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Fall Issue
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Traveling the journey to recovery
By Tracy Wainwright
In talking with Jan Brown it is obvious why she was named one of
Williamsburg’s Women With a Cause honorees. She is extremely
passionate about living a life of hope and joy. And she is
extremely passionate about sharing that hope and joy with others
and helping them to find it for themselves. It was a long,
treacherous road for Jan to get to a place of hope, and she was
gracious enough to share the difficult part of her journey. As
Jan began talking about her childhood she revealed the shocking
fact that she was only around 5 years-old when she began
drinking alcohol. Although she doesn’t have any recollection of
there being any alcoholics in her family, or even having
knowledge of what alcohol or alcoholics were. It was always
present in her home. Her parents hosted social functions
frequently and alcohol was just a part of their lives. Jan
didn’t find the alcohol on her own. Her older brother had
discovered it and introduced her to it. Jan grew up with alcohol
not only being in her home, but also as a part of her life.
Getting drunk or high became a part of Jan’s daily routine. She
would even drink Listerine to “make her insides smell good,” not
knowing that it contained alcohol and that’s truly where her
motivation came from. She would do just about anything in
chasing the high. She had consequences through her adolescence
and into her early 20s. There were car accidents, teachers who
confronted her, and a sense that her behavior was out of
control; but nothing that caught her attention. She never gained
negative attention from her parents because she was able to
maintain good grades and participate in athletics. The first
time Jan was confronted with the possibility of having a
drinking problem was when she was at West Point. She was able to
perform her duties and maintain her grades, but her inability to
keep her behavior compliant caught the attention of some of her
superiors. She went to treatment, but not because she had any
desire to quit drinking. She just wanted to get out of trouble.
Afterward, Jan returned to West Point and mutually agreed with
her superiors that becoming an officer was not a goal she really
wanted to put the proper effort into. She didn’t drink for a
while, but began using prescription drugs. Again, she would do
anything to access the high, including having perfectly good
teeth extracted and intentionally injuring herself to get pain
medications. Since Jan wasn’t aiming to become an officer any
longer she returned home and began studying at William and Mary.
On a trip with her friends Jan had her first beer since getting
out of treatment. Within six months her life had “spiraled out
of control.” One night she fell down a set of concrete stairs.
At the time she didn’t realize the damage that was done, but it
did land her back in treatment – not because she wanted to quit
drinking, but because she didn’t know where else to go. Through
most of her 16 months of treatment Jan’s desire for recovery and
to be compliant didn’t increase. That is until a judge gave her
an ultimatum – treatment or jail. That was the moment Jan chose
not only treatment, but also recovery. As Jan began to grab hold
of recovery, some “neat things began to happen.” Two special
ladies who worked at the treatment center, not as counselors but
as support staff, told her every day that ‘she’d be okay.’ She
slowly began to believe that. Jan had never lived sober and
didn’t have the skills to do so. Her counselor told her if she
would take just 10% of the energy she had used to get high and
use it instead for recovery she would not only be successful in
recovery, but also be amazing in life. Soon Jan began to use her
resourcefulness for recovery. One step at a time, literally and
figuratively, she completely transformed her life to become a
person in recovery. Recovery hasn’t been easy. It still wasn’t
easy for Jan to become compliant and surrender to the process
(or anything else.) Jan didn’t only have her addiction working
against her. Since emotional development stops at the point of
addiction, she was very young emotionally. She also found out
that the fall down the stairs had caused a brain injury and thus
additional challenges. In recovery she had to learn to reconnect
with herself, her family and her community. She went back to
William and Mary and graduated in ‘96. As Jan continued on her
road of recovery she found a hope that she hadn’t known before.
She formed an identity as “a person in long-term recovery.” She
also found a life more wonderful than she ever dreamed. As she
experienced the “wonderful life” of recovery Jan’s passion to
share it with others grew. In 2005 Jan’s dream of making
recovery attractive and to help others in their recovery journey
became concrete with the opening of SpiritWorks Foundation –
Center for the Soul. SpiritWorks Foundation is a nonprofit “peer
led addiction recovery and wellness organization.” It combines a
variety of services that are a result of Jan’s passion to lead
others to a life of recovery and guide them through the process.
There are services for every member of a family that has been
affected by the disease of addiction. There are also several
programs and services geared to women, as Jan has found that
there is a greater stigma around women struggling with
addiction. Services such as yoga and women’s support groups are
offered to help women address other issues that are generally
not addressed in treatment. Together with her staff, Jan is
living out a wonderful life of recovery and sharing it with
others. She wouldn’t trade her recovery for anything and knows
that the happiness and health that she experiences now would not
be possible without recovery. Through the hard work to maintain
her own recovery and run SpiritWorks Foundation, Jan is sharing
that life in long-term recovery provides “the hope that (life)
can be so different and so much better than ever expected.” —WLY&ME
PUBLISHER’S NOTE—At WLY&Me, we are
mindful that relationships are not always easy but somehow we
manage. This feature, IT’S NOT EASY, will attempt to share some
of the everyday struggles we work through. This feature is also
dedicated to the men and women who are passionate about giving
their time and sometimes their life for a selfless cause.
Whether you are military, fire and rescue services, police and
safety, WLY&Me appreciates your efforts and supports the loved
ones who wait breathlessly and patiently at home. Are you one of
those people? Give us a call. Tell us your story.
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