The Origins of Sage Home: A Discussion with Marca McCallie and Marilee Eveleth

Recently, Marca, the founder of Sage Home, and Marilee, one of the original board members, sat down to discuss the origins of Sage Home and how it all began. They discussed breaking generational cycles, mothers feeling pressure to hide their addictions, and the ultimate goal of healing while keeping families together. 

You can watch the video of their discussion above, or you can keep reading for a transcript. We hope you enjoy learning how we began this journey and why we believe our mission is so important. Please reach out to us to learn more about how you can help. 

MARCA: Hi, I'm Marca, the founder of Sage Home, and I'm sitting here with Marilee, an original Sage Home board member. Marilee has been an educator for many years. Recently, she went back to school to get her counseling degree and is now a therapist in town. We're going to answer some questions about Sage Home and help you know a little bit more about what we're doing.

MARILEE: So thank you, and I am very excited to be back with Sage Home and, gosh, being part of everything that's going on right now -  which there is a lot - however I think we need to go back to, you know, really the foundation and tell me a little bit about Sage Home, what is it about. 

MARCA: Sage Home aims to be a residential family-based treatment which means that mothers that are struggling with addiction or pregnant women that are struggling with addiction can receive residential treatment and bring their kids with them.

MARILEE: Nice, and so is that a model that you just thought of, or is there something else like that in the state or in our country?

MARCA:  At the time, I wasn't aware of any of this. I was having a conversation with my friend and her sister-in-law. I was saying, "man, this isn't working, you know, like, what we're doing right now in Flagstaff, it's not working for mothers," and she said, "well, have you ever thought about, you know, keeping families together?" and I was like "yes like that's it!" 

Now I know that this person that I was talking to was a part of this 30 years ago and is like an expert in the field of residential family-based treatment. She has been by our side the whole time and has helped us see the vision of how important it is for that mother-child connection when it comes to addiction treatment. And there are places all over the country that are doing this, not very many, we definitely would like to see more, and they have really high success rates. And right now, there are zero in Northern Arizona. 

MARILEE: Not one in Northern Arizona?

MARCA: No.

MARILEE: Are there any in our state at all?

MARCA:  Yes, yes. There's a couple in Phoenix, and there's one in Tucson that I'm aware of, and I believe there's another one, but I can't remember where it is located, so about four.

MARILEE:  But it doesn't provide opportunities for our communities around Northern Arizona to have that readily at hand as an option.

MARCA: Exactly, so Coconino County there's not an option which you know makes it hard on the child welfare system because they're so limited in options because on the one hand, kids aren't safe if their parents are actively abusing substances, so child removal is a way to keep the kids safe but at the cost of that connection.

MARILEE: Right, so this home would be then to have them keep them in a safe place with their parent, with their mother, while she is going through the process to be that healthy mom.

MARCA: Exactly. It would be an alternative to child removal. The dads would hopefully still be involved, but at this time, it would be a residential treatment for pregnant and parenting women.

MARILEE:  Gotcha, okay, so tell me the story behind it. Right? I mean, there's got to be a story why. Why this? I know how you came up with it and all of that but really, what's the story?

MARCA:  I was working as a lead therapist on a residential unit for a community mental health agency here in Flagstaff. Great agency, we had a wonderful team. It was a 30-day treatment, although some people could go a little bit longer, and I noticed that it wasn't enough. 

By that, some stories stick out clearly in my mind because the typical client, you know, they would come in not really wanting to be there, feeling pretty bad. Then they would get better over the month, and by the time treatment was over, there was this sense of 'I can do this, I have what it takes, I can get out in the world,' and you know, whether that was true or not they at least when they left they had this optimism about them. But when it came to these mothers, it was a totally different rhythm and pattern. 

The stories that it stick out to my mind are these moms that came straight from the hospital. The one that I'm thinking of, she had a kid, her first kid, the day before, and she came in with all sorts of energy. She was ready to fight. And she was showing up early to groups, and she was doing everything she could to get her kid back. Lots of energy, lots of that fight that you want to see in a client like, "I'm gonna do this," and unfortunately, for her situation, there wasn't a foster family in town. This meant that her baby was a couple of hours away and that it worked out she was only able to see her a couple of hours a week. I noticed that all of that energy, all of that fight, started to change dramatically. She didn't know how to hold her baby. She was afraid to change her baby's diaper. She got stressed when her baby was crying, and she didn't know what to do. She wasn't attuned to her baby because she hadn't been with her baby. And by week two, she was so depressed that she couldn't get out of her bed and she couldn't engage in treatment. She didn't finish treatment, and she never got her kid back. It doesn't have to be that way, you know? If there is a supportive environment and there are all those chemicals that rush through your body after having a baby, if we can harness that, it's an opportunity where there really can be a change in healing, and that generational cycle doesn't have to keep looping over and over again.

