Recovery Spotlight: Kayla
A Better Way to Live
Recovery Date: January 11, 2024
“Recovery has given me back the joy and peace I yearned for. Something I have today that once felt impossible is love for myself. TRULY loving myself, all of me.”
Today, Kayla is a mother of three, a case manager, a woman active in recovery, and someone surrounded by people, animals, and activities she loves.
She attends meetings regularly and is currently working through the Steps for the second time with her sponsor. She has a supportive partner who is also active in recovery, hobbies that bring her joy, and a career where she helps people navigating competency evaluations while incarcerated.
Her life today contains connection, purpose, peace, and love.
There was a time when all of those things felt very far away.
When Everything Became About Survival
Before finding recovery the first time, Kayla was homeless and using drugs intravenously.
She remembers extreme loneliness, criminal charges, and living in a world where the few belongings she had were stolen over and over again.
Eventually, she found recovery.
But Kayla’s story did not follow a perfectly straight line.
When she found herself needing recovery again, her life looked different on the outside, but internally she was struggling deeply.
She had dropped out of college. She lost her job. Her marriage was falling apart. She was drinking every night and waking up hungover every morning.
Even motherhood had changed.
“I was the type of mom that would shoo the kids away.”
Kayla describes herself during that period as spiritually sick. Her emotional pain became so intense that she considered suicide.
She knew there had to be another way to live.
Tired of Being Lonely
There was not one spectacular moment that changed everything.
There was exhaustion.
Kayla was tired of screaming matches with her husband. Tired of spending nights alone and crying. Tired of the emotional turmoil that had taken over her life.
And somewhere underneath all of that pain, she still believed something important:
There was a better way to live.
That belief became the beginning of her next chapter.
A Facebook Post and $500
Kayla’s path back to recovery began with something deceptively simple.
She asked for help.
She made a Facebook post in a women’s church group explaining that she needed assistance paying the deductible to enter treatment.
It was $500.
The women came together and paid it.
That act of community helped open a door Kayla desperately needed.
She entered treatment and later moved into Oxford House.
Sometimes a second chance begins with one person deciding to speak up about what they need.
And sometimes it begins with other people deciding to answer.
Learning to Live Differently
Early recovery brought its own challenges.
Kayla went from living in a two-parent household to becoming a single mother. At the same time, she was trying to heal mentally and emotionally from the life she had been living.
Meetings became an anchor.
The women she lived with offered support and connection.
And the Steps became transformational.
“The step work changed my life.”
Recovery was no longer simply about stopping a behavior. Kayla began doing the deeper work of understanding herself, healing, and learning how she wanted to live.
The People Who Helped Her Stay
Kayla does not describe recovery as something she accomplished alone.
Her sister has supported her.
Her sponsor has guided her.
Women in recovery have surrounded her.
Her partner has remained beside her through healing while also holding her accountable.
And each year, women’s recovery retreats give her an opportunity to reconnect with her recovery and return home renewed.
These relationships became part of the foundation she continues building on today.
Becoming the Mom She Wanted to Be
Ask Kayla what she is most proud of today and her answer is not her job, her recovery time, or any traditional accomplishment.
It is motherhood.
“I am most proud of the mother I am today.”
Recovery allowed Kayla to become a safe place for her children.
She can be present for them while their father continues to struggle with active addiction. She can offer them the support she wishes she had received when she was young.
For Kayla, that means changing more than her own life.
“I’m breaking generational curses.”
The mother who once shooed her children away is now intentionally showing up for them.
That transformation may be one of the clearest pictures of what recovery has given her.
Learning to Love Herself
Recovery restored joy and peace to Kayla’s life.
Her career has grown.
She found her voice.
She developed self-worth.
But one of the things she treasures most is something she once could not imagine having:
love for herself.
Not a polished version of herself.
Not the version other people wanted her to become.
All of her.
“TRULY loving myself, all of me.”
That kind of healing did not happen overnight. It came through meetings, sponsorship, Step work, relationships, accountability, her Higher Power, and continuing to work on herself one day at a time.
What Recovery Means Today
For Kayla, recovery is not something she completed.
It is something she continues to live.
“Recovery means a constant connection with my higher power, working on myself every day to be a better version of myself than I was the day before and taking full advantage of the life recovery has given me.”
It means continuing to go to meetings.
Continuing to work with her sponsor.
Continuing to work the Steps.
Continuing to heal.
And continuing to appreciate the life she almost lost.
Addiction Is Not the Whole Person
Kayla wishes people understood how dramatically someone can change in recovery.
She knows people in active addiction can sometimes be difficult to love. But she also knows the behaviors someone displays while trapped in addiction do not have to define who that person becomes.
“The version of ourselves that we are in active addiction is the opposite of who we are in recovery. Using addicts can be hard people to love, but when they find recovery they can be the person you lean on most.”
That possibility is part of why recovery stories matter.
There Is a Better Way to Live
If Kayla could speak to the version of herself who was lonely, crying, overwhelmed, and unable to imagine how things could change, her message would be simple:
“It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a better way of life.”
And to someone struggling today, she offers the same hope with practical advice:
“There is a better way of life. Go to meetings, find a sponsor and work the steps even if you don’t want to. You’ll be glad you did once you’re done.”
Kayla knows recovery requires work.
She also knows what can exist on the other side of that work.
A relationship with a Higher Power. Connection. Purpose. Joy. Peace. A career she is growing in. People she loves. Children who have a mother they can depend on. A voice. Self-worth.
And the ability to look at herself and genuinely say that she loves the person she has become.
Her Story of Survival
Kayla’s story is not simply about what she stopped doing.
It is about the woman, mother, partner, professional, and person she has continued becoming.
She once spent nights lonely and crying, believing there had to be another way to live.
Today, she knows there is.
And she is living it.
This is Kayla’s Story of Survival.
Stories of Survival is a Sheryl’s Second Chance Designs project sharing real stories of recovery to encourage hope, challenge stigma, and remind our community that recovery is possible.
Wear hope. Spread awareness. Inspire change.