On March 7, 2011 – exactly twelve years ago from today, the date of our interview – Jennifer Hein had a terrible car accident. She was brought to Longmont hospital, and has a very vivid memory of being rolled away in a gurney with her children calling out for her. After being discharged from the hospital, Jennifer didn’t go home. Instead, she ended up in jail for 14 days, lost 14 pounds, and had a charge of driving under the influence of prescription medication. Her daughters, aged 5 and 7, had been in the car with her, but thankfully were uninjured. The girls ended up with her ex-husband, who, like her, was an addict. He eventually took the kids to Massachusetts, where his family lived, and child welfare got involved. Jennifer relinquished custody of both her daughters, and they were adopted by her mother via a closed adoption, which means Jennifer does not have contact with them.

Jennifer is a very pretty, 44-year-old woman, immersed in the healing arts of massage and acupuncture. She also has a certificate in Addiction Recovery Services through Mental Health Partners; a certificate in Suicide Prevention through Living Works; an Adult Mental Health First Aid Certificate; and has been trained in Acu-Detox, a treatment often used for people who have undergone trauma. She volunteers at Flatirons Recovery in Lafayette as part of Natural Highs Organization, where she also volunteers twice a week. Jen is a self-described highly sensitive empath. She says her calling is to help others heal and to give back. She is passionate about this, and for good reason.

Jennifer was sexually assaulted by a neighbor when she was 3 years old. She did not even begin to process this trauma until she was in her early 20’s. She was raised in a home with parents who drank and smoked pot. Her dad, a welder, abused her mom, along with his three children (Jennifer has two brothers). Jen said she saw a lot of violence growing up. Her mother finally left when Jennifer was 8. As described by Jennifer, her parents both have their own history of generational trauma, most of it never addressed.

Jennifer came to Colorado in 2001 from Yakima, Washington, where both her parents still live (as do her daughters, now 15 and 17). She came because her fiancé had moved here. She worked retail jobs, went to massage school, and got a license. But she also started regularly using alcohol and weed to self-medicate undiagnosed mental health problems. To make ends meet, she became an “adult entertainer” (AKA an exotic dancer) at the Bus Stop. Jennifer said a wealthy client there introduced her to cocaine, and she immediately became addicted, and did not stop using for seven years. She lost her house, met a guy, got pregnant, and moved back to Washington to live with her mom. She then returned to Boulder so she could be with the baby’s father. That relationship failed, and shortly after, she ended up pregnant again by another man. Her addiction to opiates began after her second C-section. This addiction comprised another seven-year cycle of her life. She moved back to Washington for a period of time, but ultimately returned to Colorado to be with her husband (now ex) who had also become addicted to opiates. Their life was a roller coaster – a combination of a volatile relationship and drug use by both of them led to stints in jail, living in hotels, and ultimately, to child welfare services taking away her daughters.

Jennifer ended up addicted to meth, which she called a “survival mechanism.” She spent seven years of her life sleeping on the streets of Longmont, landing finally at the Boulder Homeless Shelter while pregnant with her third child. After an extended termination hearing, she lost custody of her son when he was four years old.

Jennifer has since been clinically diagnosed with Bi-Polar 1, with a complexity of PTSD with borderline tendencies. She says one of the things she works on most these days is maintaining boundaries. I asked her what it was that had been most helpful to her in starting her life over in some very fundamental ways. She said she initially went to the in-patient Transitional Residential Treatment (TRT) program (where she met Jen Livovich) after applying and being accepted when she was in jail. But she said more than anything, it was the Partnership For Active Community Engagement (PACE) Program that saved her. “I give my whole life to them. That is what really helped me get my shit back together.” They signed her up for housing and social security in 2015, which is also when Jennifer got sober.

Jen currently has Section 8 housing, and does not share her address with too many people. She says she has come to value being very private, and is always aware of her surroundings. There are limitations to how much money she can earn so that her SSI does not get affected. Her primary source of employment right now is house-sitting and being a dog walker. Jen repeatedly emphasized that she sees peer support as her calling. She told me she feels that she needed to go through everything she did to arrive at the place she is now. “I’m just right where I’m supposed to be.”

Her addictions to cocaine, opiates, and methamphetamine, as well as having been overprescribed psychiatric medications, led to more than 21 tumultuous years wherein she lost so much of what she loved most in the world: her three children. And yet, as she said, “my kids are right where they need to be. I couldn’t provide for them, but I got them in the right place.” Still, she worries acutely about her daughters being brought up by her mother in a similar toxic environment. Jennifer feels certain they will be navigating their own generational trauma, and hopes there will come a time where she will have the opportunity to help guide them through it. Her aspiration is that in sharing her story, they will understand that she had to let go of them in order not to drag them down through the minefield her life had become. When her oldest daughter was five, her father died from an overdose. Her other daughter’s father – Jennifer’s ex-husband – is now sober. Her eyes welled up when she told me that he recently told her he knew she’d tried to be a good wife, and that he knew she was loyal.

I asked Jennifer if she had advice to offer both housed people, as well as individuals experiencing homelessness. She emphasized the value of listening to people’s lived experience. “If you have never been homeless, you cannot speak to the experience… Everybody has a different reason why they’re out there.” Throughout our conversation, she focused on how sick people are from unhealed trauma. Her advice to people who are homeless is to “reach out to anyone offering a service. Don’t think this is going to last forever, or that everyone is out there against you. You need to heal your trauma.” Jennifer has great admiration for the work of Feet Forward and its peer support services. She described Jen Livovich, the founder of Feet Forward, as one of the most down-to-earth people she knows. “She tells you how it is and doesn’t sugarcoat anything.”

It is impossible to sugarcoat Jennifer Hein’s story, and she never tried to do so while talking to me. Jennifer was forthright and honest about events that clearly still cause her a great deal of pain. But what did not emanate off of Jennifer was shame. She is a woman who is clearly working hard to heal herself, and in the process, doing her utmost to help others in similar need of healing. The concept of the wounded healer was introduced by Carl Jung. In short, it acknowledges that people who have been most deeply hurt also have the capacity to offer the most empathy and understanding to others. Jennifer Hein is very much trying to do that. Like the Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl advised in his famous book, Man’s Search For Meaning, Jennifer has found her life purpose.