From Darkness to Light: Angela Turner's Journey of Transformation and Hope

Making a complete and total change in life is never easy…and often quite scary. Especially because we seldom uproot ourselves when things are going smoothly. But large-scale transitions are one way to break out of harmful habits, lifestyles, and routines to truly start a new life. For Angela Turner, the catalyst for hope was finally getting clean and sober on October 27, 2017.

Turner started Thurston County Drug Court in October 2017 with a daunting string of charges. “I was charged with eight counts of robbery and racketeering,” she recalls, “and facing 80 to 110 months in prison. I had been addicted to and abusing substances for 20 years and a vexing bane upon society and my community. I had ruined countless lives through selling and distributing drugs, stealing, lying, and deceiving anyone and everyone if it benefited me.”

Growing up with sexual trauma and a mentally ill mother, Turner started living on the streets at only 14 years old. To survive so young, she turned to drugs and crime. Parenting experts explain that at her young age, finding trouble was almost inevitable. “Because the prefrontal cortex is still developing, pre-teens and teenagers might rely on a part of the brain called the amygdala to make decisions and solve problems more than adults do. The amygdala is associated with emotions, impulses, aggression, and instinctive behavior.”

Without regular parental guidance as a child, Turner says that Drug Court is where she learned how to follow the rules. “I had never followed a rule in my life,” she admits. “I have always done what I wanted to get what I wanted as a means of survival. I also had no natural support and nowhere to live until a member of the community took me in. I was her son's drug dealer, yet she still took me and my children into her home, gave me a place to live, and supported me throughout my time in drug court.”

But the drug court staff did more than hold Turner accountable. They explained the powerful disease of addiction and mandated therapy, treatment, and 12-step meetings for support. “Once I was living clean and sober for the first time, I fell in love with life,” she says.

Through the program and continued determination to live clean, Turner went from losing custody of her children to being part of their lives again. She’s even married and owns a mini farm in Olympia’s Boston Harbor neighborhood complete with chickens, sheep, goats, and pigs.

Turner is involved with her church and volunteers to support others through their recovery. She is a Certified Peer Counselor earning a Bachelor of Applied Science in Behavioral Health and works in food security with food banks across Washington State with a background in workforce development. As she looks to the future, Turner wants to help provide housing for others working through the therapeutic recovery court system.

If anyone has stepped from darkness into light, it’s Angela Turner. But that just goes to show the power of caring, community, accountability, mentorship, and people who want to pass it on so others can change too.