Beyond Survival – A Perfume Bottle’s Impact

“Joshua Station is especially special because this place was part of my process getting well,” says Sarah Pfister, a former resident and current staff member. “I’m a Peer Recovery Advocate, which means that my role here is connecting with residents in their substance use recovery process, connecting around our shared experience.”

Sarah’s work with residents starts with relationship-building over walks, coffee, and accompanying them to resources such as recovery groups. She learns not simply what they struggle with, but what they love and what awakens life in them. Together, they share the experience of moving out of homelessness into stable housing, working on recovery, growing in their mental health, and taking important life steps. Thriving!

Sarah vividly recalls her own very first moments at home at Joshua Station. “We were not housed at that time. When I first got here and I first got my room, I expected it to be kind of like a shelter, like a motel. And when I walked in that room, it didn’t feel like that.

“As soon as I got in, I lost it. I hadn’t actually owned a bed before and so I just started crying. There was a crib for my baby son. He hadn’t had a crib. I just didn’t have the reality of owning anything that wasn’t for the purpose of survival up until that point.

As she took in the beauty of her space, she marveled at the care of our Spruce-A-Room volunteers. “They pour so much love before you move into your room and they take time to like learn your family. The bed had a pretty blanket over it. I was moved by like how much time they put into just creating beauty… even the way that they decorated the walls.

“The mirror was decorative, not just functional, because it was a bunch of little mirrors. I was like, ‘that is just there for beauty!’ Someone actually thought of me and my son so much as whole people that they wanted to create beauty just for the sake of beauty for us. I was impacted by that. There were a lot of little things like that!

“I walked into the bathroom and they had girly stuff. I specifically remember a perfume bottle. It felt like they dignified me as a human to deserve something that I didn’t need— was just for beauty. It touched me deeply. To this day, I still have that perfume on my wall because I was very impacted by it.

“I felt a love in a way that I was not able to receive at that time verbally in my life. Through the actions, there was so much love without words.

Sarah and her son lived at Joshua Station from 2018 and she graduated from our program in 2021—which makes her family an esteemed member of our COVID-19 lockdown cohort. “I lost my job because of COVID, but it was a thing of beauty because it was like, when else in life am I gonna be able to stay home with my son for that long as a single mom?” Together with support from our staff, volunteers, and fellow residents, they grew through that challenge and built a strong foundation for life.

“My son grew up here, and when he reflects on this place, he doesn’t remember it as a hardship. He remembers it as something beautiful. So when I came back to work here, he reconnected with one of his little friends from when they were babies! They run around and play and he asks me all the time, “Can we just live here again?” He has grown up with community, which wasn’t something I could give from my own family. I didn’t really have that myself. He has the sense of being a part of something bigger than himself, that I could not have provided on my own no matter how hard I tried.

“I just absolutely love this place, which is why when I got the chance to work here, I was all about it!” Sarah has journeyed from survival to an expansive life—a journey of love she now shares with others.