My life before Portage was chaos. I wasn’t living, I was surviving. I experienced perinatal bereavement, but never really faced up to it. Then my father passed away and I completely lost my footing. And so began my descent into hell. What followed was an interminable succession of stupid, ill-considered decisions that destroyed everyone I loved.<\/p>\r\n
In an attempt to forget, I turned to substance use. But to no avail. Caught in an infernal spiral, the more I attempted to escape, the less relief I found. And the more I used, the more I realized everything I had lost, the less enjoyment I had and the more I resented everyone. When the father of my first three children passed on in March 2021, I lost all hope of ever having a fulfilling family life. His death prompted me to take back control of my life and, by November 2021, the idea of entering Portage’s Mother-Child program<\/a> had taken root.<\/p>\r\n By January 2022, I had started the process to attend Portage and there was no going back. On March 28, 2022, I embarked on the most amazing journey towards a new beginning. The Portage program helped me develop <\/strong>the competencies<\/strong><\/a> that are vital to maintaining a positive lifestyle <\/strong>and taught me about the importance of positive peer pressure. Thanks to the program, not only did I stop using, but I stopped smoking cigarettes too. It taught me how to allow myself to be vulnerable and to trust others, which was extremely beneficial to me.<\/p>\r\n I completed my program on February 7, 2023. Since then, I’ve moved into a Mother-Child community housing facility, where I continue to work on myself. Since attending Portage, I’ve adopted a positive lifestyle, gotten my driver’s licence, completed the MIRE employment reintegration program<\/a>, settled my debts and completed an intensive course at college. Moreover, the DPJ (Youth Protection) has closed my child’s file.<\/p>\r\n I’ve finally established healthy, significant relationships, and freed myself from dependency once and for all.<\/p>\r\n Never live in the shadows again.<\/em><\/p>\r\n Thank you Portage.<\/p>\r\n Vanessa, Mother-Child Program, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\r\n Share this article :<\/p>\r\n Share on Facebook <\/a> Share on Linkedin <\/a><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My life before Portage was chaos. I wasn’t living, I was surviving. I experienced perinatal bereavement, but never really faced up to it. Then my father passed away and I completely lost my footing. And so began my descent into hell. What followed was an interminable succession of stupid, ill-considered decisions that destroyed everyone I… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":39346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[364],"tags":[285,370],"class_list":["post-39349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-testimonial","tag-family","tag-mother-and-child"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39349"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44432,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39349\/revisions\/44432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}