My Path to Recovery
Karen feels called to serve "going to where the people are" to share understanding, empathy, and support throughout an individual's journey of recovery.
By Karen Andro
As a child, I experienced deep feelings of worthlessness, fear, and anxiety. At the age of 14, I tried to end my life filled with unbearable despair losing all will to live.
Poem written by Karen
My mind was in perpetual shock and upheaval. Much of my energy was spent keeping everything inside trying to be strong. At night, I remember getting ready for bed wearing several layers under my night gown. Some nights, I would open my bedroom window; use a bobby pin to unlock the screen, remove it and place it under my bed. Then shut the window, but not lock it. This would ensure, if my father came into my bedroom that night, I would open the window and be able to crawl out onto the roof, then jump off and escape. At night, my father locked us in the house using a dead bolt locked from the inside. There were times he would unplug the telephones and take them so we couldn’t call for help. We had made calls to 9-1-1 before, but my father explained it away, and we were yet again invisible, silenced, powerless. One time we actually escaped during one of his rampages, and we ran over to the neighbor’s house pleading to let us in. Instead, she shut her curtain. I remember that curtain vividly. It was a green Venetian blind.
A few years later, I did escape during a rampage, and I vowed never to return home to live in fear ever again. By then I was in high school. That is a powerful memory a Saturday during the day I was home alone with my father, and he couldn’t run out after me because he wasn’t fully dressed. This time, I truly escaped. I ran as fast as I could and hid in the woods as he drove up and down the streets looking for me. I was near a marsh and on the edge of the lake. At that time, I thought again about taking my life. I thought about drowning myself, but a strength came over me to run and keep running, which I did, not far, to the house where my sister was babysitting. I didn’t return home and became what is referred to as an Unaccompanied Youth (homeless teenager surviving outside the home of my parents). Throughout the remainder of my high school, I pretended to live at home to fit in. Another secret.
Eventually, I turned to alcohol. I started hanging around people who were drinking a lot and using drugs. In my late 20s, I was introduced to cocaine and got hooked on it. A year later, my twin sister gave me an ultimatum that if I continued to use, she could not be in my life. It was then I began my journey of recovery from drugs into therapy and unpeeling the many layers of childhood trauma and mental illness (PTSD, Anxiety and Depression).
Karen Andro, Director of Hope's Home Ministries at First United Methodist Church, transformed the church's food pantry to include service for individuals experiencing homelessness. Emergency Food Bags and supplies are delivered weekly to individuals surviving outside tent camping or car camping. Included are uplifting messages and helpful information such as NAMIs handbook and stress balls. Karen's service leadership involves Harm Reduction and building strong community partnerships. The Church teams up with Friends of the State Street Family, Porchlight, Tellurian, Sankofa Behavioral and Community Health, and Madison Area Care for the Homeless OneHealth (MACH1) to deliver food and supplies weekly. Karen credits the strong leadership of Rev. Dr. Mark Fowler in leading the church to be present in community for Mercy and Justice.
I began to learn and make up for the loss of learning during my formative years. It took me two years of going to Madison Area Technical College to learn basic math, history, English and pre-requisites to be accepted at the UW Madison School of Business later to transfer to Edgewood College where I earned my degree in Business Administration. Learning felt better than any drug for me. It filled my mind and made me curious. I proved to myself that I wasn’t stupid; something I was told at a very young age by my father, and I believed it. Any time I learned a topic, I delved into it far beyond what was expected in class. I felt like a kid in a candy store (except in Economics, Statistics and Business Law).
Today, I work to help individuals who experience loss of home, loss of hope, loss of dignity, loss of voice, injustice, and inequities. This fills my heart and soul like nothing else. It is healing. My goal is to return to school, hopefully the UW Madison School of Social Work and earn my master’s degree in social work specializing in addictive disorders and mental illness.