Mural helps women paint their path out of addiction

MURRAY — Catherine Sharp knows all about the emotional thunder, lightning and tornadoes that wreak havoc on the lives of children whose mother is addicted to drugs.

She not only lived that story as a child, but she's also repeated it with four children of her own.

So the new mural she helped paint in the playroom at the Volunteers of America Center for Women and Children represents what Sharp hopes will be a turning point of sorts. It depicts a winding and twisted road from the darkness of addiction, over a bridge at the river of poor choices and through the mountains, finally ending beyond the rainbow at a happy place.

She says she's more motivated than ever to get to that happy place. At 34, she'll watch her youngest child be adopted by new parents in September. She thinks she's hit bottom with her addiction, and she has no legal custody of her children at this point. Eight weeks ago, she came to the center alone. She's one among two dozen homeless women trying to get sober — and in her case, stay that way.

"This isn't my first time here, but it's the first time I'm staying here" beyond the simple detox phase, Sharp says. She's preparing to enter long-term substance abuse treatment and has been working toward that goal since checking in on June 1.

"Once you've had enough of that lifestyle and need to make a change, you go somewhere to help you get where you need to be. I've gone through a lot, and I've lost my kids. I won't be able to get them back. But it's not discouraging me from wanting to change."

The details of the new wall mural had been sketched out when Sharp arrived, and its depiction of the journey from darkness to a happy place was compelling, she says. "It's become a part of my own journey," painting parts of the wall that at first tested her faith in her own ability to make an artistic contribution. As she kept painting the lightning storm and the bridge, those metaphors "became a part of me that I could put my heart into."

The end of her rainbow may include work in the hotel or restaurant industry, she says, but becoming a licensed substance abuse counselor is most appealing, once she works through her own issues with addiction.

"I've had plenty of experience — a little too much experience," she says, "but I think it would be nice to have someone who knows where you have been helping you and not just someone working out of a textbook. I definitely want to give back to the other women," and she has found inspiration in looking to her own mother, who she says has now been sober for 16 years.