Breaking the Cycle of Shame

BY APRIL BROWN

BREAKING THE CYCLE OF

SHAME On a late Sunday evening, MaryAnne Doty, a recent graduate of Pawsperity, sits on her couch in front of a beautiful portrait of her kids, with a lap full of her dog, and a smile on her face. The small things in life have become the most valuable to her. Simply being able to help her kids get ready for bed, play fetch with her dog, or spoil herself with the newest and fanciest of grooming tools has become the greatest achievements in her life, right alongside learning to value herself no matter what.

MaryAnne Doty, a graduate of The Grooming Project, loves her job as a dog groomer. “It was totally worth it,” she says about the sacrifices she’s made to get here.

After the devastating loss of her unborn son a few years prior, MaryAnne found herself turning to old drug abuse habits to cope with the pain. As her grief and addiction spiraled out of her control, all of the things she valued most in her life began to slip away: her marriage, her home, her cars, and even her next pregnancy took a back seat to the call of her drug of choice, meth.

“When you get to that point, where you feel that low, you just keep using because you don’t feel like you’re worth not using,” she says about abusing drugs even when she was carrying her fourth son. “I felt like a loser because I couldn’t do what a mother was supposed to do and put my kids first.” But her struggle with recovery wasn’t a reflection on her ability to love her children, or her quality as a parent, it was actually a reflection of her inability to truly value herself.

While in treatment for the third time, MaryAnne learned a lesson which ultimately picked her up out of a rut and

propelled her towards Pawsperity. The lesson was that there is a difference between guilt and shame.

“Guilt is ‘I feel bad or I did something bad’, and shame is ‘I am bad or I am the bad thing that I did’,” MaryAnne explains. She realized then that she no longer wanted to be trapped by the shame she felt, and with the information for Pawsperity in hand, she vowed to herself that she would be more than the things she’d done.

Despite almost an hour drive to and from the program every day, MaryAnne threw herself into the program. Something, she says, she never regretted.

“From the very first day it was amazing,” she says about Pawsperity. “They don’t just teach you how to groom dogs, they teach you how to do life.”

And for someone with MaryAnne’s background, the life skills were as necessary and as important as the grooming skills. Her family, even before the stress of grief and drug addiction, never had much.

“We didn’t have anything, we were dead poor,” she confesses. She didn’t have any prior experience with certain invaluable skills that aid one in living a balanced life, such as navigating a stressful work environment, or budgeting. “They taught us a variety of life skills in our Monday classes, and it was really awesome,” MaryAnne remembers.

For MaryAnne, the program was about so much more than an occupation, and because of that focused duality, she’s used it to her advantage. MaryAnne graduated from the program in January 2022, and in those eight months, she says, her life has changed quickly and dramatically.

“I graduated on a Friday and I started my new job on a Tuesday,” she says, and despite the change happening so fast, MaryAnne hasn’t stopped looking forward since. She’s not only scored a great job that she loves, but she’s also begun to put the pieces of her life back together. “Thanks to Pawsperity, and my own good doing, I have regained 50/50 custody of my kids” she exclaims.

There have, of course, been some things she’s had to get used to, such as being in a stable enough place to be financially comfortable.

“I feel like I have financial freedom,” she says with a laugh. She recounts taking her kids school shopping this past August, and the way it felt to be able to spend $700 on them without worrying about also covering her bills. She credits that ability to the Monday soft skills classes that provided her “with the steps and tools I needed to provide for myself and my kids—without that I’d probably just be blowing all of my money.”

She’s also had to get used to the feeling of being able to spoil herself a bit, something she’d not only been financially unable to do before, but also had not bothered to do because she’d thought so little of herself.

“I get coffee on my way to work now,” she gushes. “And I can buy new equipment for work…I got a new pair of cordless clippers recently, which has been life changing, I’ll admit.”

The smile on her face as she talks about her life changing clippers reveals just how far she’s come from that feeling of shame that had her trapped just eighteen months ago.

Now, she says, she wants to give back and spread the word about Pawsperity in any way she can. She talks about the program at her NA meetings, and has toyed around with the possibility of being able to become an instructor at Pawsperity once the program has completed its expansion.

“I’m just so passionate about the program,” she says. “I feel successful and I didn’t know I could do that again.” MaryAnne wants the world to know what the program has done for her, and share what it could do for so many others. “It’s not easy, you have to do the work,” she cautions, but she does it with a triumphant smile on her face, the payoff evident, even without words. “I have value,” she proclaims proudly. That’s the lesson Pawsperity taught MaryAnne that she says she’ll keep with her forever.

MaryAnne Doty graduated in January 2022. Her life changed quickly and dramatically for the better.