At the end of our last blog post we spoke to Trish Jordan, the Executive Director of Red Lodge. She sent us an email with the list of names and phone numbers of contacts. We assigned ourselves with a person; Shirley contacted Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ Whitt. Shirley had a one hour phone call with Jackie and when she told us about her we decided it would a good idea of the entire group Skype called her.
Our Skype call with Jackie took place Thursday afternoon. She first gave us a little history about her family – her mother had two other children with another man before she had Jackie and the this man was never around. Jackie was homeless at 14 because her mother went to prison for drugs. Due to this interaction Jackie inevitably started to follow in the same path as her mother.
Jackie met Donny and had three children with him. They grew marijuana in their backyard /while their kids went to school, “I was leading a double life – I was a PTA mom but I also sold drugs.” A few years later she heard the Donny was having relations with her sister and she broke it off with him. However, later on, the place Jackie was living in was getting foreclosed so she moved into the house, which she owned, with Donny and her sister.
This was a toxic environment for Jackie – she began abusing alcohol so much that she sent herself into the emergency room twice in six months for alcohol poisoning. Her only memory in those six months was when she saw her daughter, who was five at the time, climbing up the sofa chair. Jackie yelled at her and she began to cry. Her daughter told her that she was putting up lights because it was Christmas. Jackie then had this realization that she had missed six months of her life. She then left home to search for a place she could find help.
Jackie lives in Portland with her three kids. She volunteers at Red Lodge every chance she gets.
