HOPE COS

HAPPY FRIDAY!
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
Join us every Friday for a virtual conversation with our community. Each week we’ll ask a simple question to spark conversation, share perspective, and remind each other that none of us have to do life alone. ❤
Your answer, no matter how small, might help someone else today.

We are so incredibly grateful for all of our volunteers, and today we want to recognize a few people for their outstanding contributions to HOPE COS.

A special thank you to Judie Merrill, who took on the enormous task of organizing our storage area. If you've ever been down there, you know what a challenge that was! Thanks to Judie's hard work and dedication, we can actually find things now.

We would also like to honor Sharon and Dale Mushak and The Compound team. They faithfully showed up at every shelter, serving wherever they were needed- helping in the kitchen, supporting our security team, and making sure our guests and volunteers were cared for.

Your willingness to serve, your generous hearts, and your commitment to our community have made a lasting impact. We appreciate each of you more than words can express and are blessed to have you as part of the HOPE COS family.

Thank you for all you do to make a difference in the lives of others and in our community. ❤️

...continued from last week...

PART 2 of 3: THE PROMISE…

People usually assume that moment must have felt devastating, and in some ways I suppose it was supposed to. I had serious charges. I understood exactly what was happening and exactly how much trouble I was in.

But if I am being honest, what I remember feeling most was relief.

That probably sounds strange to people who have never lived outside, but survival changes the way your brain works. When life has been reduced to staying warm enough to make it through the night, finding somewhere safe to sleep, how to stay cool when it's too hot outside, figuring out how to charge your phone, and hoping nobody steals your things, stability starts to feel almost impossible to imagine. The basics become everything.

When I was sentenced, I had been given four years in ComCor. I still remember sitting in my sentencing hearing while the District Attorney told the judge, on the record, that she hoped I would fail and prove her right about the kind of person she believed I was.

Even now, writing that feels surreal. I still can’t quite understand what would go through someone’s mind to make them think something like that is okay to say. Maybe she thought she was motivating me in the harshest way imaginable. Or maybe she was just being a b***h. Honestly, I still haven't decided, but I'm leaning more towards she was just a b***h.

I had made mistakes. A lot of them. I understood why I was standing in that courtroom, and I was not looking for sympathy or excuses. But there was something deeply painful about hearing another human being openly root for your failure at a moment when your life was already falling apart. I was homeless. I was exhausted. I was scared. But if that wasn’t incentive to prove someone wrong, I don’t know what is.

ComCor was not easy, and there were parts of it I hated.

My first couple weeks there were rough. I ended up switching rooms after some serious issues with my roommates. I don't really want to get into everything that happened, but I will say this: paramedics later told me I could have died.

We were routinely woken up around 3 a.m. for random drug tests, and every few weeks the entire campus would get shaken down in the middle of the night while police walked through with drug dogs and went through every single thing we owned.

I had to turn over my entire paycheck every payday and got six dollars a week back for myself, which did not even cover what it cost to do laundry there, much less bus fare to get to and from work.

I still remember a friend trying to drop off a bag of quarters for me when I first arrived, because I literally could not afford to wash my clothes, and staff refusing to let her leave them for me. Looking back, that still irritates me.

I complained about ComCor plenty while I was there, and there were things about it that drove me absolutely insane. There were moments that felt incredibly humiliating, frustrating, and unfair. But as much as I can complain about parts of the experience, I also believe something else is true: I genuinely do not think I would be where I am today without that structure in my early recovery.

Part of my program consisted of something called "the matrix." People were expected to write about their lives. What had happened, what went wrong, and what they wanted their future to look like. Some people paid others to do theirs or rushed through it just to get it over with.

I took my own matrix really seriously.

I filled an entire spiral notebook with writing.

For the first time in a very long time, I stopped running from the wreckage of my life long enough to really look at it. I started asking myself hard questions about how I had ended up there, what patterns kept repeating, and what I actually wanted my future to look like if substances were no longer part of it.

I was embarrassed by where my life had ended up. Embarrassed by the charges, embarrassed that after all those years of trying to pull myself together, I had somehow landed right back in another hole. There was shame too. And fear. I had spent years trying to convince myself that somehow things would eventually work out, only to end up exactly where I was before.

I was determined to do something different this time. I had made a promise to myself and to God, and I meant it.

I had meant all the promises before too. Every time I had tried recovery, I wanted it. I meant it through all of the relapses too. I don't think people spend years struggling with addiction because they don't care enough or don't want better lives. Most of us desperately want things to be different... but addiction is a powerful thing.

