Sarah holds a profound and quiet strength in her being. When speaking with her, it’s easy to feel the warmth, kindness, and compassion that radiate from her heart. She is soft-spoken yet intellectual, naturally sweet, and deeply engaging. It is clear that she is remarkably intelligent—someone who has excelled in various careers while confronting internal struggles, often forced to navigate some of life’s most difficult challenges largely on her own.
Sarah’s path through adolescence was far from typical. She was denied the usual high school experience, misled into attending a wilderness summer camp in Utah under the guise of a hiking trip—a prerequisite for an abusive, “behavior-modification” boarding school in Montana. She did not realize the true nature of this program until she expected to return home at the end of the summer. Those two years of high school left her disoriented and distrustful, with no physical diploma or formal record of her attendance, as the school was later shut down due to malpractice.
Emerging from this intense institutional abuse, Sarah entered the world numb, confused, and unsure of her place. Her story illuminates the profound damage such systems can inflict, but more importantly, it is a testament to her resilience and determination. She ultimately broke free from the torment of a violent and controlling partner who had held her captive in her own home. Now, at Beit T’Shuvah, Sarah is discovering who she truly is beneath the pain and struggle, reclaiming her life, and building a future defined by strength, self-discovery, and hope.
“I am…well, I am a kind, caring person,” Sarah begins, pausing to reflect, “Now that I’ve been doing a lot more self-reflection—uncovering and breaking down the walls I’ve built over the years through drugs—I’m really trying to get to the core of who I am. Who was I before all of this?”
Sarah’s journey into addiction started early. She was only 13 when she first smoked weed, “The first time I got high, I thought, this is great. It was something I wasn’t supposed to do, which made it even better.” Growing up in a mixed-faith household—her mother Jewish, her father Christian—Sarah often felt like an outsider. “I hated my bat mitzvah… I just couldn’t connect to the concept of God,” she recalls, “From a young age, I noticed how many terrible things people did in the name of God—wars, cruelty, hypocrisy. I was drawn to people who felt the same way.”
As a child, she struggled with fitting in and seeking attention, sometimes through harmful behaviors, “At a young age, I’d do little things for attention—cut my arms on purpose, sit at the dinner table, and make sure my mom saw.”
Her adolescence took a difficult turn when her parents sent her to a wilderness program in Utah—she was told she would spend the summer hiking in Moab. “They took everything—shoes, clothes, everything. They handed me a tarp, rope, a bag of trail mix, and made me hike 7 to 10 miles a day through the Utah desert. I had to build my own shelter. It was three months of that.”
The program didn’t end there. Instead of returning home, she was placed in a two-year “therapeutic” boarding school in Montana. “If you got in trouble, they’d make you dig out a huge redwood stump from the frozen ground—alone, in the snow. It was work-based, strict, almost cult-like. You couldn’t cuss, couldn’t even mention certain bands or artists. Attack therapy, screaming groups, crying, snot running down faces, staff holding up pictures of us as children yelling, ‘How dare you do this!’”
College brought new freedoms—and new temptations. At Sonoma State, Sarah quickly fell into substance use. “One of the guys was smoking Oxys. The first time I tried it, I was hooked. I started making the drive back and forth constantly.” Her addiction escalated, and she began stealing from her parents. “I broke into their house, figured out their bank passwords, and siphoned money from their accounts into mine. I knew I’d get caught, but I didn’t care. I was addicted, angry, and reckless.”
Her parents gave her an ultimatum: go to treatment or face legal consequences. Sarah entered rehab for the first time at a program in Berkeley. “It was structured, behavior mod. By then, I knew how to play the game. But I was pissed.” She almost completed the program, but left early when she wasn’t allowed to see a visiting friend from Alabama—and ended up moving to Alabama with her, where she turned 21.
Sarah’s 21st birthday marked another pivotal moment: “Everyone at the bar bought me shots. I blacked out, fell off the bar, smashed my face into a table. My tooth went through my lip. They pumped my stomach, glued me back together.” Eventually, she returned to the program and completed it, having to start from the beginning.
In the following years, Sarah began to rebuild. She moved in with friends, found work in the restaurant and tech industries, and maintained sobriety. “I put together about three years of sobriety,” she says, “I was around 25 or 26. I had my own apartment, was working, and going to meetings. I had my life together for a bit.”
