On Getting Well: Wellness Center — A Holiday Op-Ed
The holiday season is filled with surprises, big and small, like gifts at a birthday party. We may run into someone we hadn’t seen for awhile.
Find something that we thought we’d lost. Or maybe someone hands us just the right recipe.
A box, white and rectangular sits closed up, tight against the snow. It’s unwrapped, ribbonless. Despite that, a gift awaits inside. For now, it opens only as one enters it. I enter the white boxy rectangle that sits on Greg Kruschek Drive. With fans blowing, torches sparking and nails pounding, the Wellness and Training Center resembles a workshop filled with busy elves, hidden in snow from prying eyes.
On the second floor, interior walls are framed by steel girders glinting silver. Many window outlines are visible and air movers the size of SUV’s lie in their wrapping. A flat roof, I ask? The snow blows right off, thanks to the great north wind.
But it can stand up to ten feet of snow.
Descending to the first floor on a spacious staircase, I walk around, then pause in the center. This is the heart of the building, the hearth. Blue lines on concrete floors mark the paths that two-thousand-pound walls will traverse to open into a large community room, four soundproof rooms becoming one “long house.” Group rooms for treatment; a hearth room for the Nome community. This, for me, is the beating heart of the gift—where substance use disorders will be treated, in all their complexity, a full continuum of care.
Whether from Front Street, the Day Shelter or elsewhere, people brought to the sobering center can detox in a corner of the WTC. Then it’s onto Day Camp in one group room, for inpatient-like treatment lasting a few months—here in the region, close to home, to culture, to family and community.
Of course, Intensive Outpatient Treatment, offered now, will take place in another group room, and then clients will be stepping down to
Outpatient Treatment in still another room. Adjacent will be another, exciting part of treatment: Owning Recovery, where clients get and practice the tools to live a life that is not only sober, but productive, purposeful and hopefully purpose-filled. Craft and Sewing rooms will have equipment and supplies for people to do traditional activities as they learn recovery principles. In nearby exam rooms, Tribal Healers will help treat the whole person throughout treatment, not just alcohol or drug issues.
When the four group rooms open into one hearth room, at special times, friends and family will join clients in recovery—with food, song, dance and ancestral words. This potlatch is where community can embrace the recovering person, providing heart and courage for the journey ahead.
NSHC has made the dream of recovery from substance abuse much more real with the building. And as this gift inside completes, my hope is that we will begin to prepare ourselves: To gather in understanding and a common will to help our brothers and sisters and parents and aunts and uncles and children who struggle with addiction to get the help they need. Prepare ourselves to encourage, plead, exhort and escort them up until they can take that walk into the WTC. To quietly prepare ourselves to tell the truth until it pierces the shields of denial so common in substance abuse.
Yes, other BHS services will be offered in offices around the perimeter of the first floor, addressing trauma and mental health issues. Yes, vital Health Aid Training will take place upstairs for our villages, along with Wellness activities such as CAMP to help with chronic diseases. All that is great.
But the most fragile, urgent and one of the most important issues facing the future of the region is recovery from addiction. It’s scary to take it on. We’ve had years of trying, with minimal gains. For so many here, alcohol is the easier, softer way.
And so hope is mixed with fear. But in wellness, we’re honest about our feelings. It’s not easy. If we’re angry or scared, as happens frequently this season, we need to tell someone who is appropriate and safe. Can we recognize and accept our fear and not blame or feel shame?
Can we recognize our anger and not punish the source? If we’re overwhelmed, can we remember that we don’t need to do all our tasks at once?
Can we stay with a feeling until it’s time to release it and go on to the next? Can we share our secret feelings with someone if we get stuck? And in the sharing, can we feel lighter, happier and more joyous? Can we allow ourselves to feel joy, happiness and love when they’re available?
And only then will we allow reason in the door, to guide us on our next step?
We can begin with one word, one talk, one visit, one referral. We can begin by being honest with ourselves, respecting others, and staying open to guidance. Putting one foot forward, one step at a time, one day at a time. And when we receive a gift, we can stop long enough to appreciate it, leaving the future in tomorrow’s hands.