Stormy’s childhood was marked by domestic violence, drugs, and abuse. “It was just really chaotic,” she says. She began drinking with her mom in middle school, and smoking pot in high school.
After high school, Stormy started using harder drugs. To pay for her habit, she did some adult modeling. “That sustained my lifestyle,” she says, “and it really fed my need for chaos and attention.”
“Even heroin wasn’t enough to cover up the pain.”
Stormy eventually married and had two children, son Cage and daughter Madeline. She started doing opiates, and turned to prostitution to pay for her and her husband’s habits. After they broke up, she turned to heroin. At that time in her life, “there was just so much pain and shame that I was experiencing that even heroin wasn’t enough to cover up the pain.”
The combination of alcohol and heroin was nearly a deadly one for Stormy. “I overdosed on heroin, probably, like eight times,” she says. Her dealer cut her off because she kept overdosing at his house. Knowing she would die if she kept doing heroin, she switched to meth, but soon meth had a grip on her. She lost custody of her kids.
“That’s what really brought me to Jesus.”
When Stormy went through a “drug-induced psychosis with paranoid delusions,” she believed her ex-boyfriend was evil. “That’s what really brought me to Jesus,” she says, “because I could look in his eyes and I felt like there was so much evil … it really brought me back to remembering what I learned in Sunday school about God … there had to be a God.”
Stormy was in and out of her children’s lives as she fought addiction. When her third child, Josiah, was born, he tested positive for meth. She was devastated when he was removed from her custody and placed into foster care. “I just cried for the first couple months, every day,” she says. “I just felt so lost, and I was suicidal.”
“I never thought that I would ever be where I’m at today.”
Stormy left her boyfriend, knowing she would need to in order to get her kids back, but in the process became homeless. One day, she visited her baby boy. She knew God wanted a different life for her and her kids and prayed He would bring her children back to her.
Stormy’s prayers were answered when she arrived at the Mission’s Women’s Recovery Program at Hope Place. She saw there was room for all three of her children. Eventually, they were reunited. Hope Place provided a safe place for her and her kids to learn how to be a family again.
Now, after graduating from the Mission’s recovery program, Stormy’s life has changed completely. She works with the Mission, doing graphic design for the Marketing team. Her family has grown, to include her baby girl, Grace, and last March, they took a family vacation, something she never did as a child, to Florida.
“I have got Jesus in my heart, I feel so much joy in my life,” Stormy says. “I never thought that I would ever be where I’m at today.”
Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission has been serving the homeless population and helping the lost become found for over 90 years. Their vision is to see every homeless neighbor — beloved, redeemed, restored. Find out more here.
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