Sarah Bird lost her daughters to alcohol three months ago.
Now, after 42 days of addictions therapy, she's looking forward to getting them back.
Surrounded by trees, friends, elders and some vociferous squirrels Wednesday morning, Bird became the first person ever to graduate from the Meadowview Women's Health and Wellness Treatment Centre. Run by Poundmaker's Lodge, the recently approved facility is meant to help senior or mature women overcome addictions.
Council gave Poundmaker's the go-ahead to start a senior women's treatment centre in the old house on Meadowview Drive last December. It now hosts about seven clients.
Originally pitched as a centre for women older than 50, the centre is now accepting women who are over 30.
Staff have found that women over 30 did not fit in with the younger clients at the main centre on Poundmaker Road, said Thelma Chalifoux, acting executive director of Poundmaker's, so they moved those women over to Meadowview. "This is where these women [belong]."
The centre has since exceeded all expectations, she said. "It's performing miracles."
A healing journey
Bird, 31, is a single mother with a son, two daughters, and a big grin.
A teen mom, Bird said she had her first son when she was 15. It was a tough life raising a family on the Paul First Nation near Duffield, but she put her kids through school and made sure they got to hockey practice. She later had two other sons, but they died at a young age.
It was those deaths that led her down the wrong path. "From there," she said, "my life just spiralled down." She became a "functioning alcoholic," working by day but drinking heavily at night. "I always knew there was something wrong with me," she said, but she pushed aside the ache in her heart for the sake of her kids.
She hit rock bottom when she attempted suicide in 2008. "I had severely traumatized my children," she said, and she realized she had to make a change. She tried to get treatment through her band, but none was available. She kept drinking.
She had been drinking on June 1 when she got in a fight with her two daughters. The fight was so serious that they called Alberta Children and Youth Services. The social workers took her kids from her and put them in foster care.
"My first reaction was, 'What have I done?'" Bird said. It was the first time she had ever had trouble with the law or children's services. "I felt a lot of self-hate, guilt and shame."
The social workers gave Bird a deal: get treatment for your addictions, and you can get your daughters back. (Her son is an adult and lives on his own.) She chose to go to the new treatment centre at Meadowview.
"When I first saw this house," she said, "I thought, 'Thank God. I hate institutions.'" The old home was comforting to her, and the tall trees and abundant wildlife around it helped her find peace. "Just listening to the trees, the birds and the squirrels, it's very humbling. It reminds you of where you are."
She went through many days of group therapy, lectures and self-reflection during her treatment, as well as traditional sweats and pipe ceremonies. "I was determined to find out who I was and find out what it is that was causing me to hurt."
At her graduation, elder Joyce Beaver presented her with a bear-like marble — a reference, Beaver explained, to Bird's bear-like strength and determination.
Bird said she was looking forward to going home to her son in Edmonton and reuniting with her kids this fall. She also planned to return to the centre some day — not as a patient, but as a counsellor.
"Every one of you is worth it," she said, in her speech to her fellow clients. "Don't give your past any more power over you. … Hold your head up."
