In this episode
Carrie is the mother of four grown children and one new granddaughter. She works as the Assistant CFO at a Keller Williams real estate brokerage and is an independent Realtor.
Carrie is a humanitarian at heart and has an immediate love for those she comes in contact with, knowing that like her own life, each has a story. Carrie’s story and personal journey is one of significant loss, but also one of strength and power in surviving and overcoming a deep addiction to prescription drugs.
In the early fall of 2018, she required a neck fusion. It was the fourteenth surgery required in the space of just eight years. While recovering from this procedure, she was careless with the medication the doctor prescribed. This led to taking too many pills in the space of three days. On the third day, her family insisted she go to the hospital. She was incoherent and could only speak in poorly-formed sentences. Upon arriving at the hospital, she had several tests run. Her liver was angry and inflamed to nearly toxic levels. She spent a week recovering, regaining her strength, and allowing organs the proper time to heal. It was also at this time she let go of her pride and admitted she needed serious help. She was honest herself and her family and shared that over the last several years, she’d relied too heavily on pain medications to bring relief to discomfort and emotional pain.
With each surgery, she held onto them for too long in the recovery process. She agreed to check into a recovery center to free herself from the horrible habits she’d formed and identify the root of the real problem.
Drugs are not the real problem; they are a means to a false-end, a “numbing solution” to issues that are much greater. She spent 51 days away from her family in a home in Draper designed for women with a variety of addictions and mental illness to heal from.
For 51 days she shed tears feeling isolated from her children and family. For 51 days she worked like she had never before, all day every day, sorting through emotional scars, trauma, and much-needed healing. She was surrounded by angels, both living and unseen souls, including her family and a group of highly skilled physicians, therapists, and new friends fighting similar battles. With great courage, she became sober and survived.
Months went by, she graduated the next level of out-patient treatment, found a job, each day learning to preserver, move forward, and find happiness again. Her strength would be tested yet again as she dealt with divorce and further separation from her children. But in the end, she SURVIVED. And now, she’s learning to THRIVE.
Carrie is not alone in this journey of being “human” and overcoming challenges. Together, we are what makes up mankind, all here to help others in their personal journeys. Carrie’s may be unique from yours, but nonetheless it is still a journey she has strived to triumph over. Perhaps yourself or a loved one can gain hope and healing from her experiences. In that she finds further healing. She firmly believes we are sent here to help one another, through this our weaknesses become our strengths. We are not victims, we are survivors.
