“Gratitude is part of what keeps me sober.”
“Changing my perspective to gratitude is part of what keeps me sober,” Emily Spadling said. “As the saying goes, 'You can't feel grateful and feel sorry for yourself at the same time.’”
She started abusing drugs when she was young. “I had a lot of trouble relating to other people. Plus, I was in church all the time and I hated it.” She started with alcohol and marijuana because that is what was available. It grew from there. “I would raid people’s pill cabinets and take anything that said ‘May cause drowsiness or dizziness.’”
“When I was using, I was incredibly negative because that fueled my addiction,” Emily remembers. “If I looked at the world with anger, I could justify why I used.”
After graduating from college in 2010, Emily said, “That’s when I went off the deep end.” She had been using meth for about a year when she first came to Reconciliation Services (RS).
She was really strung out on drugs and a family member suggested she try therapy at RS. “I don't know why I said yes, but I did.” The therapist then was Father Alexii Altschul (Fr. David Paisus at that time), who also co-founded the organization.
After a year of using meth, Emily had lost 30 pounds, she wasn’t sleeping, and she wasn’t eating. “I was losing my mind and I was very paranoid.”
“Reconciliation Services never looks down on anyone and the team sees the potential in everyone. ”
She met with Fr. Alexii for one hour, every other week. “Having somewhere to be at a certain time was a lifeline. I don’t think I made a lot of sense from week to week. I may have been up for two days. I would unload what was going on with me. He was always kind and understanding, and pushed me to get help.”
“I did go to my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting during my season with Fr. Alexii. It didn’t stick right away,” she said, “but I like to think of my time at RS as my connection to the real world.”
After a while, Emily stopped seeing Fr. Alexii regularly. A friend of hers was killed and she stopped using meth shortly after, but she continued to use pills.
She met one day with a job counselor at Missouri Vocational Rehabilitation who put it to her really plainly. “You graduated from college. You don’t have a place to live. And, you work at a sandwich shop. Would you go to rehab?”
Emily knew she was a drug addict, and she had a lot of pills on her at the time. She went to rehab the next day and has been sober every day since leaving treatment.
“Being separated from drugs and alcohol, I was able to see that they were the problem. I kept rambling to Fr. Alexii about these chaotic situations, and dangerous situations, and not connecting that it couldn’t get better while I was using. There were a lot of other things that had to change, but drugs were the immediate danger.”
Not long after getting sober, Emily met with Fr. Alexii to thank him for being with her during that difficult season. “He was so kind and glad that I was sober.” She had some money at the time, and donated it to Reconciliation Services. “I felt bad for all the times I couldn’t pay and I just came up here and took up all this space.”
Emily now teaches English as a second language to immigrants and refugees in Kansas City. She married her partner this year with whom she also co-founded an arts nonprofit, No Divide KC. And she just celebrated nine years of sobriety. “I am so grateful for my sobriety,” she shares
“I was so lacking in confidence because drugs were my whole life. Now I’ve been teaching for 8 years. Meeting people from around the world has been life changing.”
Emily is still a monthly donor to RS. “I think it’s incredible what RS does for the community. I wouldn’t have been able to get mental health services anywhere else. I didn’t have that capability, and financially I wouldn’t have because my main priority was getting and using drugs.”
“I’m so grateful to Fr. Alexii for being my lifeline to the world that I could know and the life that I could have. Reconciliation Services never looks down on anyone and the team sees the potential in everyone. They meet people where they are, with whatever resources they have, with a spirit of openness and genuineness.”
You can join Emily and become a monthly donor at our giving page. $80 a month covers one hour of therapy and $45 covers an hour of case management. One hour every other week with Fr. Alexii is what started Emily on her healing journey. Help other people like Emily start theirs with a gift to Reconciliation Services.