Segulah House — Christ-Centered Transitional Housing for Women

There was a time in my life when I desperately needed a safe place to begin again.

My story isn't simply a story about addiction. It's a story about hurt, loss, grief, trauma, forgiveness, faith, and learning how to live again.

Before my relapse, I had already experienced seven years of sobriety. I knew what recovery looked like. I knew I could live a sober life. But then came a year that changed everything.

I just had to make it to midnight.

That is what I told myself repeatedly as I sat smiling from ear to ear in front of everyone. Thirty days sober and I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.

Fresh off of a plane from Florida. The scabs once on my face were healing nicely and for the first time in a long time I looked somewhat put together. Thirty days ago I wasn't even functioning, couldn't tell you my name, and was nodding off into a lamp post.

Hi, my name is Monica Spears-Sanders.

I have been clean and set free from addiction for 7 1/2 years. For 17 years, I lived in and out of active addiction. Those 17 years cost me almost everything. I was trapped in a cycle of addiction, depression, abusive relationships, and chaos. I bounced around from one unsafe situation to another because I didn't know what healthy love looked like, and I didn't know how to create a healthy life for myself.

The domestic abuse and unhealthy relationships I experienced only deepened the depression and hopelessness that had already taken hold of my life. Addiction became a way to escape feelings. I didn't know how to process the pain. I didn't know how to heal. I was in and out of jail. I couldn't hold down a job. I couldn't maintain a stable home. I was surviving, but I wasn't truly living.

My testimony is not a story of a perfect life. It has a lot of brokenness, addiction, abuse, loss, fear, and many times just wanting to give up — but most of all, it is a story of the faithfulness of God.

There was a season when I was trapped in addiction and I was in a very abusive marriage at that time. I experienced physical and emotional abuse from my first husband, and for a long time I lived in fear and worry. I was hurt, broken down, and made to feel as though I wasn't enough. The things I endured changed me in ways I didn't even realize.

One of the deepest wounds of my life was losing my children because of the circumstances I was living in. There is a kind of pain that comes with losing your children that is too difficult to put into words. I carried grief, shame, guilt, and regret. There were moments when I wondered if I would ever be able to forgive myself for the person I had been and the choices I had made. I thought my past had written the ending of my story.

I was about four years old when my childhood was shattered. My brother Rob and I were sitting on our bedroom floor playing with toys when the front door exploded open. The sound was deafening. We heard our mother scream, then the shouting of strange men with badges. They tore through our home, ripping it apart piece by piece. It was chaos — loud, violent, terrifying. And when it was over, both of my parents were in handcuffs, being taken away in the back of a police car.

That moment was the beginning of our time in foster care — a place filled with darkness, fear, and abuse. It was also the beginning of my self‑hatred. I was just a child, but the wounds were already deep. Those wounds eventually grew into the addiction and self‑destructive behavior that consumed my life for many years.

My father spent most of my life in and out of prison. My mother fought her own battle with addiction. And I followed the same path. My days revolved around getting my next fix of methamphetamine. I lived in survival mode, doing whatever I had to do to keep the pain away. I was locked up several times, and even though I desperately wanted to stop, I couldn't. The pain was too heavy, too constant, too familiar.

For a long time, I didn't understand why my life had to look the way it did.

My childhood left wounds in me that I carried quietly for years. There were things I experienced that no child should ever have to carry, and those experiences shaped the way I saw myself, the way I loved people, and the way I handled pain. I learned how to survive before I ever learned how to truly live.

As I got older, the hurt followed me. I tried to fill the emptiness in ways that only left me feeling more broken. I made choices I'm not proud of. I hurt people, and I hurt myself emotionally. There were times when I felt completely lost and wondered if I would ever become the person I knew I was supposed to be.

Honestly, if I were to sit down and write out all the ways I would have benefited from a place like Segulah House, I could write a whole book. But the thing is, it's not only going to be beneficial for these women—it will be life-changing. What makes Segulah House different is that the love of Christ is in the hearts of the women who are working so hard to get this place going.

It will be a place for women to come and build their lives on the only true foundation, Jesus Christ. It will be a place where women will learn to sow good seeds and have patience until the time of harvest. It will be a place for recovery and healing from all the years of trauma and abuse that most of us have endured.

At Segulah House, women will learn to find their identity in Christ instead of in men or drugs. They will be surrounded by other women who truly love and care about them and want the best for them—something most of us in addiction lacked, even from our closest family members.