Growing up fatherless left a void in Trisha’s life. At 13, she tried to fill it with sex and marijuana. Later, smoking crack helped her forget the hurt, but it never went away.
Trisha drifted from one abusive relationship to another, having two sons and a daughter. “My kids lived in chaos. They grew up just like I did — no daddy, raised by a single mom who was addicted to crack.” During the chaos, Trisha’s father returned — addicted to heroin and suffering from kidney failure. Trisha took him in.
“God allowed me to take care of my daddy,” she says. During their time together before he died, Trisha’s father apologized for leaving her and she forgave him. “He did the best he could, but he was addicted to drugs.”
Trisha’s healing had begun, but she had a long road ahead and couldn’t walk it alone. She spoke to her pastor at Binghampton Community Church, and he referred her to Moriah House. Even though she had to leave her teenage daughter with her son, Trisha says, “I needed to go. God gave me another chance, and I had to take it.”
As soon as she walked into Moriah House, Trisha cried.
“I felt a weight lifted off me. I thanked God for this opportunity.”
Four months later, there was a room available for Trisha’s daughter to join her. Her sons came on Family Night and saw “a transformation.”
Trisha and her daughter graduated from the program in October 2009. Trisha now devotes herself to sharing Jesus with women on the streets through Sista2Sista, a drop-in center she describes as “a safe haven where women can go and be loved on. There’s a counselor here, and we give the girls referrals to detox, to rehab — and to Moriah House.”
Moriah House helped Trisha break the generational cycle of poverty and addiction in two directions. Not only are her children stable and settled with kids of their own, but her mother has also been sober for over a year! With your help, the void in her life has been filled with her family, her work, and most of all, her Savior.
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