Erin’s Story.

“I was deep in addiction, really unhealthy. I had lost care of my daughter and I was in and out of jail. I was quite lucky when my old probation officer was like, ‘there’s this treatment available’, because I had tried treatment before but I had run away from it. They said there was a Corrections-based one I could get you in, so I was in the process of that.

I was in prison for three weeks, then I got into He Kete and it was the hardest thing of my life.

Back then I hated every minute of it. Now, I look back and I actually learned so much from being there about my behaviours and I’m now a better person because of it.

One thing we had to practise was patience and all of that. Now I am a very patient person and I’m a very polite person. I never used to be how I am now. I had a bad attitude and a negative outlook on life. I’m actually doing things with my life now, which is really rewarding in itself.

I’m so grateful for He Kete and being where I am today because of it. Milly was really amazing. I loved working with Milly. She was really helpful towards me. There were times when I would be going off at the staff and she’d pull me aside and give me another outlook on things because I was so closed-minded.

But, it was definitely about my behaviours and awareness about my own feelings that really stuck out to me because I’d identified feelings before. It was either happy, sad, or mad. Now, I can be like ‘I’m feeling really frustrated’ or ‘I’m feeling really hurt about this’. I can name all of those feelings I’d never heard of before.

It was really rewarding being able to identify my feelings and the awareness around myself now. It was about half-way through being there I started noticing changes in me. I actually started to like the changes. It was obviously working. My will to stay was more than my will to leave.

I had a connection with my daughter by that stage and she’d wait for my phone calls. It was more the connection with my daughter that made me want to stay. I didn’t want to disappoint her again. Now, I’ve got my daughter back in my life and we’ve got this really amazing connection.

With my addiction, it was mostly trauma-based from my childhood. I was in foster care, my mum and dad were addicts so I think I was preempted to be an addict. I was in a violent relationship when I first started drugs, then it just spiralled out of control when I lost my daughter. When I lost care of her, I thought I had nothing left to live for.

It got to a point in my life where I was just so miserable in addiction. Life was just so miserable for me. Now, it’s not. I just love my life now. The thing with He Kete is if you really want to be there, it will work out. You’ve just got to want to do it or it's not going to work.”