MARILEE:  Right, because then you also have the infant who had no mother bonding as well, so you know that whole piece is missing as well, and we see what happens with kids who have no bond. 

MARCA: Yeah, well, yeah, even with the best foster parent in the world, right, you know there's still this big question mark...

MARILEE: Sure 

MARCA: You know, 'what happened, was I not wanted?', right, 'who am I?', 'what am I?' and you know sometimes it's really necessary. Child removal is a necessary option.

MARILEE: Absolutely.

MARCA: But what if it was the last resort, you know, what if the first option was that mom whose eyes lit up when their kid came into the world had enough support to be there for their kids and is that even a possibility and can we dream of that being a possibility.

MARILEE: So what might be some of the barriers for women getting to get treatment and things like that?

MARCA: Well, there are quite a few barriers and especially with women that meet more of those vulnerability categories, those more marginalized groups, socioeconomic. There are all sorts of social determinants of health that make it very difficult for women to receive addiction treatment. A big barrier is children. There's a sense that they have to hide what's going on because they're afraid that they might lose their kids right and right now without that option, you know, that's a real possibility because DCS, The Department of Child Safety, doesn't have a lot of options. They do have some cool programs, but they're limited on options. So the fear of losing their kids is a really big driving force to kind of silence it, or pretend like it doesn't exist, or pretend as they have it under control, right.

MARILEE: And remain in that sickness loop, not getting out of it because they don't know a safe place to go and how to do that so they won't lose their kids.

MARCA: Exactly, right, and the same is true with pregnancy.

MARILEE: Sure.

MARCA: You know many pregnant women avoid going to the doctor because they don't want to be discovered.

MARILEE:  Exactly, that's right.

MARCA: So what we know from research is that if we can intervene early then, there are a lot better chances of that baby being born healthy and that mom being healthy because the mom's an active participant because the plan would start while she's pregnant. It's not like it has to start once she gives birth. She can begin the whole plan and procedure while she's pregnant, so than creating a healthier future for her and a baby yeah so it allows the mom to engage as soon as she can, and that's going to require all sorts of partnerships making sure that information is available and for women in our community because there is so much shame and stigma like being stigmatized that they're going to keep hiding unless they know that there's an opportunity for them to receive treatment in a non-judgmental way,  in a way that can provide an opportunity for them to continue to be a parent, you know. Another - well, there are several more barriers, you know, housing is a big barrier.

MARILEE: Huge, yeah.

MARCA:  They have to have - if they get involved in the department of child safety which if they're abusing substances like we would hope that someone would be intervening there they have to have stable housing, and they need to have a way to care for their children financially. So now we're talking about moms who probably have their own trauma history, most likely.

MARILEE: Right, yeah.

MARCA: Who probably you know have struggled in life in a lot of ways that they're using drugs and alcohol to help regulate them or soothe them or whatever the function is there they might not know how to go about getting housing they might not know how to make it write a job application, or a cover letter, or interview you know all of these skills are recovery, right, you can't just do therapy and get better like you have to know that your actions can provide a safe and stable living for yourself and your family.

MARILEE: Right, and that's part of the whole Sage Home philosophy, and their programming is to provide that type of coaching, provide those types of learning opportunities life skills, development.

MARCA: Yeah, right, how to go to the grocery store, how to budget, how to cook a healthy meal, how to find friends - 

MARILEE: Healthy friends!

MARCA: Yeah, how to have a boundary, how to say no, you know all of these things that maybe weren't modeled for them in a way that worked. So I mean, they have all sorts of skills, and yet...

MARILEE: Just buried down deep.  Yeah, so we want to help them find them. 

MARCA: Right, and what a better time when you have all those chemicals on your side from childbirth. And it's not just for, you know, newborns and kids, there's, there's real survival energy around keeping a family together, and a real loss of that when it's separated. Because hopelessness is just so heavy, so if we could provide an environment that fostered hope and, you know, it wouldn't work for everybody, but I think it would work for many moms because people want to be good parents. People want to have a life that's meaningful and connected to their values. They don't do that because they get pulled away because of trauma or because of addiction or poverty. There are all of these things that make it so much harder.

MARILEE: Yes, definitely.

MARCA: So family-based residential treatment takes a lot of barriers away and provides an opportunity to be in a safe enough space to work on the things that keep them from living their life that they're trying to live.

MARILEE: Absolutely.

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about Sage Home and what we are doing to help Northern Arizona families. You can visit our website to learn more about us or donate to our cause here.