Some of us have it easier than we’d care to admit. Others are born into lives that have been riddled with struggle from the start, the odds stacked—nothing but trials and tribulations, complication after complication with no resolve in sight. We can connect with the concepts of a life of challenge as we all face them in essence, but some, like Cici R., have been fighting for normality since birth.
Cici describes herself as timid. Insecure. Still finding her purpose. But underneath that softness is a resilience that has been forming since childhood. What I see is someone who has endured. Someone who has persevered. Someone who has finally arrived on the other side of a struggle she had no say in being born into.
Tragically, her father died when she was seven from AIDS related to drug use. Her mother struggled with addiction and untreated mental illness. One day, after witnessing her mother being beaten by her boyfriend, Cici called the police. That call resulted in DCFS removing her and her siblings from the home.
For years, Cici questioned whether calling the police that day had ruined everything. Would life have been easier if she had stayed silent? But there was no safe version of that childhood. “My mom used to fight us, fist-fight us. And we were seven, eight, nine years old.”
The foster system did not bring safety the way one imagines it might. She and her sisters were separated at times. She moved through foster homes and group homes, running away repeatedly due to abuse. Her sisters remained more stable—but endured abuse nonetheless; Cici became “the black sheep,” the one who bounced from placement to placement, running away often.
High school became her refuge—not because she excelled, but because it was the only place she felt safe. “I didn’t care about my grades because nobody else cared. I just went because it was a sanctuary.” That really hits hard. Most people go to school because their parents make them, and they don’t love it. For Cici, school was a safe haven—just think about that for a second. Everything outside of school was so bad that school, the one place most kids famously hate being, was where she felt the most at home.
Cici’s had her first drink, on accident, at eight years old when her mom left booze in a sippy cup—then blamed her for trying to get drunk. Her first intentional drink came in junior high, sneaking alcohol from a foster parent’s liquor cabinet and bringing it to school in a water bottle. By high school, she was prescribed Adderall, discovered it could be abused, and was eventually introduced to meth. The addiction took hold quickly and lasted until she was about eighteen.
When Cici was moved from the valley to a group home in South Central, she stopped meth cold turkey—not from recovery, but from lack of access. Vicodin replaced it. Substances shifted, but the underlying need did not.
At nineteen, she became pregnant. So, she stopped using drugs and, at age twenty, gave birth to a baby boy. For years, her life revolved around her son. But the trauma underneath never resolved. Instead, it went quiet. Cici isolated. Afraid to be seen. Afraid of the world, “I don’t know what it was, but I was so scared.”
At twenty-seven, alcohol returned—not as rebellion, but as relief. Bars offered what she had struggled to access her entire life: confidence. Looseness. Social ease. “Being drunk and not being the shy Cici I am.” What began as weekends became daily routines. After-work drinks turned into driving home drunk. Eventually, she began working at a bar, where cocaine entered the picture.
That escalation was rapid and devastating. Cici wouldn’t come home for days. Her son once told her, “You left on Thursday and didn’t come back until Tuesday.” Her sisters stepped in to care for him while she spiraled. She lost her job. Money ran out. Crack became cheaper than cocaine, and meth slowly crept back into her life.
Her son eventually moved out of her home because of her drinking. That loss shattered her. Soon after, she was arrested in the middle of an abusive relationship and spent time in jail. Ten days after her release, she was placed on a psychiatric hold for eleven days.
That was the breaking point.
Cici sought treatment and arrived at Beit T’Shuvah for the first time. In her seventh month, she relapsed. When she left, she left with plans to use. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
But when she looks back, she doesn’t blame the program. She names something deeper, “I felt so alone, I didn’t utilize the community I had here.” Three and a half months into her relapse, she recognized the pattern replaying itself in real time, “I saw my life repeating. Toxic relationship. Using. Running out of money.”
She called Beit T’Shuvah and asked to return. This time has been different. Cici is honest about what changed. Her first stint, she told herself that she was getting sober for her son. It wasn’t enough. This time, she made the decision for herself.
Self-esteem—something she has struggled with since childhood—became the central focus. In groups, where she once stayed silent, she now raises her hand. “Last time, I wouldn’t share. This time I forced myself to.” The act of speaking became a rebuilding of worth.
Family work has been equally transformative. Through family immersion and therapy with Jill, Cici and her sisters began addressing the abuse they endured growing up—experiences they had never spoken about openly. Each sister carried the trauma differently. For years, Cici believed she might be responsible for their suffering because she made the call that removed them from their mother. Now she understands something more nuanced: there was no safe option.
Her mother has not been in her life for over thirty years. She eventually married the man who abused her and continues to struggle with addiction. “For a long time I felt like I was following in her footsteps,” Cici admits, “I’ve made a choice now not to.”
That choice shows itself in small but powerful ways. Her sisters now rely on her. They trust her to care for their homes, their pets, “I’m dependable again,” she says with quiet pride. For someone who once felt like the unstable one, the unreliable one, that shift matters deeply.
Her relationship with her son is slowly rebuilding. They speak again. She hopes to restore his room when she returns home, creating space for him as he enters adulthood. Cici speaks about that relationship not with entitlement, but with humility and hope. One thing is for certain: her love for her son is unwavering and unshakeable. It always has been.
Today, she graduates the program. Her last day at BTS. This time, she leaves treatment with structure. A partner who prioritizes recovery alongside her, attending couples therapy to strengthen the bond and stability. She is completing peer support specialist training and hopes to work in treatment—helping others who grew up in systems like she did. “I feel confident in my sobriety,” not overconfident—grounded.
Recovery has given Cici something she never had growing up. “I feel like I have a good foundation now, I’m looking forward to this next chapter,” and with that foundation comes something even more powerful—hope.
For someone who grew up with abusive parents in the throes of drug addiction, then endured abusive foster homes and found sanctuary and safety anywhere but home, Cici’s experience from childhood has been far from normal. The odds were stacked early, just as they so often are for those born into lives shaped by chaos rather than care. While others are given stability as a starting point, Cici was forced to search for it—to fight for it—from the very beginning. Becoming a mother at a young age left even less time or space for her to figure out who she really was.
Thus, for Cici, recovery has become something different. A slow excavation. A stripping away of everything she carried that was never truly hers—the fear, the instability, the belief that she was destined to repeat the life she came from. Finally, Cici is understanding that she is who matters most—and in taking care of herself, she is able to be the best version yet for everyone around her. In doing so, she is no longer defined by the struggle she was born into, but by the life she is building today. Sometimes, for someone who has been fighting for normality since birth, that realization is nothing short of radical.