Shea M.
"I’m thankful to be in a place where I can give back."

It all started as some fun with friends in high school. Shea experimented like many, with alcohol and marijuana. Overall, she was a responsible young adult and going places – an acceptance letter from Drexel University in hand – her entire life was before her. However, what seemed to be a hopeful and exciting time for Shea proved to be a veneer for her true feelings of shame, guilt, and mistrust. No one knew she was sexually violated at age fourteen. No one knew how she internalized and harbored negative feelings about herself because of it.

“On the outside, my friends and family thought I was a success story,” said Shea. “While really I was dying on the inside.”

The next four to six years saw Shea’s drinking and drug use worsen and after only two semesters at Drexel, she had dropped out of school. Her college partying got in the way of her maintaining a good grade point average, however, leaving Drexel did not prove to be the wake-up call that Shea needed to straighten out her life.

Brightness never a question about Shea, she obtained a good position at the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Within a short period, she received two promotions and eventually a position in the organization’s Food and Beverage Administration Department. On the surface, Shea was doing well. It was a great job with room for advancement. Though behind the facade, it was also a job within an environment of crime and decadence.

Still drinking heavily and using cocaine daily, Shea wanted to stop but couldn’t. By the same token, the cycle of addiction she was entrenched in, the casino environment, also could not last forever. It was at age 23 when Shea suffered what she described as a nervous breakdown and what the doctor diagnosed as alcohol psychosis.

“The breakdown led to further self-pity and abuse,” said Shea. “I thought that I was trapped and that this is just what my life will be.”

By age 26, Shea was smoking crack-cocaine and in and out of jail without a stable place to call home. She had lost her job and the will to live. At the same time, she had just found out that she was pregnant. For what is dreamed about by a little girl as one of the greatest days of a young life, to Shea it was some of the worst possible news.

Ironically, her savior was going to jail. After she violated her probation, Shea was sent there for the entire life of her pregnancy.

“I thank God that I was in jail for my pregnancy. I know that I would have been using if I were out on the streets,” said Shea.

After getting out of jail and giving birth to her son, Gaillin, Shea went back to drugs and alcohol. Jail may have helped her bear a healthy child, but it was not what she needed to address her addiction. After a few months, her probation officer suggested that she look into a program. This was the day Shea discovered MatriArk at Seabrook House.

“I used to blame everyone and everything in my life for my own behaviors,” explained Shea. “The education about the disease that I received while in MatriArk, helped me understand what I needed to do to live and be the mother that my children deserve.”

Still active in the 12 Steps, Shea M. is now a fulltime employee of MatriArk at Seabrook House, the very program that helped her find the courage to recover. Still a very bright young person, she has enrolled in a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (CADC) program to become a counselor. Giving back to the community is something important to her, having gotten so much from the program. “I’m thankful to be in a place where I can give back, “ she explains.

Today, Shea describes herself as having an “inner peace” and an “inner strength.” Only she knows what that means to her – and it is only she who can maintain this reality. Ever grateful, Shea looks back on what her life once was and is in awe of what she has today. “I never thought I would be able to say that I am happily married, raising my two children, and buying my own house, said Shea. “I am doing the things that I dreamed about when I was young.”

She and her husband, Vinny, recently bought a house in Minotola and they are raising her two children, Gaillin (6 yrs) and Cecilia (3 yrs). Shea M. is living proof.