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Mindy, a graduate of Hope Academy, Fairbanks recovery-focused high school, learned an important lesson during her stay — the importance of being honest.

“I learned I had to be honest with myself,” Mindy says. “I had been lying to myself.”

Mindy immediately clicked with the staff, but the expectations were different than what she was used to.

“They weren’t just focused on your grades. They were focused on your sobriety, too.”

Mindy graduated from Hope Academy on May 28th, 2010, and has enrolled at IVY Tech Community College. After she finishes at IVY Tech she wants to earn a degree in mortuary sciences, but is committed to taking life one day at a time.

“I live by that,” she says with a smile.
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Debra, a former patient who now volunteers at Fairbanks, says that the best thing she received from her time in recovery here, was when she left.

“I had to face life on my own, and I learned I wasn’t afraid anymore – I could feel the peace.”

Being at Fairbanks, Debra says, helped her find the woman she’s been hiding all these years. “When I look in the mirror, I can say I actually like this person,” she says. “I had to deal with all my emotions and stuff. Before recovery, my emotions were in a bottle.”

“My biggest thrill is talking with the other women at Fairbanks,” she says. “They think I’m helping them…they’re helping me.”
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Seth spent 30 days at Fairbanks before moving into La Verna Lodge Family Program, a 12-step, long-term treatment setting for men created to unite residents and their families in recovery.

“I had to get away from my daily habits and also focus on my recovery,” he says. “But I also needed a safe place to manage my anxiety about life, and a place where I could be held accountable to behave in the appropriate way.”

“After coming to Fairbanks, I realized everything kept on happening without me, that I wasn’t the cause for every effect. For somebody who was terminally self-important, that was the biggest lesson I could ever get.”
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