When Katherine Briggs 10 stepped into Valley Vista Alcohol and Chemical Dependency Treatment Center, she was somewhat nervous about the idea of creating and performing theatrical skits with recovering drug addicts. Her anxiety was put to rest, however, when she and some of her classmates joined a group of women at Valley Vista performing a "ridiculous" West African dance, which Briggs said allowed her to quickly bond with the women. Briggs shared her experiences working for the "Telling My Story" program during a panel about the program at Zeta Psi fraternity on Tuesday.
"When we're working on our skits or doing our dance it becomes so apparent that, despite our differing situations, we're all fundamentally the same," Briggs said in an e-mail to the Dartmouth following the event.
"Telling My Story" is a nonprofit organization that works to empower women in the Upper Valley facing the struggles of recent incarceration or addiction. A group of students enrolled in Women and Gender Studies 59 have with these women throughout this term to create skits and personal narratives that facilitate understanding and social reflection, said Pati Hernandez, the executive director and facilitator of the program.
Tuesday's panel also included two recovering drug addicts, an alcoholic and a former prisoner who all shared their stories and discussed the effect of the "Telling My Story" program on their personal treatment processes.These individuals were identified only by their first names.
Karen, a recovering drug addict, said the program was "empowering" and gave her a forum for both personal reflection and social criticism that otherwise would have been unavailable to her.
"You can't walk into a courtroom and say society played a role in [my addiction],'" she said.
Jess, who served six months in the Vermont State Prison in Windsor, Vt., described how she did not sleep for the first couple weeks of her incarceration, and said that "Telling My Story" allowed her to feel more comfortable at the prison.
Denise, a patient in treatment for alcoholism, said the program helped her "open up" and bring her out of her shell.
Several of the panelists also discussed the struggles they faced while attempting to reenter society.
Liz, a recovering heroin addict, described her impending road to recovery, during which she said she will need to find a new place to live, a new job and new friends in order to avoid other drug users. After her previous attempt at rehabilitation, Liz said she found it difficult to meet sober friends and felt she could never be open with others because of the stigma surrounding drug users.
One of the main goals of "Telling My Story," Hernandez said, is to promote understanding and social change among the general population, rather than simply "paternalistic" attitudes toward recovering drug users.
Briggs said her contact with women at Valley Vista was a "whole different kind of learning" and that she learned how similar she is to the women in Valley Vista, something she had not previously expected.
"We spend so much of our time learning about things that have to do with people but we are so far away from them in a lot of ways," Briggs said. "When you actually go and do something and interact with people you learn it in such a different way."
Professor Ivy Schweitzer, who teaches the women and gender students at Dartmouth, said the program provides community-based learning through which students step outside the "Ivory Tower" and compare theory from books with real-life experiences outside of campus.
"The point is to go out and have an experience and then come back to the classroom and reflect on what just happened," she said. "What did you see? What did you learn? Does this theory describe what I see, or is it just theory?"
The women involved in the program will perform their productions this Friday and Saturday at Valley Vista.
The "Telling My Story" organization was founded in 1995 in New York and relocated to Vermont in 1999.