Elevating those in our community who moved mountains in their lives so they can help others move mountains in theirs.

Every morning for 13 months, Lauren Kotz peered down from her prison bunk into her newborn baby’s crib. In 2018, after being charged with drug possession and conveyance, she was sentenced to 14 months at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. Twenty-two days into her detention, she gave birth to her daughter.

Lauren made a vow that she would use her time behind bars wisely, and she did. She earned her GED and built up an extensive transcript of mental health groups, recovery groups, and parenting classes. Her mission was simple. “It’s about creating a life for her that was different from mine. I'm hoping that I break the cycle, and she can have a prosperous life and not have to go through the things that I went through,” she said.

Lauren traces her substance abuse back to when she was 12-years-old. She had always been exposed to addiction through her mother and the people she brought around. “My mom is an addict herself. She was dating other addicts and alcoholics, and our life was very dysfunctional. I moved around a lot as a child, so I never had stability,” she explained.

In 2002, she and her mom moved from the inner-city to her grandfather’s farm outside of Claysville, PA. Lacking the typical rural attire of boots and flannels, her new classmates teased her and called her “gangster girl.” She had to impress this new crowd of kids to make friends, so she followed her mother’s guidance and began hosting parties in a field at her grandfather’s farm. Drinking became a usual habit on the weekends. Then she moved again, this time to a trailer park, and she fit in by copying others’ actions. She smoked, she drank, and she started dating a 19-year-old man. This relationship was discovered by Child Protective Services and the boyfriend was sent to jail. Lauren was devastated, and fight or flight set in. She called a friend who had just moved to Iowa, asked their dad to buy her a plane ticket, and set off for the Midwest. Her great escape was perfect until halted by a layover. “By the time I got to Kentucky, my mom had found out that I ran away and she put an amber alert out. That’s where the feds got me,” she recalled, laughing.

Lauren was sent to live with her aunt who provided a more stable life, but stability and the rules that come with it weren’t familiar to her. After a year of disregarding her aunt’s wishes for her to go to school, keep her grades up, and quit smoking cigarettes, her aunt grew tired and she was sent back to live with her mother. Her teenage spiral continued downward, and she carried on dating older men and using harder drugs. “My drug use started with pills at that point. I was hanging out with older guys, you know, 17, 18, 19. They were doing pills and cocaine. So I started doing pills and cocaine.”

Her teenage years were marked by sparse school attendance and toxic habits, binging Xanax and alcohol to ease the pain of her life. On the first day of her senior year of high school, Lauren drove to school under the influence of cannabis. Sitting in home room, her name was called over the speaker. Her presence was required in the main office, and she was certain she had been caught for driving high. Ironically, when she got to the office, she was awarded for scoring one of the highest scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), a yearly standardized test administered in the state. Despite her intellectual aptitude, she didn’t see the value in finishing her high school degree, and she dropped out by the end of the week. She told herself she would get a job and work on getting her GED, but that wouldn’t happen until she was serving time for her third convicted felony, ten years later.

Despite her recovery in prison, when she left the Ohio Reformatory for Women, she returned to her baby’s father’s house in Wheeling. This ended in disaster, and all of her progress was lost. “I'm just as addicted to unhealthy relationships as I am to drugs. And so I would always go back. And then when I would go back, I would start using again,” she said. She lost her sobriety, and during June of 2020, Child Protective Services took her daughter. The vicious cycle of addiction continued. “They took her because I was using, but I was using because they took her, and so I was just stuck on this hamster wheel, and no progress was being made. And then finally, I got to a point where I just said like, ‘I have to stop this. Something has to give if I want her back and I want to be a good mom. Something has to give.’”

Finally, something did give. Lauren reached her darkest point and experienced a revelation. Her mother’s addiction prevented them from having a healthy mother-daughter relationship, and she was repeating this pattern with her own daughter. “I always told myself, if I was going to be a mom, which I always wanted to be, I would be better than my mom. I would never put my child through what my mom put me through. And I started to become my mom.”

Lauren contacted her aunt for help, and she jumped back into her recovery process. This time, she knew she had to change her life completely; all the people, places, and things that could trigger a relapse had to go. After going through rehab, she applied to the Mary & Martha Recovery Home to help sustain her sobriety. “You have to create a life worth living, and you have to have a support system. When you're held accountable, you're more likely to do the right things.”

Lauren was then accepted into the Ohio County Family Treatment Court, a pilot program created by the WV Legislature in 2019 that is currently being tested in four other counties. The court features a comprehensive rehabilitative program that helps participants maintain sobriety and reunites them with their children once they prove they are healthy enough to do so. Lauren was reunited with her daughter this past April, and she graduated from court on July 28th.

Currently, Lauren is a Project Rebound peer recovery coach where she spends her time operating a shower station for homeless residents of Wheeling and guiding people in active addiction into recovery. Starting this Fall, Lauren will begin working towards an associate's degree at West Virginia Northern in the Substance Abuse Intervention Specialist program. Then, she plans on earning a bachelor’s degree in social work at West Liberty University with the goal of becoming a licensed social worker.

Lauren’s story reminds us that recovery isn’t always linear; there are often relapses and backwards movement. But her story also shows us that there is always a reason to keep pushing forward; all ground that was lost can be regained with faith and perseverance. “This time last year, I was homeless, lost my kid, couldn't hold a job, was strung out on heroin… if you would have told me this day last year, this is where I would be at today, I would have laughed in your face and told you not a chance in hell. Today, I have my own house. I have a car. I have my child back. I have a good job. I help people. I give back to my community. I'm not taking from them anymore, and it's an amazing feeling.”

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