We were given the opportunity to meet Teresa in 2018 when she came through the Social Detox Program. It was her second time through Maggie’s in the same year, but this time was different.
“Though I had been trying for years to get sober, this was the real deal—it was the first time I grasped the reality of the situation, as I sat in a circle of women it was the first time in my entire experience that it wasn’t me alone going through what I was going through. There were others, and we had a common language of survival; no one had to explain why they were there, or what hells they’d been through. We all knew, and for once in my life, I understood that my suffering was not unique; it was just hidden from plain sight.”
Upon completing, she started volunteering, attending meetings, and sponsoring women in the house. She quickly became a regular overnight volunteer, and in 2019 she joined the team as a Social Detox Coordinator.
Teresa, we are so thankful for your love, your uplifting spirit, and for keeping us smiling. Happy two years!
What has been the biggest gift to you in your recovery?
I have learned that the most unwelcome things, the things we would never want, are the things that end up making our bones, making us. I did not want addiction. I was given addiction. And with that, I was given a beautiful opportunity to find a wonderful personal relationship with God. I learned of spirituality. How gorgeous it is to be human, to be messy, to be alive.
What would you tell the woman who is newly sober, or still trying to get sober?
If sobriety is anything (and it is anything), it is a forgetting, a letting go, an acclimation to a world you never imagined you could acclimate to. It is sacrifice and possibility. It is heartbreak on a level you can only understand once you’ve let your heart break that totally, for everything that was and everything that now can be. There are things I have learned in the last two years. How we were not meant to keep it all together all the time. How our deepest wounds are where the light gets in. How easy it is to shed the things we thought we could never live without. How important it is to hurt, to feel, to struggle. How much we can absolutely change while simultaneously remaining what feels like absolutely the same. How joy and love and happiness can exist so brightly in the worst places. How adaptable we are, how full of potential we are, how unlimited we are. How much we need each other.
What is your life like today?
How joy and love and happiness can exist so brightly in the worst places. It’s a string of other days – days you wouldn’t have otherwise had, or had in such full, living color, had you not dared to leave everything you’ve ever known behind.
About Teresa Hollingsworth, Social Detox Coordinator
Teresa has been a Realtor in the DFW area for 25 years. She is an alumna of the Social Detox Program at Maggie’s and now works as a Program Coordinator. She volunteered extensively in 2018 as an overnight volunteer and also within Maggie’s Women’s Group. She loved The Magdalen House so much, she never left after completing her program. Teresa carries the message and sponsors women in different treatment centers across the DFW area. She feels she owes a debt of gratitude to the ones who mentored her and showed her how to recover. Had they simply gone on with their lives and just forgotten people like her, she wouldn’t be here today. Her gratitude begins with the Magdalen House.
