Thursday, April 19, 2012

Best. Positive. Image. Ever

Most. Positive.Image. Ever. If Melonie can do it, what exactly is your problem?

She was one of five children born to a single mom who struggled to hold it together. She never understood why her father wanted nothing to do with her, even though she looked just like him.

She did understand that drugs were an escape and prostituting herself was a way to pay for it. By the time she was 18, she had 4 children of her own, and a baby daddy who abused her to within an inch of her life.

Years later she is standing before a banquet room with 400 people who wipe tears listening to her story, and who give her a thunderous standing ovation when she is finished telling it. This is no ordinary rags-to-riches story.

Had I seen her before I heard it – seen the silky skin, the stylish outfit, the steely confidence – or better yet, had I seen her hustling to bring life back to barely beating hearts – I'd have made the five-second assumption that she came from a family of privilege. The kind of family that could afford to send her to the best schools. The kind of set up that allowed her time to study.

That's not Melonie's story. Not by a long shot.

Those four children? She loved them. And she lost them. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that the state took them into protective custody. Maybe it was the breaking point. We can't judge that. What's on record was that her mother – the remarkable woman who did the best she could with her five children – stayed in Melonie's life and convinced her to leave Minnesota – to escape the abusive boyfriend and to ride the train to Oregon to try for a better life.

That didn't work, either, at least not at first.

When the train jerked to a stop in Portland, there were no jobs. There was no support system, nothing to hold her up or bring her along. She took to the under culture, doing drugs and selling her body and soul to survive.

She lived and slept under Portland's legendary bridges.

Maybe there was a reason God put her there, under that bridge the night she saw the billboard. It was an advertisement for a hospital, plastered onto the side of building, picturing a larger than life shot of a doctor. It reminded her of something – the dream she'd abandoned years before of becoming a nurse.

It's not like she woke up the next day and enrolled in nursing school. There was a stop in jail along the way. There was a painful coming-to-Jesus experience People Like Us can't even imagine, much less make happen.

There was a series of letters Melonie wrote from her cell to case workers and judges, advocates and anyone who would listen, making a case to get her kids back...and she won. She won them seconds away from adoption. She won acceptance into a program that helped her stand on her own two feet as a mom and finally as a nursing student. There was this man she met, the guy who'd become her rock and her husband. And there was the time it all became too much and there was a relapse, the one that sent her spiraling fast back to where she'd come from, to what might have been a point of no return.
Except for that man, her husband, who knew what to do. Except for Melonie's mother, her kids and her own resolve to respond. Her husband had a relationship with Lifeworks Northwest. The Portland organization helps solve mental health and addiction issues for thousands of families. Every year. Every day. He knew who to call and they knew what to do.

With a leave of absence from school,Lifeworks Northwest, family support and that resolve, Melone came back. Then she went back. To school. To graduate. To be hired by one of Portland's larger hospitals, but not into just any nursing job.

No, her interviewing supervisors knew those nerves of steel, that non judgmental heart, that life experience, that resolve, was perfect for the trauma unit.

That doctor on the billboard?

She works with him now.

And when she's not busy with her family, her now adult children, her career, she's giving back. She's volunteering, encouraging people on the edge not to fall off. And she's teaching CPR to the team at Lifeworks Northwest. Stands to reason, doesn't it, that someone who could have been left for dead under a bridge believes that every heart deserves a second chance.

So today she's looking beautiful and strong, standing on a stage sharing her story with hundreds of supporters, movers and shakers, curious people who want to help. They hear her story. They experience the results of Lifeworks Northwest where “life works when you get the support you need.”

Melonie was the final speaker. She followed the executive whose mother was addicted to pain killers and then arrested trying to obtain more prescriptions. Melonie followed the well-produced video featuring several amazing people who were talking about their mental illnesses and addictions and successfully living with them; living amongst us.

So, let me get this straight: Lifeworks Northwest reaches out to people on the edge, to the hopeless, the addicted, those convicted of crimes...and Melonie is the outcome?

I'd support that in a heartbeat.

Where do I sign up?

Right here.