“Who are you?”
That’s the first question I ask every spotlight subject—not because what they answer is important, but because how they answer is. Where their mind goes when they hear that question says everything. Some go for the tangible, “I’m a daughter, a sister, a lover of pasta…” Some go with the clichè AA jargon, “I’m an alcoholic, a grateful member of this community…” But then, there are people like Rachel S. who take a long pause and answer, “I’m still trying to figure that out.” That’s honest. That’s real. That’s Rachel.
From the start, Rachel never quite felt like she belonged anywhere. A square peg in a world of round holes. “Even with sports, I was always hopping around—hockey, basketball, softball, soccer, tennis. I was kind of like that in school, too. I just adapted to be who other people liked. A people pleaser.”
Spanning longer than she can even remember, she has been a self-described chameleon—a tiger with ever-morphing stripes. To one group, she was this, to another she was that, and to herself, she was petrified with an anxiety that a child should never have to hold.
Rachel grew up in Minnesota, surrounded by family, community, and the aroma of snow-dusted grass. “My family’s very close. My parents are still together, my brother lives in Mississippi, and my grandma… my grandma’s my person.” That warm and loving family proved not to be enough to calm Rachel’s anxious nature. “Before school, I’d cry so hard I’d throw up,” Rachel laughs. “Sometimes my grandma would sit outside my classroom, or she’d give up and take me with her to work. I loved that. My mom was pissed, but looking back, she said, ‘Eh, whatever—she probably learned more hanging out with the adults.’”
There was joy in that childhood—but there was also confusion. “I showed very big emotions at a young age,” Rachel says. “Not just little temper tantrums, but aggression. My parents put me in therapy before I even realized what it was. I thought she was just the toy lady. I loved her.”
Rachel was a born and bred tomboy, thanks to being raised in a sports-heavy home. But when she made her first female friend in first grade, she was introduced to dresses and dolls. This girl introduced her to the concept of “playing house,” something Rachel had never heard of before. The game quickly became too serious and eventually sexual. “I didn’t know what was happening,” she says quietly. “I didn’t know what sex was. I just… ran home and kind of took it out of my brain.”
School became a battlefield. “That’s when the anxiety really started. Not being with my grandma—my protection, my person.” Having to see this girl every day was a torturous reminder of a shameful moment she just wanted to forget. So, she started to disappear into disguises. “I was always confused and never felt like I could fit in with certain people. But at the same time, it also allowed me to be friends with everyone.” It’s a strange thing—to be everyone and no one all at once. “It made me start to hate myself,” Rachel says, avoiding eye contact.
“My brain just wouldn’t shut up. It wouldn’t stop talking negatively about me—‘Why don’t you like this? Why can’t you do this?’ I needed a physical release.”
That release came in the form of self-harm. “That was for sure my first addiction. Rachel tried to be secretive about it, but her arms told a different story. “My arms would be tender and sore from having cuts all over them. I’d wear long sleeves in the summer.” She remembers a girl who once mimicked the cuts with a red marker. Rachel felt insulted. Rightfully so. “I didn’t say it to her, but I was like, ‘You think I want to do this? I don’t, but I have to.’”
It ended because of a single, unexpected kindness. Her baby cousin, who was maybe five or six at the time, saw her cuts and spoke up, innocently. “I was just… done. He helped me when he didn’t know he could. When he is older, I can’t wait to thank him for that.”
The outer wounds had healed, but the inner ones had a long way to go. “I had suicidal ideation. I never had a plan, but I would pray and pray to have terminal cancer—just an easy out. I’d watch YouTube videos about people ending up in the hospital and be jealous of the Make-A-Wish kids. Like, that’s a two-for-one—you get what you want and die.”
By eighth grade, she was suffering more than ever. Kids slipped razor blades into her locker, put scissors on her desk, and told her to kill herself. Kids can be so cruel.
When Rachel took her first drink at fourteen, the noise stopped. “I didn’t throw up. I didn’t get hungover. I woke up perfectly fine.” The anxiety was gone. The pain was gone. The remedy for her sickness had been found. It became her medicine. She drank throughout high school, finding creative ways to score booze, but by the time Rachel got to college, the doctor was in and the pharmacy was open.
In college, the world opened and fell apart all at once. “I went to CU Boulder and I went absolutely H.A.M.. I’d end up in some city I’d never heard of, wake up next to someone, have to go outside and figure out where I was.” By nineteen, her parents sent her to treatment for the first time. “When I was at Hazelden, they’d ask, ‘Are you ready to be sober for the rest of your life?’ and I’d say, ‘Are you kidding? No!’ Everyone else was saying yes, and I just thought, ‘Are you crazy?’”
Rachel bounced through multiple jobs and multiple treatment programs—Minnesota, Colorado, New Jersey—and managed to gather six months sober before turning twenty-one. “There was something in me,” she admits. “I needed to be able to do that—a legal drink, a legal smoke.” The relapse was fast. She agreed to come back home, but her parents made her sign a contract—no drinking, pay rent, save money. “I lasted maybe two months. Then they found out. Then they kicked me out.”
That’s when her grandmother sent her a lifeline—a link to Beit T’Shuvah. The text just read, “Whenever you’re ready.” Rachel called admissions on a Thursday and was on a plane to Los Angeles that Friday—drinking her weight in airplane mini bottles.
And that’s where the story shifts. Somewhere between the walls of Beit T’Shuvah and the faces that welcomed her, Rachel began to find the person she’d been chasing her entire life. “When I got here, I didn’t know anyone. But I jumped right in.” Thanks to that leap, she has transformed. “I’ve learned more life lessons in the last six months than I have probably in my life just with all the people around me.” Those six months have turned Rachel into someone that she never thought she’d be—someone she can see herself loving one day. “One of the biggest things I realized a couple of months in was I don’t have to be friends with everyone….and that’s fine. I will always be kind to everyone, but I don’t have to be liked by everyone.”
That word—kind—sits at the core of who Rachel is. “Even though I grew up in a masculine family, I had so many maternal figures. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I just said, ‘A mom.’ I feel like I’m a mom without a kid.” And truly she is—a 22-year-old mom to a community of 134 drug addicts and criminals. Despite her maternal instincts, around Beit T’Shuvah, they call her “Baby Rach.” “It used to bother me,” she admits. “I was like, I’m not a kid! But now it’s love.” She has come to realize that it isn’t a term of minimization, but a term of commitment. It says, “You’re not just the youngest in your family, you’re the youngest in ours.”
These days, Rachel works at the front desk and interns for the synagogue. “I love being the first person people talk to. When new intakes come in, I treat them like normal people, not patients. I know what that first call feels like, and I love just giving back however I can, because of what Beit T’Shuvah has given me.” She gets to see the inner workings of the temple and is proud to help facilitate Shabbat services every Friday night.
After we talked for some time, I asked her again, “Who are you?”
“A crazy Vikings fan,” she grinned, but when the humor faded into reflection, she realized that she is so much more. “I’m a very loving and caring person who not only wants to see myself succeed, but I want to see others succeed. I’m more than an alcoholic.” A word she says she says she feels a lot is “whole.”
And maybe that’s what she’s become—not a different person, but a truer one. The girl who once morphed her shape to survive knows that she no longer needs to. Under it all—all the smoke, mirrors, and camouflage, the real Rachel has always been waiting. Even a chameleon has a base color.
In just six months, Rachel has deeply woven herself into this community. How? Because she’s not hiding behind a mask. She’s not performing, not blending, not pretending. She’s all she needs to be and more than this community could ever have asked for. Because Rachel doesn’t fit in. She belongs.
That’s Rachel.
Who the hell are you?