down an outdated fence, and put up a brand new one. Kingsolver mentioned the properly of assist “has been just endless. It’s been deep, and loving, and a wonder to see.”
Higher Ground, with just one paid employees member, has estimated yearly working prices of $120,000, Cantrell mentioned. Residents are charged $50 every week. Ventrell mentioned that charges at different restoration homes range broadly however that $2,500 a month is an approximate common.
“We want them to focus on saving money and paying any restitution or fines they may have from past charges,” Cantrell mentioned. “Some may be focused on repaying child support they may owe.”
Higher Ground receives no federal or state funding. Donations proceed to pour in. And Kingsolver lately purchased the constructing subsequent door with plans to open a thrift store, which might be a supply of further revenue for the house and supply retail work expertise for its residents.
Supporters aspire to open extra Higher Ground properties elsewhere within the area.
What these girls are gaining, Kingsolver mentioned, “is not just sobriety, but belief in themselves.”