Addiction is also more complicated than people often realize. Looking back, it would be easy to write this story as if everything was misery all the time, but that wouldn't be true either. There were friendships, adventures, moments of laughing so hard my stomach hurt, and periods where I genuinely believed I was getting my life together. There were times when I had my own place, my own things, and dreams I was still chasing. Some of the people I met during those years are still among my closest friends today. Some of them are on this recovery journey with me, and others are not. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love them any less- we’re just on different paths.

There were also experiences so strange that they sound completely made up. I was once kidnapped and held hostage for three days. I later spent a month living with a Mennonite family in another city in western Colorado. One time, I met a shaman who lived in a crystal cave (okay, so it was a cave completely covered in geodes, but I promise it really happened) with a pet eagle named Naomi. I have found myself surrounded by enough genuinely bizarre situations that I could probably write an entirely separate book about them.

The problem was never that life was bad every minute of every day.

The problem was that no matter how many good moments existed in between, I always seemed to end up back in the same terrible situation.

For the first time in a very long time, I started wondering whether there might still be a way to build something different.

The difference wasn’t that I suddenly wanted recovery more, this time. It was that, for the first time, I stopped trying to figure out how to eventually use “responsibly,” whatever that was supposed to mean. I stopped negotiating with myself about whether maybe one day I could control it. Instead, I started trying to understand why my life kept ending up in the same painful place and what it might actually look like to build a future without substances in it.

When you have spent years simply surviving, chaos becomes comfortable and normal. You learn how to survive chaos. You know what to expect from it. Stability feels dangerous and uncomfortable because you are always waiting for the moment it is taken away or disappears.

Homelessness and addiction doesn't always kill people quickly... Sometimes it just slowly takes pieces of them until one day there is not much left.

I did not want to spend the rest of my life cycling through addiction, homelessness, survival, and starting over.

I did not want to go back. I knew exactly what was waiting for me if I did.

I believe that if I go back one more time, there might not be enough of me left to find my way out again.

Recovery came after that.

There was no single moment where everything suddenly made sense. No magical shift where I woke up transformed. At first, it mostly felt uncomfortable. I had to sit with emotions I had been numbing for decades. I had spent years surviving, reacting and running from myself. Recovery meant sitting still long enough to actually look at the life I had lived and the damage I had caused, and that was harder than I expected. It also meant the opportunity to decide what I wanted my future to look like, and work towards it.

In May of 2017, I was approved for non-residential status and moved into sober living. I was still a ComCor client and still under strict supervision with a case manager, but after everything that had happened, simply being in a home instead of the facility felt significant. It was not freedom exactly, but it was progress, and for the first time in a long time, life started feeling a little less unstable.

That doesn’t mean it was easy.

Living in a house full of women was its own adventure. Many of those women became some of my closest friends and strongest supports, and a couple remain really important people in my life today. But recovery housing isn’t all rainbows and unicorns either. There were disagreements, personality conflicts, annoying house meetings, hurt feelings, and all the challenges that came with putting a group of people with very different backgrounds under one roof and asking them to heal together.

I was working at a local pizza place within walking distance of the house, but they could not give me enough hours to support myself without a car. To make ends meet, I donated plasma twice a week, every week. What started as a temporary solution turned into years of sitting in plasma donation centers just to keep my head above water financially. Eventually I was diagnosed with chronic anemia and can no longer donate, but at the time it was simply part of survival. Every single red cent went towards paying to keep a roof over my head. That was my primary focus. If I lost my bed, I would lose everything else too.

Transportation was another challenge. I relied heavily on the bus system, which was both expensive and incredibly time-consuming. It took HOURS to get anywhere. I spent a lot of time staring out bus windows and waiting at bus stops, trying to figure out how to stretch every dollar as far as possible. There were a couple of times I got so far behind financially that I was almost placed on a financial contract. I WANTED to pay more- I just wasn’t earning enough money. Then one day, a couple of years later, one of my family members gifted me a beat-up ancient gas guzzling vehicle. It was the most beautiful car I’d ever seen in my entire life, and that’s when the trajectory of my life changed. That amazing gift allowed me to get additional shifts at my job as a delivery driver, which allowed me to catch up financially. Finally, I could breathe.

At some point during all of this, someone suggested I look into becoming a peer coach. For the first time in my entire life, I heard that my years of struggle were qualifications that could potentially help someone else out. I understood addiction, homelessness, hopelessness, shame, and starting over more times than I cared to admit, but until that day, none of that felt valuable to me. It felt embarrassing.

By then, I had spent so much time seeing myself as the person who needed help that it never occurred to me, I might someday become the person offering it.

