Not Giving Up: Tina’s Story

If it weren’t for Unity House, Tina Clark would not be alive today, she said.

“Since I was 22, Unity House has been there for me,” said Tina, 52. “I never thought I’d be here today. I’m very grateful.”

Tina endured an abusive childhood. The youngest of seven children, she left her Auburn home at age 18. Tina was close with her mother, but when she died of emphysema a few years later, Tina blamed herself. She became severely depressed.

“I thought that me being happy meant that I didn’t care about my mother,” Tina said. One night after work, she downed alcohol and all of her mother’s leftover medications. “I just wanted to die.”

Tina survived, but she tried to harm herself many more times over four months in a psychiatric hospital.

After she was discharged, Unity House’s mental health treatment apartment program provided the shelter and support she needed to keep going. Weekly visits from Unity House staff helped her slowly rebuild her identity and confidence.

After 14 years in the program, she decided to move in with a partner in Rome, N.Y. That relationship started well, but became abusive over time, she said. In 2019, she returned to Auburn. After four months on a Unity House waiting list, she got a mental health treatment apartment, where she has been ever since.

She began to go to PROS, Unity House’s outpatient mental health program, where she met people struggling to overcome challenges not unlike hers.

“PROS is awesome,” Tina said. “The staff is amazing. We are all such a family there. I have a lot of friends there.”

Tina also began undergoing dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) through the county mental health program. DBT focus on mindfulness, setting relational boundaries and building skills to tolerate painful emotions and situations, rather than resorting to harmful behaviors. Together with PROS, DBT has allowed her to make tremendous progress in recent months, she said.

“It changed my whole thought process,” she said. “I found ways to cope with things instead of the old behaviors… I really look at life in a different way.”

Tina said she’s ready for more independence. She wants to move to Unity House’s supportive apartment program, which provides monthly visits from Unity House staff, rather than weekly visits.

“I’m realizing now that I can do this,” Tina said. “I’m not giving up.”