You Can Recover

November 10, 2025

Dear friends,

We recently held a Healing Storytelling Workshop, led by Christina Love. During the workshop, she recounted her history of growing up in homelessness and abuse, then being trafficked, drowning her pain in drugs, and eventually being left to die in a ditch by one of her many abusers. She then explained a pivotal life-changing interaction when a healing centered provider told her “you can recover”. These are powerful words when spoken by someone who truly sees a heartbroken soul and treats them with compassion, instead of condescension, dignity, instead of disdain.

Twenty-five women, including five from Safe Haven, went through the workshop - women who are currently homeless and women who are successfully running their own businesses or who hold leading roles in their companies. These women came from a wide range of current socio-economic backgrounds, but all have shared experience of trauma. Over the course of two days, they learned to see new possibilities and new ways of living, seeing their strength and resilience more clearly than ever before. One woman in the workshop said, “Center for Transforming Lives makes me feel capable when I don’t feel capable myself."

When a person experiences a lifetime of abuse, poverty and homelessness, they often feel invisible and incapable. They feel defined by what has happened to them. Through neuroscience, we know that when poverty and trauma are experienced in childhood, coping mechanisms and beliefs are physically encoded on the brain which allow a person to survive as a child, but can keep them from a fulfilling, functioning life as an adult. Healing takes time, intention and relationships that support that healing.

Therefore, our message to the mothers that come through our doors is “you are more than the harm done to you, you are capable, and you can decide the future for yourself and your children.” At Center for Transforming Lives, one of the most common themes of feedback we receive from the women is that they do not feel judged. They tell us they feel seen, heard and valued. Being seen as a person and treated with compassion opens the door for new learning and new ways of being.

The road to recovery from poverty and trauma can be long and challenging, but it starts when a person believes they can recover. We’re here to help them take the first step and then support them on the journey ahead. We know healing and recovery is possible because we see it - every day.

If you have not yet come for a tour of our Riverside campus, come see the mission in action. After all, you make it possible.

Be well,
Carol

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