When Ann Marie McWhite became pregnant with her daughter, she knew she could not let addiction get in the way of her being a parent.
“I was born into a family with addiction,” said McWhite. “When I was young, I swore that I wasn’t going to do drugs or drink, but in my teen years I ended up doing that. I found recovery when I was 22, 23 years old, and had my daughter. I saw how hard it was because I relapsed after I had her, and I found out how hard it was to stay clean and have a child. I sat on my hands a lot of days.”
McWhite resolved to kick her addictions to alcohol and cocaine in order to give her daughter a normal life. Through a long struggle including attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings, accepting God into her life and physically sitting on her hands every waking moment for 30 days, McWhite eventually beat her addiction. Now 30 years sober and in the midst of the worst addiction crisis in the nation’s history, McWhite is attempting to help young women going through the same process she did.
“I struggled through it, because I didn’t have anyone to take her in and care for her while I was getting clean,” she said of her daughter. “As I’m on my Christian walk, seeing women and knowing women who are addicted and having children, it seems like they always go back because of the stress of having a child, the stress of being a mom and trying to stay clean. It’s kind of like a nosedive, so God just keeps ministering to me about a women’s center.”
Focusing on women
After years of watching local women struggle with recreational drugs, alcohol and an opioid crisis that has fueled a nearly six-fold rise in overdose deaths since 1999, McWhite recently decided it was time to act. While Macon County has a dedicated men’s treatment center in Adult and Teen Challenge of the Smokies, McWhite said she sees a need for a center specializing in issues unique to women.
Through the new Arise and Shine Thrift Store located in the Carson Community Center on Old Murphy Road, the addiction survivor and a group of volunteers will soon begin raising money for a proposed in-patient women’s recovery center.
“It’s just to bring change into our community. That’s what Arise and Shine Women’s Recovery Center is about, and this thrift store is going to bring the finances in, prayerfully,” said McWhite. “The Recovery Center is going to be a year-long program, and we’re going to be able to disciple the women. When the women are discipled, after about nine months we’ll help them decide where they want to go in their life. If they want to go to school to be a cosmetologist, or a nurse, or whatever, they decide they want to do, and we’ll start heading them in that direction.”
While the recovery center is still a ways off – the group is still in the process of getting the thrift store up and running – Arise and Shine has a clear plan for the proposed center. With the help of an executive director and two initial in-house staff members (the group hopes to expand the center over time), the one-year residential program would combine Christian ministry, fitness and recreation, and job/life skills coaching into a complete resource for personal growth.
The group also hopes to create an Arise and Shine Children’s Center, a program to house and provide specialized care to clients’ children while their mother undergoes treatment. They are even planning to outfit several “restoration cabins,” places where women and their families can live for up to three years after graduating from the residential program.
‘It’s a blessing’
For longtime residents of Macon County, the plans represent a much-needed resource.
“There were a lot more things to do in Macon County when I was growing up than there are now,” said Carol Anne Elliott, an Arise and Shine volunteer and leader of Franklin’s Prayers Against Drugs prayer group. “We had the ball fields, we had a go-kart track, Heritage Hollow was a happening place. We just had things to do, and I know it’s not an excuse, but as I’ve seen things go away, I’ve seen the drug problem get worse and worse. … The last 20 years have just been [bad], and it’s sad to see as a lifelong resident.”
As a school system employee and mother of an addiction victim, Elliott is more than qualified to speak on the subject. She said a number of her former students have struggled with substance abuse after leaving school, and believes that having a recovery center near Franklin will be more attractive to clients than travelling great distances to seek treatment (conversely, the group hopes Arise and Shine might be a destination for clients from other areas seeking the tranquility of the mountains). After observing Prayers Against Drugs’ four-year anniversary this month, Elliott is glad to finally take a concrete step toward fighting addiction among local women, a sentiment shared by another Arise and Shine volunteer.
“It’s a blessing, no matter how you look at it,” said Doug Cross while painting a wall in the soon-to-be store. “There’s plenty of examples in the world that tell us what you sow, you will reap. If I help them, they’ll pay it forward.”
Work in progress
As the three volunteers set about turning the Carson Center space into a working thrift store – painting walls, cleaning windows, arranging boxes and furniture – McWhite received an important call on her cell phone. On the line was a local woman whose daughter is battling addiction, wanting to know if McWhite could speak to her daughter on the phone. Having dedicated her life to fighting addiction in Macon County, the Arise and Shine founder said she seems to attract those that have been touched by substance abuse.
“She works at [one of the shops] in town, so I went in there and out of the blue she started pouring her heart out to me,” said McWhite on meeting the woman. “I’m standing there like, do I have a sign on me that says ‘Talk to me, I’ll minister you?’ But it just happened. She just started pouring her heart out, and so I told her it’s funny because I’m looking to start Arise and Shine Women’s Recovery Center. It’s weird, but [it happens to me] often. At least three times a month, I’ll be talking and people will tell me about their daughter.”
The Arise and Shine Thrift Store will open for business later this month at the Carson Community Center, located at 3001 Old Murphy Road across from the recycling center. To contribute to the Arise and Shine Women’s Recovery Center fund, donations can be sent to PO Box 913 Franklin, NC 28744. Prayers Against Drugs meets at 6 p.m. on the first Friday of each month in front of the Macon County Courthouse.