Around that same time, I met the Executive Director of an organization that provides peer services and began training to become a peer coach. One of the strangest parts of that season of my life was how deeply she believed in me before I had any real ability to believe in myself.

***************************************
…to be continued next week.

🚗 Today's the Day! 🚗

DMV2GO is at Hope COS today from 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM.

Need to renew a driver's license or ID, replace a lost card, obtain a motor vehicle record, or take care of other eligible DMV services? Stop by and take advantage of this convenient opportunity right here in the community.

📍 Hope COS
⏰ 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM

Please review the flyer for available services, fees, and required documentation before you arrive.

We look forward to seeing you!

Part 1 of 3: THE PRAYER…

When I was a little girl, I didn’t say, “When I grow up, I want to be a homeless addict.”

But that’s what ended up happening anyway.

Nobody really grows up dreaming about addiction, jail, homelessness, broken relationships, or sleeping in on the streets wondering how life went so wrong. At least, I don’t think most of us do.

Like a lot of people, I had plans. Dreams. Things I imagined my life might become. Somewhere along the way, though, addiction slowly started making decisions for me, and before I really understood what was happening, my life had become something I barely recognized.

By late 2016, I had been homeless for a couple of years. Again.

By that point, homelessness was not unfamiliar territory to me. Collectively, I had spent well over ten years of my adult life unhoused. Sometimes I had a car to sleep in, and sometimes I did not. I knew the camps. I knew the hidden places people slept, gathered, laughed, lived and unfortunately…died. I knew the trails, the small areas of secluded woodland, the unincorporated areas that were basically safe from police involvement, the abandoned corners of town, and the unspoken rules that come with surviving outside. I knew which gas stations might tolerate someone lingering too long, which would allow someone to get water, use their bathroom and which ones would run you off immediately. I knew where to find dumpsters that threw away perfectly good food, where to stay visible enough to be safe but hidden enough not to attract too much attention, and how to make it through the day carrying everything you owned.

Tent cities were not something I had simply heard about. I had lived in them.

I knew what it felt like to sleep lightly because you never fully trusted that your things would still be there in the morning. I also knew what it was like to be able to sleep dead to the world, simply from pure exhaustion. I knew what it was like to constantly think about where you were going to charge a phone, wash your clothes, stay warm, or find food. I knew how quickly a bad stretch could turn into months, and how months had a way of quietly turning into years before you even realized what had happened.

That familiarity almost made it worse.

Because by late 2016, as I sat in a tent hidden in a cluster of trees off a bike trail behind ComCor in Colorado Springs, I knew exactly what I was looking at.

I knew how hard it was to claw your way back from this type of existence.

And I knew how easy it was to never make it out at all.

The tent I was staying in was not much protection anymore. Every time it snowed, water found its way inside. By November, enough snow had already fallen that nothing I owned ever fully dried out. My blankets smelled like mildew and wet earth because they stayed damp almost constantly, and after a while the smell settled into everything. My clothes smelled like it. My hair smelled like it. My skin smelled like it. Even now, certain smells can take me right back to that season of my life before I even realize what is happening.

People who have never lived outside often imagine homelessness as temporary discomfort. They picture being cold for a while before eventually warming up. They imagine hunger as something sharp and immediate, not something that quietly settles into the background of your life. What they do not understand is how quickly survival starts shrinking your world.

Eventually, life becomes very small.

You stop thinking much about the future because the present takes all your energy. Your focus narrows to immediate problems. Where are you sleeping tonight? Will your things still be there in the morning? Can you stay warm enough to sleep? Will you eat today? Is there somewhere safe to charge your phone? Can you make it through the next twenty-four hours without things getting worse?

That was my world.

Since it was winter, I was cold all the time. Not the kind of cold you escape from at the end of the day, but the kind that settles into your body and never fully leaves. My shoes were wet more often than they were dry, and every morning started with pulling damp clothes back onto a cold body because there were no better options. Hunger became familiar enough that I mostly stopped noticing it until it got sharp. Some days my stomach hurt badly enough that I felt sick, but after a while you stop reacting to things that once would have felt unbearable because survival has a way of teaching you where to spend your energy. I remember once being so hungry I stole someone’s ramen packet. Yes. A ramen packet. Those things were like ten cents each, but starvation was desperation, and I felt guilty while I ate someone else’s food.

The loneliness was harder.

For years, I had been the person people called when they needed help. I had loaned money I could not afford to loan, given rides on an empty tank, listened to problems in the middle of the night, opened my home, fed people, and shown up when things fell apart. I had spent years believing that loyalty mattered and that if life ever completely collapsed around me, the people I loved would show up for me too.

