By Ganelle Grimm, Development Coordinator
Sharon has been a resident of Our House for two years. She
is in the process of moving out of the Family House and into
her own permanent home. Remarkably, Sharon has also been
an Our House donor for the last eight months. She has been
donating $20 each month, a portion of the earnings from an
entrepreneurial venture she began while living here. Her
story is one that inspires courage and generosity in the hearts
of all those who are willing to hear it.
Born in Conway, Arkansas, Sharon moved to Missouri when
she was 20 years old for medical school at William Woods
College. She met her husband, Tim, while he was in law
school. They married and moved to Kansas City. She gave
birth to two children in two years and then decided not to
finish medical school, opting to stay home with her children.
―I don‘t regret one minute of the time I spent taking care of
my kids. It was either marriage or medicine.‖ Sharon and her
family had several happy years in a beautiful home. They
lived an affluent life full of homemaking and socializing until
the birth of her last child, when Sharon began to suffer from
bipolar depression. ―I developed real serious depression with
alcoholism along with it.‖ Untreated, those struggles were a
heavy weight for Sharon and her family. Sharon and Tim
divorced in 1995.
For years, Sharon was unable to resolve getting divorced, so
she continued to drink. ―I was up and down. I had a couple
good jobs here and there, but I was spiraling out of control,
in and out of treatments a few times.‖ She survived those last
few years in Missouri on the money left in her retirement
account. Down to her last $1,000, Sharon decided to spend it,
hoping she would be dead before she‘d spent it all.
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