Giving Back and Sharing Hope
Jamie Post works in direct client care as well as in the kitchen in the women’s program at Adult & Teen Challenge Ohio Valley.
“I didn’t really expect it, but they asked me and I, of course, couldn’t turn it down,” Jamie said of the position. “My heart’s here.”
She loves the job and the meaning she derives from it. “This place saved me so being able to pay it forward — to give the love that I was given to the people who are struggling — definitely fills my heart with joy.”
Jamie graduated from the ATCOV program in March 2023 and worked as an intern at the center for about six months. Then she started working full-time.
Before coming to ATCOV, Jamie had used opiates for about 18 years and completed a rehabilitation program at a different facility but relapsed. She was on life support, her brain swollen and bleeding. She agreed to get help and her family found ATCOV. Now God has healed her.
As an ATCOV staffer, Jamie shows unconditional love to the women in the program, offers them solid advice, encourages them and provides a consistent routine. She knows how important that was in her transformation and that many of the women in the program haven’t had it.
“I know how hopeless and hurt and lost I felt,” she said. “If I can do anything to make somebody feel cared for, loved, I know how much it helped. It’s what saved me, the love that I was shown here. So just giving them a little glimmer of hope that they feel loved and cared for and seen and heard is most fulfilling.”
Jamie also shares examples from her own experiences to help the women. “I always encourage them to keep a heart of gratitude and not to feed negativity,” Jamie said. “When they can’t talk to their kids I let them know that I went through that too, but it takes time. And that God is always bigger than anything going on right now. You just have to be patient and it’s about God’s timing, not ours.”
Her relationships with her parents have been restored and she’s working on her relationships with her children. Jamie’s parents are in awe that God rescued her, fearing there had been no hope for her. “It’s pretty great all the way around,” Jamie said. Her brother struggled with addiction as well and is now clean. She helped and inspired him to seek help, too.
Jamie’s life now is entirely different than when she first arrived at ATCOV. “I would say that it’s full of hope and joy, most of all, peace, the peace of the Holy Spirit on a daily basis,” she said. That completely contrasts to before when she was lost and broken.
“I don’t know that I had any hope at all,” Jamie said. “It was just God’s intervention that saved me.”
