toledoblade.com --

We all know this: The mirror doesn't lie.

We just don’t see its harshest truths because we don’t want to.

But on July 4, 2008, an addicted and miserably unhappy Jill Clemens looked reality in the eye. Today, she sees a different person looking back at her.

"I am a productive member of society now. I am happy, joyous, and free," the 37-year-old mother of four said softly as she sat on the sliver of a back porch at Harbor House in Toledo's central city. Once a funeral home, the big place on Cherry Street provides transitional housing and help during recovery for homeless, chemically dependent women.

Harbor House will celebrate its 20th anniversary with an open house and cookout on Aug. 20.

The Harbor House, which provides transitional housing for single, homeless women who are recovering from addiction.
( THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT )

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"We don’t care how you get here, but we do care how you leave," declares a sign in the front hall, a quote attributed to Renee King, program director/assistant executive director.

Hundreds of women have come and gone over the years.

Some come from jail, some from the streets. Ms. Clemens came about nine months ago from Glenbeigh Hospital of Rock Creek, Ohio, a treatment center that’s affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic. She had been there for three months, a stay that began two days after her epiphany last July.

"I looked at myself in the mirror and I couldn’t stand what I was looking at," she remembered. "I was so miserable. I just said I couldn’t do this anymore. I have to get help."

Former resident Connie Brooks, 49, came to Harbor House by way of the Correctional Treatment Facility in downtown Toledo, an alternative to prison for many first-time or nonviolent offenders and those who have chemical dependencies.

That was 10 years ago, a time when she was wondering what her next step would be. She had tried to straighten out on her own, "and it wasn’t possible. I would do it for awhile but then I would revert to the lifestyle."

Renee King, left, assistant executive director, Donna Perras, center, executive director, and Connie Brooks, right, case manager, sit in the family room of Harbor House.
( THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT )

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The answer came to her at a 12-step meeting as she listened to a man talk about his experience at a halfway house.

Sitting on the porch at Harbor House, Ms. Brooks pointed to a nearby structure. "I used to get high in that building," she said. "I never knew [Harbor House] was here. When I walked in, I felt it: This was the right place. This is what I was supposed to do."

She was so ready to leave her old life behind.

"My spirit was just tired," Ms. Brooks said. "I really wanted to be responsible. ... It was time for me to grow up."

She stayed at Harbor House for 13 months and nine days, then moved out with $1,200 she had saved from a job the staff had helped her land, and into an apartment they had helped furnish.

She’s now a homeowner, a sophomore at Lourdes College with a dual major in social work and criminal justice, and full-time case manager at Harbor House.

"I believed in me," Ms. Brooks said. "You can face anything. You just have to be in that space of there’s nothing you cannot accomplish if you set your mind to it."

Donna Perras, executive director of Harbor House, puts it this way: "We help women reclaim their lives."

"Our final, ultimate goal is for them to become contributing members of the community again, and all the steps that are taken here in the house lead them to that ultimate goal."

Ms. Clemens and Ms. Brooks are said to be typical of the women who are accepted into the program.

"They’ve all reached bottom," Ms. Perras said.

And they’re ready to change, Ms. King said. "They want to do the right thing, but they don’t know how because they’ve been in the darkness for so long."

Harbor House is a nonprofit organization that relies on a financial patchwork of government grants, gifts from foundations, fund-raising events, and an annual appeal for its budget of about $220,000. It also welcomes donations of furniture, supplies, and clothing for residents.

The house can accommodate up to 14 women at a time. The minimum stay is six months and the maximum, 18 months.

It’s a tough program, Ms. Perras said, one that includes a behavioral contract, mandatory 12-step meetings, individual and group therapy sessions provided by outside agencies, group sessions with other residents at Harbor House, and chores such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry.

"We provide structure, because these women do not have structure in their lives when they come here," Ms. King noted. "They’re not used to a schedule or any type of boundaries."

She insists they leave the street life behind in every way. "You are now a lady," she tells them. "You will talk like a lady, you will act like a lady, you will dress like a lady."

There’s a large room in the basement that’s filled with clothing of various sizes where residents can find something suitable to wear.

Their preparation for "real life" extends to daily skills that other people take for granted, such as planning a menu, shopping for groceries, and cooking a meal.

"They’ve been homeless or in prison for so long they’ve forgotten how to do things," Ms. Perras pointed out, "or they’re so young that they don’t have the faintest idea of how to cook."

The median age of women in the program last year was mid-30s, but participants have ranged from teens up to 65. All have little or no income when they move in.

Billie Adams, 60, a program alum who now lives in Old Orchard, said it was scary when she left Harbor House in March, 2007, and moved into her own place. Until then, she had never lived alone. She had relied on other people for even the most routine tasks.

"I remember at my first apartment, I had set boxes on top of boxes at my back door, and I sat there and cried because I couldn’t figure out how to get the boxes [through] the back door. Then it came to me — Cut the boxes down, dodo."

A drinker since she began sneaking samples of her father’s homemade wine in the basement when she was 11 or 12, Miss Adams said she had entered treatment programs several times as an adult without success.

Early in 2006, she tried again. "I was tired. I was through, but I didn’t know where to go," she said.

Miss Adams initially went to a hospital in Detroit, where her children live, then to a treatment facility in Maumee before entering Harbor House in July, 2006.

She hadn’t planned on staying in Toledo, but realized everything had to change in order for her to keep making progress. Miss Adams said she couldn’t go back to family in Detroit or friends in Florida "because I knew I would have gotten drunk."

Her lightbulb moment came in a group session when she was feeling trapped by all the negative forces in her life.

"I said to myself, ‘It’s either death or deliverance,’ and ever since then I’ve been on top."

Contact Ann Weber at: aweber@theblade.com
or 419-724-6126.

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