Instead, most of them disappeared.

The part that still hurts to think about was not even the big things. I was not asking people to let me move in. I was not asking for money. I was not asking to sleep on anyone’s couch.

I just wanted to charge my phone.

A phone matters when you are homeless. It is how you try to stay connected to opportunities, resources, people, and whatever fragile sense of stability you still have left. Before I figured out where the outdoor outlets were around town, I tried asking friends if I could sit outside long enough to use theirs.

Friends.
People I had supported for years.
People I loved. I thought they loved me too…

They said no.

Eventually, I learned where the outlets were near buildings and gas stations, places where nobody cared if you were quietly charging a phone. But I never forgot what it felt like realizing that the same people I had spent years showing up for could not even offer something as small as electricity.

By then, I had also picked up my first serious drug charges. After over twenty years of somehow avoiding getting caught, my luck had finally run out. Since I had violated probation again, prison was no longer some distant possibility people warned me about. It was real. I was looking at 4-6 years.

The strange part is that prison wasn't even what scared me most.

At least prison meant I would not wake up freezing in a tent wondering how I was supposed to survive another day.

By that point, I had stopped praying for things to get better. After enough years of trying to fix my life only to somehow end up right back where I started, hope had started feeling dangerous. Every time I convinced myself things might finally change, something happened that seemed to prove me wrong.

So every night before I went to sleep, I prayed that I would not wake up the next morning. And I was furious every single morning when I’d wake up, that I was still alive.

This is difficult to admit, even now.

I wasn't making plans to hurt myself. I just felt exhausted in a way I didn't know how to explain. Every morning felt like another day I had to survive, and there were nights when I genuinely did not know how much more of that life I had left in me.

Then came the night in late November when something inside me finally gave out.

It had been snowing most of the day, which meant I already knew what I was walking back to. Snow meant water, and water meant that by morning everything inside the tent would somehow be wetter, colder, and harder to tolerate than it had been the day before. The tent had never been particularly good at keeping the weather out, and by that point there was not much I could do about it anyway.

I crawled inside, wrapped myself in blankets that reeked, and tried to settle in for the night. The smell bothered me less than it probably should have by then. What was most miserable of all was the chill, the cold and the damp.

I don't remember falling asleep, but I do remember waking up.

It was sometime in the middle of the night, and the first thing I noticed was that something felt really wrong. At first, I couldn't figure out what had pulled me awake, but after a few seconds I realized I was so cold that I could barely move. My body felt stiff and heavy, and when I tried to take a deep breath, I could not quite catch it. Everything hurt. The ache was bone deep and I sat there trying to move my fingers and toes, so that I was able to work the zipper on the tent and go to the bathroom.

I remember reaching for my phone for the flashlight.

Of course it was dead.

I sat there for a while trying to think clearly, but everything felt foggy and muddled. The blankets were damp. My clothes were freezing and wet. The cold had settled into everything so completely that it no longer felt like something outside of me. It felt like it had moved into my body.

When I finally unzipped the tent, I saw how much more snow had fallen. It was beautiful and awful at the same time.

I still remember standing there staring at it.

The world was desolate in that strange way snow makes things feel empty, and I remember feeling something in me finally shatter.

I was freezing, exhausted, and so completely worn down that I could not imagine doing any of it again.

I had spent years trying to claw my way back from addiction, homelessness, bad decisions, and the kind of instability that slowly takes over your life. I had promised myself so many times that things would get better, only to find myself back in another camp, another crisis, another version of starting over.

Standing there in the snow, I remember realizing that I genuinely did not know if I had another comeback left in me.

That was my breaking point.

I cried harder than I had cried in years.

Not because something new had happened, but because I suddenly understood what my future probably looked like if nothing changed. Another winter. Another camp. Another year of surviving instead of living.

And standing there in the freezing dark, crying so hard I could barely breathe, I made myself and God a promise.

If I somehow managed to pull myself out of this one more time, I would never come back the same way.

Never ever again.

I prayed for help. I prayed for change. I prayed for a different way of life.

Three days later, my prayers were answered.

I was sentenced to ComCor.

***************************************
…to be continued next week.

📣 DMV2GO Schedule Change

DMV2GO will be at Hope COS on June 15th instead of its usual 4th Thursday of the month visit.

If you're planning to utilize DMV2GO services this month, please note the change in schedule and mark your calendars accordingly.

📅 June 15, 2026
⏰ 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM
📍 Hope COS

Please see the flyer for available services, fees, and required documentation.