Sophia Peer Mentoring
“If you’re thinking about coming to Sophia Recovery – be brave and just walk through that door. You will never regret it. It’s the best place to be if you want to recover. I was a little nervous, yeah. But [the facilitator] was very, very friendly and open.”
“I did meet someone [at Sophia Recovery Centre] – she was a cousin. We were cut from the same cloth: we both drank too much wine, only she had stopped. She became my peer mentor over and above the meditation, which I got from another program also at Sophia. This woman became a wise woman in my life at that time, and she was my peer mentor and helped me get strong enough in my resolve to stop drinking.”
“…there was another peer mentor, who was the leader and was leading the activity of the meditation. She very pointedly came to me and said, would you like to come back? You know we have a program where you could actually make an appointment and come back and talk to someone if you’d like. She wasn’t gonna let me get out of there without having a little bit of a conversation. I would’ve just slid out the door. That contact, that initial contact with her made all the difference. I felt that once I said yes to meeting with someone that I had made at least the first step.”
“My peer mentor right at the outset, even before we started meditation, spoke about her own story of recovery. Then when she established an appointment with me with another peer helper- she told her story about battling with alcohol. She had stopped for eight years, and then had started again. She thought that she could have some drinks and then started again. It was her honesty and her storytelling me that I could just relate to. This woman, this peer mentor was also a retired teacher, and was kind of my age. I think she was smart – rather than saying, let’s you and I talk, she thought – no, this woman will be good [paired] up with someone who has a similar background.”
“…I’d developed relationships with other women at Sophia – not just the staff, but other guests who were going through the same thing, or were maybe a few steps down the road… When I was at Sophia, I could be open and honest about how much I was drinking, why I wanted to drink, why I was afraid to quit.I could be honest about any of that – and the people there had understood, because they had been through the same thing.”
“I met up with Sister Mary Beth – I think it was the first year that Sophia was open. I just started coming to the Wednesday night women’s meetings, and having one on one counselling with Sister Arleen, and I just started coming to the programs that were available. I really got a lot out of the one-on-one counseling. If you go to a regular therapist, most of the time they don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. I’ve had the experience where they just stare at you with their judgemental faces. They really don’t have a clue how to help you or work through it, because they’re more about your feelings than your problem.”
“Sisters Arleen and Mary Beth both had crazy stories of where they had been and where they’d come from that I identified with. I just started coming all the time. At the time my mom also came and went to Al-Anon and we had Sophia helping us. It finally stuck… I see one of the ladies for peer support, and it’s some of the best counseling I’ve ever had. I have somebody that actually had a child that’s gone through some things that I can identify with.”
“You walk into these rooms and they’re not judgmental. They’re friendly. Everyone there – other women that are in the program – treat you with respect. If you come out here with your face wet from crying and stuff, nobody’s staring at you, wondering what’s going on. I just felt like it was very welcoming, very easy to walk into and ask for help.”
“I would’ve never gotten sober without Sophia. When you first get sober, you’re alone, you’re bored, there’s nowhere to go. People don’t just sit at Tim Hortons waiting for a friend. When you’re first sober it’s very dangerous to go out in the world. You can’t just go to the bar, or to the friend’s house you were at last year.”
“You’re looking for a new way of life, and to find a new way of life on your own is really hard. But if you come to Sophia, they have retreats and meetings and sewing groups and poetry groups and cooking groups – always have something different going on. You can find an interest and there’s just drop-in group if you’re really lonely.”
“I was nervous my first time coming to Sophia. I had no idea what to expect. But the moment that I arrived there I recognized the gate. I had a flashback memory of my dad – he was a milkman; he was delivering milk there. He was like fixing my overalls right on the inside of that gate. A butterfly landed on my shoulder. It was almost like a moment of like, “this is where I’m supposed to be.”
“I’m not really a people person. I don’t do well in a group of people that I don’t know. I tend to worry too much about everything, and I miss everything that happens. So I’ve just been working one-on-one with [my peer counselor]. AA would not have been an option for me anyway because I’m not interested in anything that would be faith-based. And I prefer to be without people.”