by Rev. Dorothy S. Boulware
Rev. Lisa Yerby-Bryson, a minister, trained therapist, substance abuse counselor and founder of a faith-based addiction recovery program, describes herself as “beautifully broken.” At first glance at the polished, confident woman, it’s hard to see what she means.
Growing up as a “P.K.” — a preacher’s kid — in Baltimore, she was raised by what she calls an “amazing” family, guided by a faith she readily embraced. Yerby-Bryson sang in the choir, studied the Bible, kept her virginity until marriage. She and her husband recently celebrated their 41st anniversary.
“I had a relationship with God,” Yerby-Bryson says.
Things changed in an instant, and almost irrevocably, when she was raped by a church leader inside of the church. Plagued by self-blame, Yerby-Bryson told no one — a fateful decision that left hurt, anger and doubt festering inside of her. It ultimately led Yerby-Bryson down a long, dark path of substance abuse, incarceration and a crisis of faith.
That painful experience, along with the hard work of recovery and the insights she gained on her journey from addiction to sobriety, led Yerby-Bryson to found Praising Through Recovery. The Baltimore-based program is specifically geared towards helping women deal with and recover from addiction
Its website describes PTR, as it’s known, as “an outreach ministry and organization providing spiritual and recovery support to adults seeking to overcome their dependency on drugs and alcohol.” But Yerby-Bryson herself works with what she calls “next level” women: those with careers, families, even church homes.
PTR’s mission statement, posted on its web page, makes it clear.
“We believe that by intimately walking life through our innovative mentorship programs we can grow an amazing community of women who will pave the path for future generations to live successful purpose driven clean and sober lives; hence breaking the chains of addiction,” it states. And it begins with taking the first step.
Changing Face of Addiction
If the stereotypical image of addiction is someone who’s poor, formerly incarcerated or homeless, “my women are already successful,” Yerby-Bryson says. Their addiction often happens, she says, when “they’re finding it challenging to experience that same success in balancing different aspects of their lives.”
She goes on: “For these women, their professional life may be working, but they have no idea of their need to have fun. Or they have no idea how to navigate healthy relationships.”
Unlike other recovery programs, Yerby-Bryson goes wherever her “clients” may be: Across town, across states and, most recently, overseas, including countries like Rwanda. But her journey of healing began only when she first healed herself.
After the rape, Yerby-Bryson descended into a downward spiral of guilt and shame, her mind and spirit both in turmoil. It began, she says, “first with passive-aggressive separation from church and family, combined with too much work,” and alcohol to deal with the pain.
“But ultimately the alcoholic beginning quickly morphed into full scale addiction,” she says, including crack cocaine and heroin. Then came the typical behaviors, with the typical outcomes: estrangement from her family; embracing street life; then incarceration.
The preacher’s kid — the good girl who grew up in faith and proudly lived by it as a young woman, only to have someone shatter it in a sacred place — had fallen from grace. The darkness of faithless addiction closed in and lasted some 20 years.
Fortunately, Yerby-Bryson’s family eventually found a high-quality treatment facility, in a predominantly white, affluent community that would take her in. She was the only Black patient, and had to teach the staff to deal with a culture they had not experienced.
“Now, I’m gonna be honest: I really struggled because I was the only Black person there, and they had never had a Black person in their program” she says “Not only had they never had a Black woman in their program, they did not know how to build a relationship with me.”
That included staff not taking into account her aversion to swimming as well as Yerby-Bryson’s suspicion and defensiveness early on.
So she began recovery teaching on diversity and trying to build a bridge to her fellow patients. It also gave Yerby-Bryson an unusual path back to her faith.
“The first woman God used at this point in my life was a white gay woman, who legitimately didn’t have a relationship with Jesus, with the church or with God,” she says. The woman, Yerby-Bryson says, “actually despised church and God. And He used her to lead me back to Him,” causing her to reconsider her break with the church.
“It’s Easy to Judge a Person”
Now, having become a minister herself, Yerby-Bryson works with a large group of women at PTR, and because of where they are in life, they choose the kind of help they want.
That includes Mae Golden, one of Yerby-Bryson’s clients. Golden needed help with a personal situation that seemed to be getting the best of her. She found Yerby-Bryson to be just the person for whom she had been looking: someone who has walked a similar path, and came out stronger on the other side.
“It’s real easy to judge a person by their cover and then figure out what you judged had not been it at all,” Golden said. “You don’t really know a person until you’ve had a chance to interact on a regular basis. Lisa provided a lifeline for me, and it was through developing a relationship with her that I came to know and trust her as a person.”
Getting to know people, Yerby-Bryson says, is an essential part of the plan.
“I walk my life with people. They’re busy, they got stuff,” she says. “Most of them will come to the eight-week Bible studies because it’s a life group and it’s a fellowship amongst a bunch of other broken women. We are just our beautifully broken selves.”