December, 2006

This is the time of year we seem to be overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done before the Holiday Season; baking, cooking, gift shopping and wrapping, Holiday parties to attend, helping with charities, remembering neighbors etc. Even here at our facility we are busy getting ready for the Holidays – decorating the rooms and halls to look festive and welcoming.

It is not meant to be pleasant here, but we do make the Holiday season special for our students – after all they are still children. Our goal is to have the students recognize they did not have to grow up so fast; that it is OK to be “just a kid” a little longer; that they can go ahead and believe in the spirit of Christmas; that it is delightful to be excited about small things in life; that missing your family is healthy.

Our request as an administration is that you parents will keep it simple this Holiday. This will give your child an opportunity to truly dwell on what he/she has already been given – not in a form of a package, but in a form of unconditional love. You have done the difficult thing by placing your child in our program. You have loved your child enough to give him/her a second chance at life. This is a gift. This is the spirit. Your child will eventually understand and thank you for giving them something they could not give themselves. Happy Holidays!

The Learning Center for Families
Dicken’s Festival in St. George
Winter Fest
The Eagles Club Food Drive

Student seminars have started at our facility with Discovery seminar 12/04/06. It will be followed up by Principles, PC II, Keys, Orientation and Focus. The graduates from each of the seminars will be posted on the parent BBS shortly after seminars are over. Make sure your family rep has received the most recent information about permission to photograph your child.

We just completed PC I @ Cross Creek and PC III @ San Diego. We had a LARGE PC I with 85 parents in attendance. Two young ladies, Amber L and Brooke H., who graduated the program in 1998, talked to parents during PC I. They both are so powerful and still grateful for the lessons they learned while in the program. We also had parents of another student, Andrea B. visiting during PC I, and they addressed the parents on importance of completion and sticking to the life contract. Andrea’s parents have returned every Christmas since 2000 (after Andrea graduated) to have a little Christmas celebration with the upper level girls. Heartfelt thanks to families who continue to be so supportive of what we do.

Cross Creek graduated 27 students this PC III and we are so proud of the students and their families. This is a hard program, and these students are going home recommended, because they and their families have done the work. Needless to say we will miss them and wish them all good things and luck in the future.

Basketball is in full swing at our facility. The boys and girls basketball teams compete in the Utah State High School Athletic Association 2A level. The season opener will be in January after all the preliminaries are over. There are still several games to be played in pre-season, and we all look forward to winning a few this year! The coaches are:
Mr. Rosey Rosander for the boys’ team, Mr. Joel Heaton for the girls’ team.

Congratulations to all our seminar graduates this past month! We are so grateful for the support we get from parents who truly take it on – both at home and at the program! Way to go!

Christmas is almost here – remember to send out your packages early rather than late – this way we avoid last minute rush to the store in case someone’s package didn’t get here on time.

Thanks to all those parents who have so willingly assisted either by staffing, offering support when other parents are struggling, playing it forward in every way. We couldn’t do this without you!

You never dream when holding your tiny bundle of joy for the first time that one day you would be facing the most difficult decision of your, or rather, their life. You look into their eyes and see the miracle of life, unconditional love and acceptance. You see in your child beauty, talent, curiosity and a brilliant future. Then that day comes. A day, deep down, you knew was coming. A day you hoped and prayed would not. You saw signs. You had doubts. Then you couldn’t deny it any longer. Your precious child needed help.
We ordered information from Cross Creek but did nothing for two years. We hoped and prayed that we would never have to use such a resource. We told ourselves things were getting better; that our daughter was going to be okay. We told ourselves that she was “just being a teenager”. But things were not getting better. Our daughter was just getting better at hiding her behavior. But after a while, she didn’t care so much about hiding. The outbursts of anger became more than the average teenage emotional roller coaster. She was failing school, lying, sneaking out, driving without a license, manipulating her teachers to get out of class, and the list goes on. We had no idea how bad things really were until she admitted to me that she was cutting herself to deal with stress. The day had finally come.

We took her to a therapist but felt like we needed to do more. We overheard some of her phone conversations and discovered more than we bargained for, more than our hearts could bear. Going to therapy once a week wasn’t enough. How much longer would it take? How much longer would we have before we wouldn’t have her at all? We knew she was still in there, somewhere, lost, trying desperately to get out but she didn’t have the skills or the willpower to do it on her own. So we did what we had to do. With tears of pain, we contacted Cross Creek. They were so very wonderful. They felt and understood our situation and our grief. In the few days prior to making the final decision, they were calling just to check on us, to make sure we were okay. We felt connected; that there was someone out there who understood, who cared.

The days and weeks that followed were painful. But the pain gave way to something we hadn’t expected - a sense of pride and empowerment for doing something above and beyond our own feelings of pain, hurt and loss. We did something that was going to give us our daughter back. After her initial shock of being in the program, she began to realize her old patterns of behavior were not going to work there and that she needed to change. Her letters home became more and more positive. Then the day came that we were waiting for, a letter thanking us for giving her a second chance at life! Before we made the decision to place her in this program, she didn’t have a future. Now she is getting her life back and to quote her from a recent letter – “ When I first got here my eyes were dull and full of pain and now they sparkle and have life like they used to!” We can’t wait to look into those eyes again! We are on our way and are looking forward to becoming the happy, healthy family God has intended us to be.

This program is not just a program to help your child; it is a program to help the entire family! This program has had a dramatic effect on our marriage, our circle of friends, our jobs, our relationship with our 10 year old son – the powerful changes in our lives are amazing.

If you have concerns for your child’s life or future, just request the information and review it. It could mean a better future for your child or it could be the difference between life and death.

