COVER FEATURE
Bringing
Best
How Centerstone’s Intensive In-Home Treatment Is Changing Lives
2
Out the
Centerstone therapist Meghan Ocasek visits Ethan and Brenda.
A lot has been written in recent years about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Kids who endure lingering traumatic situations—abuse, addiction, divorce, neglect, poverty, racism, etc.—have a higher incidence of physical, mental, economic, and social challenges as they age.
“She had some issues, like a lot of young adults do these days,” Brenda says about her daughter. “Alcohol abuse. She’d had two pints of whiskey that day. When I got off work, Ethan met me at the door and said, ‘My mommy drank some brown stuff and she won’t wake up.’”
Ethan, a bright teenager who lives in Clarksville with his grandmother, Brenda, still remembers a traumatic event that happened involving his mom when he was four years old. Sitting at the top of the staircase at home, he saw her passed out on the steps below.
“I told her not to drink it, but she wouldn’t listen,” says Ethan. “And I’ve always wished she had listened because none of this would be happening. And it’s always made me kind of sad that she didn’t listen.”
ISSUE TWENTY-SIX
