In recovery, beautifying the city
A lot of ugly t h i n g s h av e happened in Christ y Lebiedzinski’s life.
Growing up in New Jersey, Lebiedzinski, 30, starting drinking alcohol and smoking pot at age 13. No real reason why.
“I don’t k now,” she s ays sheepishly, sounding embarrassed. “That’s what people did at that age where I lived. I had a good upbringing. I don’t have any terrible stories.”
Lebiedzinski graduated to abusing painkillers and heroin at 19 when she married a man who she says physically and verbally abused her.
“It was the most toxic relationship you can think of,” she says.
The marriage lasted only a year.
But the damage was done. S h e was a f u l l - b l own d r u g addict. The low point for Lebiedzinski — and all addicts reach that point — was when her best friend from age 8 told Lebiedzinski she couldn’t hang out with her anymore.
“She said she couldn’t watch me kill myself,” Lebiedzinski rec alls. “That’s what really opened my eyes.”
That’s also when Lebiedzinski sought help. She moved to a halfway house in West Palm Beach five years ago, then she lived in a Lake Worth sober home for eight months.
It’s been four years, Lebiedzinski says, since she injected her arm with a poison that’s killing way too many people in Lake Kevin D. Thompson Worth and across the country. Lebiedzinski still drinks a glass of wine every now and again, something she knows she shouldn’t be doing in lifelong recovery.
“I try not to make it a habit,” she says. “I know I can’t handle it, but I’m trying the best I can.”
Despite those ugly and painful chapters in her young life, Lebiedzinski, a mother of two who lives in Delray Beach, is now part of something beautiful in Lake Worth.
S he’s pai nt i ng a c ol or f ul beach-themed mural on the side of Living Right, a sober home on North B Street.
“She’s such a gifted young lady,” says Steve Johnson, the facility’s co-owner. “Her story is just so amazing as she continues to put her life back together. She’s one of those success stories that often gets overlooked.”
Lebiedzinski, who started painting as a young girl, wants to have the mural finished bymid- MArch. She says she can only work on it nights and weekends because she has a full-time job as a director of client services for an outsourcing dental company in Boca Raton.
Johnson, however, wants it finished sooner than that. “I hope it’s not that long,” he says. “I got some guys who can help her out.”
Painting the mural, Lebiedzinski says, gives her more joy than drugs or alcohol ever did.
“I love the interaction with people passing by,” she says. “I see every race, every age.”
Lebiedzinski sees something else: those ugly chapters in her life getting further away in her rear view mirror.