Geri Newsom recalls the day she was arrested for her fifth time on drug charges. She says she’d had enough. “When I went to prison, I was broken. I was exhausted. I was over it,” she said. “I was tired of the people that I had around me that were just using me. I was just miserable, and I wanted to change my life.”

It may be hard to imagine that getting arrested and going to prison could bring someone a sense of calm and relief like that. But that’s exactly what happened for Geri. Her life had been in overdrive for a long time, and she was ready for a change.

“We grew up in our nightgowns in the back of a cop car,” she said. “For five nights out of the week, the cops were called because my mom and my stepdad had gotten drunk, and they had fought. One of the last times, he beat my mom so bad that if I would have gone to school like she always said, ‘just go to school, get dressed, just go to school, and don’t tell anybody,’ if I would have left her there, she would have died. I went in and checked on her before I left, and she was barely breathing. She was in the ICU for like two weeks.”

At 13, Geri became a ward of the court and entered the foster care system where she bounced around from home to home. She got pregnant at 15. She says she tried to work and go to school after she had her daughter, but then she got introduced to drugs, and it just seemed like an easier way. It wasn’t long before her aunt took custody of her daughter.

Over the next six or seven years, she had — and lost custody of — two more children. It’s something that she says pushed her even further into the lifestyle that was destroying her. “When you lose your kids, you feel worthless and like your whole being is just stripped from you and so yeah, I dug really deep into the drugs.” she said.

That’s why Geri viewed going to prison as her opportunity to get clean and change her life. “I felt like, now’s my chance, you know, and so from day one, I started reading my Bible, reading all the self-help books I could get. When I went to prison, I got into classes,” she said. “So I did that in prison, but Journey helped me come out here and reintegrate with life without having to worry about life’s stresses.”

When she was released from prison, Geri moved into Journey to New Life’s Peace House, where she stayed for seven months. She moved into her own apartment in July 2021.

Journey helped me do the things that I needed to do without stressing about everyday life, like where I was going to stay, or how I was going to get food, or was I going to be able to find a place where there wasn’t drugs? Journey gave me that opportunity.

— Marion Hamilton

Moving out on her own isn’t the only progress Geri’s made. In September, she celebrated three years of sobriety. Not only that, but she’s holding down a full-time job working six nights a week. More importantly, she’s also reconnected with all of her children and is working regularly on her relationships with her extended family. In fact, since being released from prison, she’s become a support system for her oldest daughter, who Geri says was following too closely in her footsteps. She doesn’t want her daughter to end up repeating the same mistakes she made, so she’s trying to be a good influence. The turning point, she says, is that she finally forgave herself, and she’s invested the time in learning how to love herself and to love and be loved by other people.

“I feel like I’m living my best life right now, you know, I really do,” she said. “I feel like, I’ve got it together. I’m already excited to see what another three years is going to be. The rewards and the blessings and everything that’s coming together in my life is just remarkable.”

She’s very thankful for the role Journey to New Life played in helping her get to this point. When she moved out of Peace House, she says she missed the women, the case managers and the house managers — and the feeling of “home” that she was leaving behind.

Now, when Geri dreams about her future, she pictures herself hosting Sunday dinners for her family, where they all come together, eating, playing cards, drinking coffee and enjoying each other’s company. “I want to be that Grandma that’s got a Sunday dinner going,” she said.