FROM ADDICTION TO TOP POP
The other day, Jermar Wilkins was wearing fatherhood on his chest.
His T-shirt bore the names of his children, Jamalya, Jermario, Jermarria and Jermarkus, and the logo, Team Junebug 1.
“Junebug, that’s my nickname,” Wilkins said. “Last Father’s Day, before my children’s mother died, she got this T-shirt made for me.”
Yet for a time, Wilkins wasn’t wearing his relationship with Team Junebug on his chest. He was putting it up his nose. Now 35, Wilkins struggled with a cocaine addiction that made it tough for him to do much more for his children other than what the law required for child support. At one point, he was sleeping on his
grandfather’s’ couch because his craving for the drug had pushed him into despondency.
“It (drug addiction) affected my relationship with her (the mother of two of his children), my mom, and everybody,” Wilkins said. “I was very abusive…
“During my addiction, I always had a job, so I was always able to take care of my kids. But I was barely living. … I remember calling my cousin and saying I’d rather die than to keep living the way I was living. I was barely eating, barely taking care of myself.”
But the thought of the team propelled Wilkins to get up from the couch and to get himself into a drug rehabilitation program — where he stayed for 43 days.
“I walked out with a bag of clothes, but I also walked out with a solution,” he said. “I learned what I was dealing with. I remember crying out for help. And I cried out for God to help me.” God answered just in time. After he recovered from his addiction — which he picked up while working at a restaurant at age 16 — the mother of Jermarria and Jermarkus, who had been on dialysis, became gravely ill.
Her death provided another moment of clarity for him; one that reinforced the point that fatherhood wasn’t just a matter of him providing money to his children, but providing love and emotional support.
“When Lakeisha started swelling up and stuff (from dialysis), and I saw she wasn’t able to do what she used to do, that’s when I started crying out for help,” Wilkins said. “I looked at her struggle, and knew I needed to do better.
“Last Halloween, she was telling me bye, and she said ‘I love you,’ Then she said, ‘I believe my kids are in good hands now.’ “And she died the next day.” So far, Wilkins has worked to prove her right.
Cherrie Lindsey, a family intervention specialist at Youth Villages, has strengthened his hand at fathering by helping him understand the grief that Jermarria, 11, and Jermarkus, 9, grappled with at the loss of their mother.
And Wilkins, whose two other biological children, Jemalya and Jermario, are from a different mother, also has begun to understand how his own upbringing may have fueled his deficiencies in fathering.
“My father wasn’t present when I was growing up, but I had a stepdad. He was very abusive to my mom, but as far as keeping a roof over our heads and food on the table, he did that. So, I thought that all a father needed to do was provide food and a roof over their heads.
“I never thought a father was needed in the spiritual realm as well.”
Wilkins also is working to lead his team not only through what he has overcome, but also in what he is trying to achieve.
Now married to his longtime friend, Latisha, and stepfather to her three children, Wilkins, who works as a pallet turner, also is working on earning his GED.
He also regularly speaks to groups such as Cocaine Anonymous on how he ended his drug habit; he talked to 300 people at a gathering in St. Louis recently.
Ultimately, Wilkins said, he wants to become a minister or counselor. But right now, Wilkins’ children can learn much simply by looking at how he beat a scourge that many people don’t beat — cocaine.
That’s because his love for them — and his commitment to a dying Lakeisha — was stronger than his desire for it.