She didn’t just survive addiction; she turned toward the light and now uses that light to guide others home, one honest day at a time. She was born in 1981 in Yuma and grew up in Winterhaven on the Quechan reservation. She was a quiet child in a loud house, where alcohol was regular and weekends blurred. At ten she tasted her first beer, got drunk, and that same night was sexually abused. The shame settled in and stayed for decades. She learned to keep still, to keep secrets, and to keep drinking. By her late twenties the habit was heavy. At twenty nine she woke sick and dizzy and began throwing up blood every morning. She hid it, kept drinking, and ended up in the ER, needing transfusions and hospital stays. In 2017 another bleed put her under anesthesia. The doctors could not stop it. She was placed in a medically induced coma. Her family was told she might not make it.
While machines kept her alive, her mind went elsewhere. In that other place a man in a suit led her into a small theater where scenes of her life played. She saw her sister’s living room, and her five year old niece years older, smiling at her. Love for her nieces and nephews hit her like a bell. Then the scene changed and she found herself in a dark forest under a pale moon. Winged shapes circled. A voice told her to walk across a black rock lake lit by running lava beneath.
She refused and kept toward the mountain. The forest brightened. A soft wind rose. In it she could hear voices she knew, calling her name, telling her to get up and that they loved her. The next moment she was in a hospital waiting room that faded to black, then flooded with waterfalls and sky. She opened her eyes in the ICU on Easter weekend. Her friend Sammy smiled and said, “Good morning, beautiful.” The world looked dull after where she had been, but she was back.
Her boyfriend Enrique stayed every night, even though they shared the same addiction. She reached out for help, met a mentor named Ron, and learned about Native recovery through the Wellbriety movement. Then life hit hard again. Enrique got sick from cirrhosis. Doctors said he had less than a month. She called his family, stayed by his side, and watched his health fade. He died on July 14, 2017. A month later her little brother Austin, only thirty three, died in front of her in the hospital. Grief drove her back to the bottle. Soon she was vomiting blood again and flown by helicopter to Phoenix. Waking up with a breathing tube, she told herself, “I’m done.”
She went home sober a little over a week, asked her tribe for help, and moved into sober living in Lake Elsinore. It was lonely and hard. She wanted to thank her childhood friend Phillip for helping her, but before she could visit, he died in his sleep. She made a choice not to drink in his honor. Meetings, work, and prayer carried her through her first year. She took her sobriety chips to her brother’s grave and promised to keep going. She saved money, traveled to Alaska, and felt a door open: maybe she was the only thing that had ever been in her way.
She had been a security guard since 2004, but in 2020 she packed two suitcases and moved to Riverside to study drug and alcohol counseling. The pandemic shut the world down and she still drove across the country for the first time. She finished school, kept studying, started working at Everlast Recovery in November 2020, and earned her associate’s degree the next year. She found joy in the work she never imagined for herself. She fell in love again and learned new things about how to show up in a healthy way.
She keeps her promises. Each year she honors her brother with another chip on his headstone. She leans on faith and family. She knows addiction tells lies and hurts the people you love most, and she is grateful her parents never stopped believing in her. The world looks different now: clearer, steadier, and full of purpose. She is a better daughter, sister, and aunt because sobriety finally let her meet herself.
