Magdalene House: A Place about Mercy

3. The Story of One

54 C h a p t e r 3 The Story of One when I think about the women who I see coming into this program, I think that, well, while they have all had horrendous childhoods filled with abuse and neglect, and have ended up addicted and prostituting—you know, everybody’s story is going to be pretty different. And once you get to the point where they’re all victims of abuse, women who’ve been oppressed, women who need to be freed, prostitutes—once you lump ’em all together, I get uncomfortable. —Lynn, Magdalene House staff member B ecause narratives of addiction and recovery are so often individual stories of personal failure and triumph, one of my goals in writing this book is to help connect these individual stories— their accounts of abuse, despair, poverty, healing, hope, and change— to the broader systems, environments, and relationships that created them. I write about these things to draw attention to the need for better systems, environments, and relationships rather than reformed individuals . Human flourishing will be limited in important ways until we do a better job of shaping the laws, economic practices, and social beliefs that form the contexts in and through which humans exist. At the same time, as Lynn’s words illustrate, something is lost in talking only about systems and inequalities, or even in talking about the generalized experiences of a small group of people. The world around us takes root in our very beings and shapes us (and in turn is shaped by The Story of One 55 us) in ways that are at least a little bit different for each person, a reality of which I was reminded often during my time at Magdalene House. whether the differences and similarities are the result of genetic fabric, creative design, or social ideologies (or all or none of these forces) is beyond the scope of this book. what is within the scope of this book is presenting the women with whom I worked in the most humane way I know how; among other things, they embraced me with overwhelming hospitality, and they were brave and kind enough to share their stories with me. In the interest of honoring the many “pretty different” stories of the women at Magdalene, this is the story of one, in her own words. My name is Marion and I’m forty-seven years old, and I’m grateful that I’ve made it this far. Thinking back, I think about growing up in the house with my parents. I had both my parents growing up and they both worked two jobs, and I was the oldest of three and I was responsible for everything: cleaning the house, making sure that my brother and sister were doing what they were supposed to do, and, Mom, she kept us in church all the time. And I hated church, I hated that I had to do everything, and that I had to make sure we were at church and everything. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Tuesday night, wednesday night, the orientation class for whatever was going on that week, then on Fridays, praise sessions, just being in church all the time, and I felt like I never learned anything . Like, . . . what was the purpose? You know? And, I think like around the sixth grade, I became interested in boys and I wanted a boyfriend, Davis, and of course my mom and daddy said no, but I was always curious—curious about the boys and curious about hanging out in the neighborhood, but my mom never allowed us to be outside after dark—we had to be inside. And I remember being in the girl Scouts and going camping and stuff that the little girls in our neighborhood never got to do. I got to do some things that other kids didn’t get to do, but my mom was so strict, and she meant it about church. So when I was in the ninth grade, I met this boy that was in the eleventh grade and I fell in love. And, later in 1979, I mar- 56 Magdalene House | A Place about Mercy ried this guy because I had gotten pregnant. And so I was going into the tenth grade and I had to drop out of school because I stayed sick all the time, and later on that year in September, we...