Anita DeHart grew up in a home of substance addiction and physical abuse. On that dangerous path, her father began to get abusive toward her mother and siblings until they separated. Her father remarried and, although he remained abusive, has focused on sobriety for the past 22 years. Anita’s mother was able to get clean while incarcerated and maintained it for four years. Anita and her siblings had to live with their father and step mother finding more physical and mental abuse. Anita turned to drugs at 16 years old to help her cope, starting with pain pills and moving onto meth. “I just wanted to feel normal or different from what I was feeling at that moment. Drugs helped with that.”
Anita “became too much of a problem child,” dropped out of high school, and was sent to live with her mother. Her mother’s health deteriorated so Anita cared for her. Her mother relapsed back to drugs a year before passing away – Anita’s daughter, Chasity, was only six months old. This sent Anita spiraling back into depression and it would be two more years until she changed her life. “I went to jail and got clean. I was accepted in the Drug Court program and my life became amazing. I was finally becoming somebody I want to be. I was 100% off drugs and loving everything about life. I graduated Drug Court and a month later gave birth to my son, Nicholas.”
However, doctors gave Anita pain medication during labor that instantly relapsed all her progress toward sobriety. It took another two years until she finally had enough, got clean, separated from her children’s father, found support living with her sister, and had her case worker sign her up at LearningQuest to earn her diploma in order to find a job. Anita quickly passed all tests and earned her diploma. Her hardworking ability to excel in class was why she was chosen to be a speaker at her 2019 Graduation & Awards Night. Anita said, “I was unemployed and lacking confidence to even apply for a job because I didn’t have my HSE or GED. My daughter is my true inspiration. How can I as a mom ask her to do great things in school if I didn’t even finish high school?”
Anita found employment at Ace Hardware with plans to start courses to earn her A.A. in Human Services this Fall at MJC. Anita says, “My dream is to be able to help women like myself, addicts who just can’t seem to stop, mother’s who don’t believe they’re good enough.”
“I had the knowledge in me the whole time, I just needed to believe.”
-Anita DeHart
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