Growing up, both of Kirsty’s parents were addicted to class A drugs. This meant she was involved with the care system from an early age, staying at several foster homes throughout her childhood. She had little contact with her parents from around the age of six. Kirsty only had one long-term placement during this time, and although they did their best to care for her, by age 9, she didn’t really know how to connect to a family system, even a loving one.
Although her home life was disjointed and chaotic, Kirsty thought that what she had witnessed was how normal families worked. This kind of life taught her not to trust people.
“I associated getting close to someone with pain: they would either hurt you, leave you or die.”
At 16 she moved again, this time to Preston. She was able to find some more permanent accommodation and also managed to get a job.
But five days into her new job, Kirsty was attacked. And raped.
She reported the incident to the police and they were able to find and successfully convict the perpetrator. The impact of this event caused Kirsty to emotionally spiral. She had used substances in the past, but after what had happened to her, Kirsty fell into a heavy addiction.
“I’d had enough trauma in my life preceding this incident that I probably would have ended up that way at some point. The rape was a catalyst in causing my addiction to take over when it did and my life to spiral downwards. During this time, I felt lost and completely separate from the world around me. I felt unworthy of help and had no hope or idea if, or when, my life would turn around.”
With addiction, the offending came hand in hand. By the time she was 19, Kirsty was arrested for a petty offence and sent to prison for two weeks. Being sent to prison did not have the effect she thought it would. It didn’t frighten her from re-offending, and instead she adapted to the new environment and continued to offend.
Kirsty was released after the two weeks and from then on it was a 10-year cycle of addiction, re-offending and release.
In July 2007, whilst she was serving a sentence, Kirsty woke up one day with the dawning realisation that she just couldn’t do it anymore. Whilst there was no obvious crisis that caused her mindset to begin to change, she just knew she couldn’t carry on with what she was doing.
Kirsty talked to a drug and alcohol worker and faced a crossroads: head south to HMP Send to attend the RAPt (now The Forward Trust) programme for substance use, the only intervention of its kind in the country. Or, head further north to a prison where she knew drugs were everywhere. Kirsty chose to go to HMP Send.
“When I was on my way to Send, for the first time in my 28 years of life I just knew, inherently, that I was doing the right thing. I felt hope that maybe things could change for me. I immediately started engaging with Forward’s 12-step programme, and managed to begin the healing process.”
Around the time of her release from prison, Kirsty started thinking about her future. Someone from Forward got in touch with The Nelson Trust, an organisation that provides residential addiction treatment. They managed to negotiate a bed for her there upon release.
She later graduated from The Nelson Trust’s residential rehab and was able to move into their resettlement community, where Kirsty began looking towards the future and what sort of career could be out there. She wanted to give back, so she began volunteering in several different places, taking whatever training was offered to her.
“I worked in different sectors to widen my knowledge base. Then I applied to work at The Nelson Trust, and have been working there ever since – nearly seven years!”
After starting her new role, Kirsty was able to secure a research fellowship with the Griffins Society, who partnered with both The Lankelly Chase Foundation and the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge. The research was named ‘Losing My Voice’ and studied the experiences of sex working women in residential drug treatment. From this research, Kirsty and her team developed three new programmes to support sex working women to address shame, stigma, trauma and identity. She finished the research four years ago and the feedback they’ve had from women graduating the programme has been humbling.
Kirsty’s role at The Nelson Trust is now ‘Learning and Development Lead’. Her day-to-day responsibilities involve internal colleague development and consulting with and developing external agencies in adopting a Trauma Informed Approach to improve services for trauma survivors.
She was recently shortlisted as a nominee at the National Diversity Awards in the ‘Positive Role Model Award for Gender’ category, recognising her work in helping women recover from addiction and trauma.
“People often make presumptions about the type of person you must be having been to prison and being in recovery, but I haven’t experienced any judgement because I present myself to others as evidence of rehabilitation. My past does not define who I am now. While I used to feel defined merely by the fact that I survived, the power of my story is that I have moved forward from that now – I’m not simply surviving, I’m thriving. Life for me is finally the normality I rebelled against yet so desperately craved.”
Listen to Kirsty’s episode of the More Than My Past Podcast with Jason Flemyng.