My name is Kelly and I want to tell you about my beautiful daughter Lindsay and our struggle with Meth. We moved to Las Vegas in 2000 so that I could marry my child hood sweetheart. At first, everything seemed perfect, our families blending, Lindsay adjusting just fine to her new school and new life. I was blissfully happy and unaware of the problems she was having adjusting. In two short years she started drinking and smoking cigarettes and we shockingly discovered, she was “experimenting” with marijuana. I started her in therapy, individually and then family therapy. She went at first but quickly refused to attend sessions. We went without her trying to prove we were willing…she didn’t care. She had once been an honor student, captain of her soccer team, and heavily involved in Girl Scouts. I knew all of her friends and their parents. Now I didn’t even know their names. She wouldn’t tell me where she was going and she wouldn’t come in at curfew. The arguments became more and more frequent; her outbursts more unexpected and vulgar. Not only was she disrespectful to us, her friends that called were equally obnoxious when we wouldn’t allow her on the phone or tell them where she was. At this point, Lindsay was only 13. We started getting calls from the police – out past curfew (we thought she was home sleeping), breaking and entering, shoplifting. Her moods became more and more erratic. She suffered from constant, unexplained headaches. She’d refuse to eat saying she was going to eat at her friends’ house. My once straight-A student was now failing almost every class. Now she was 14 and the court system was mandating drug and alcohol counseling. By now I was getting desperate but had no idea where to turn. Lindsay was calling me almost every day at work, sometimes 4 or 5 times a day, crying and threatening to kill herself, screaming that she hated me for bringing her here, telling me she hated everyone including herself. Some days I’d run home to “rescue” her, other days I was so depressed myself I couldn’t function. I decided to try therapy again and spent an entire day calling almost every psychiatrist in town. Only one was willing to take on a teenager as a new patient. Only One! After three sessions with him, she refused to go back. We put her in a short term psychiatric treatment facility (one week) and then they recommended a summer long out-patient rehab program. Four days a week for 3 hours she had group therapy with a wonderful therapist who really tried to make a difference in these kids lives. Unfortunately, this time, was wasted. Lindsay attended only because she was meeting more addicts which gave her more opportunities to get drugs. School started back up in the fall but she didn’t bother going. I couldn’t make her. I’d ground her and she’d just look at me, laugh, and walk out the door. Our entire family was upside down and I was lost in the whirlpool. In the meantime, my husband was researching long term rehab facilities on the internet. Facilities that meant sending her away for several months but with a proven uccess rate and the whole family was treated, not just our child. At first, I was furious that my husband would even consider sending MY daughter away. I refused to believe that she needed anything more than more of my love and attention. I was obviously a bad mom for letting this happen to her. Besides, all she was doing was smoking, drinking a little bit and smoking a little weed. That didn’t warrant being sent away. I kept my head in the sand for a YEAR. I was watching my daughter destroy herself and yet, I did nothing because I couldn’t believe I needed to take such drastic measures. If I had only known what we were up against. Finally, another threat of suicide and she started begging me to send her away. She was actually asking me to get her out of the house and away from her “friends.” I still had no idea how bad things were for her inside her head. We still had no idea that she was using meth…didn’t even suspect it. But finally, I had to admit something was desperately wrong for Lindsay to be begging me so adamantly for help. She’d gone from telling me to go screw myself to pleading for my help. I knew it was time to make the decision I’d been putting off for a year. So one year ago today, I drove my beautiful 15 year old daughter to Cross Creek in St. George, Utah. One year ago today, I turned my daughter over to complete strangers who told me to “trust their program”. I miss her so much but every day I am thankful we made the choice we made. One of the first things the teens have to do is write a Confession Letter to their family. We were shocked. There were things we knew and others we suspected, but it was the things we were clueless about that could have killed her….and almost did. We almost lost her several times due to her reckless choices and never had a clue. Never had a clue until we got that letter.

Today, a year later, Lindsay is healthy, sober, and ALIVE! She’s drawing again, enjoying reading again, and working hard in school to make up for the year she lost. She’s on the cross country track team and getting back in shape. She wants to get back into Girl Scouts again when she comes home. She’s finding herself again while she’s working through the issues that led her to her choices; and at the same time we’re working our part of the program. Cross Creek doesn’t just treat the teens, they treat the whole family. There are seminars we attend, separately and together, meetings with her therapist, and an amazing family support group. We have met the most incredible people, especially the teens that have graduated and come back to support us! This program not only supports our daughter, but our entire family. We’ve all grown, individually and as a family and we thank our daughter for the opportunity this program has given each of us.

If you have a teen struggling with drug abuse or if you suspect it, ACT NOW! I knew in my heart what was happening but couldn’t bear to admit it. Don’t wait. Your teen won’t tell you the truth about their drug use; they’ll lie to their physicians, they’ll lie to their teachers, and their therapists. Meth is an epidemic in this country and this city and short-term programs cannot fix it. Act now before the situation gets worse. Meth is killing our children and most parents, like myself, don’t even realize how bad it really is. Don’t let your fear or guilt keep you from making this drastic and painful decision. My daughter has been gone a year and will probably be gone another five months and my only regret is that I didn’t do it a year sooner. But when she comes home she’ll come home whole and healed and healthy. She’ll come home with her doors of opportunity back open again. A life that was almost thrown away has been rescued. My lost child has found herself and she’s coming home with a purpose. My 15 year old drug addict is coming home a 17 year old, confident young woman who wants to make a difference in this world. The program at Cross Creek is so incredibly powerful and will transform your teens’ life and your own. Act Now! Don’t let another day pass. You’re saving your child’s life, and the life of your family. It really is the greatest gift you can give them and you’ll be grateful for the rest of your lives. We are and we’re grateful for the opportunity to share our story with you.

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