But old habits resurfaced, “Every relapse starts with alcohol—not because I love it, but because it opens the door,” she explains. Even periods of sobriety were fragile, challenged by toxic relationships and environments. Alcohol led to cocaine, and then, around COVID, meth entered her life. While Sarah managed to maintain well-paid positions in new and emerging tech companies, her drug use slowly changed the innate ability to maintain, and the kinds of people she surrounded herself with transformed, from healthy co-workers to criminals and drug dealers. “From that day forward, everything changed. I didn’t give a fuck about drinking anymore. Meth cured me of my alcoholism in the worst possible way. Meth switches off everything—eating, sleeping, caring. It’s the fucking devil.”
It was during this chaotic period post-COVID, after her choices in relationships began to reflect the nature of her progressing addictions. The meth and the opiates, which eventually led to fentanyl and a guy 3D printing ghost guns in the tenderloins, which was where she met a man we will call, Mr. A—homeless, living in his car, and initially charming, “He basically just moved into my apartment and never left.”
What began as companionship soon turned very quickly abusive.He was a gun runner, so there were weapons all over the house, and her life was in constant threat. Mr. A controlled her through fear, violence, and drugs. “He went through my phone and computer, looked through my old texts, past medical history, took over all my accounts…I was terrified because he always had guns.” He forced her to commit fraud, stole her money, and held her hostage in her own home, at gunpoint on numerous occasions—forcing her to lease a car, maxing out her credit cards, even walking her out to distant secluded rocks by the ocean, holding a gun to her head and threatening to shoot her.
Sarah’s body and mind began to deteriorate through this experience. Mr. A forced her to shave her head, put her in enough hospitals that she had to hide her identity—he threatened her and her family’s life. The abuse finally ended when he snapped her arm, fractured her orbital floor, and broke her nose in 5 places. She escaped with a pair of handcuffs on and was taken to the hospital after being found in a Safeway parking lot. Sarah finally mustered up the courage to tell the police what had happened—Mr. A picked her up from the hospital, and when she awoke at their apartment the next day, he had already been taken into custody.
From here, Sarah was left alone and traumatized, her Fentanyl use escalated, MRSA infections worsened, she lost vision in one eye, and developed large ulcers on her legs requiring skin grafts, “I literally did nothing but use drugs…I felt broken, scared, and unsafe.” Soon she realized she was in need of medical attention and was hospitalized for six months and transferred between three different facilities—Sarah faced a long road to recovery, but she got herself back on her own two feet because of her willpower. She raised the money to leave San Francisco post being held hostage with a GoFundMe, she did the research herself that led her to discover BTS, she got herself to a hospital, she persevered, she escaped, and she survived
Finally, she landed at Beit T’Shuvah. “When I got here, I was overwhelmed. I was very isolated, recovering from months in hospitals. I didn’t feel like myself. My self-esteem was shot.” Slowly, through community, group work, and personal growth, she began to rebuild, “Katie suggested I become a PF. At first, I resisted, but I tried it. It ended up being therapeutic. It allowed me to engage with the community, problem-solve, resolve conflicts, and hold boundaries.” This week, that internship turned into a full-time position.
Sarah has also made massive strides in her recovery, tapering down off methadone, exercising regularly, and practicing self-care. “I’m showing up for myself in discomfort, and this experience has helped me rebuild myself.” She is getting surgery this week, which will restore vision to her left eye. She plans to stay at Beit T’Shuvah, focused on healing and safety, leaving the past—and people like Mr. A—behind.
Sarah has endured more than most could imagine, yet those trials have not broken her—they have shaped her. And what does that mean? It means that if someone can survive what Sarah has and still turn their life around, nothing can stand in their way. Here at Beit T’Shuvah, she is doing the hard work to uncover the resilient warrior within, and to embrace the person she was always meant to be. She is rebuilding herself, reconnecting with her family, and restoring a natural ebb and flow to everything around her.
While the terror of a rigid, controlling school experience set patterns that influenced her addictions and relationships, that chapter of her life is behind her. She got away, she got out, and she survived. Now, in recovery, Sarah has become a leader and a source of strength—a warm, courageous presence for other women who have suffered physical abuse and assault.
Her story is only the beginning. With her compassion, determination, and lived experience, Sarah is already lighting the path for others, helping them find their own way forward. Her journey is a testament to resilience and a promise that even in the darkest moments, transformation is possible.