Plagued by intrusive bad thoughts, a Maryland teen turned to drugs and sex amid the women’s liberation movement of the ‘70s to escape from herself. Selling herself on the streets of the U.S. capital to pay for her daily crack cocaine, guilt and shame overcame her. It was only after becoming reacquainted with God that she found a way to reclaim her life.
Her mission is: no life is a throwaway, all lives matter.
“One of the questions that people ask me is, ‘How did your life get off track so desperately and so quickly?’ Lisa told The Epoch Times. ”The evil forces in our world, they don’t just start when somebody’s 16 or 17. They start working on you much earlier in life.”
But she says God’s saving grace can pull such broken people out from the pit of hell. “You’re not what you did. You’re not your mistakes. You are not your sin. Those can be forgiven. But you use those to propel yourself to be able to be a blessing to other people,” she said.
Good or Bad: It Starts in the Mind
Lisa recalls walking home from her all-girls Catholic elementary school at the age of five. Crossing a bridge, she would stop and look at the water, thinking, “If I fell in, nobody would miss me; if I fell in, the world would be better off.”“I thought that God made two kinds of people. He made good people, and he made bad people, and I just happened to be one of the bad people,” Lisa said. “I never felt like I could articulate those things to my parents ... I kept everything inside.
“As I grew, those things just were nurtured and they bloomed into who I thought I was. When you don’t have faith, and you are hearing all these negative things, they become truth.
“If I had known God loves me, that I was special to Him, that He had a plan for my life, and that He was going to be with me, [then] there would have been no room for those thoughts that said, ‘You’re no good. You’re a bad girl. Nobody loves you. You’re not valued.’ I would’ve had something to counteract them.”
Lisa started drinking alcohol at 14. When the drink hit her system, all inhibitions and negative feelings disappeared. At 15, she lost her virginity.
“When you look back, I was craving this love, this affection, and this attention ... I was just so uncomfortable in my own skin that I would do anything to help me escape,” she explained.
At 18, Lisa moved out of her parents’ house and rented an apartment in Washington, DC. She was hired by a law firm as a legal secretary and had a bright career path ahead of her until she was seduced by the local nightlife. She started bartending and met a drug dealer who became her boyfriend, and later her pimp.
The man introduced Lisa to crack cocaine. But, since the drug made him paranoid, he also lashed out.
“I never thought about a consequence at all ... [crack] just became the love of my life,” Lisa said. “I was willing to get beat up over it, I was willing to go to jail because of it, I was willing to do whatever I had to do to stay high on the drug.”
Deeper Into the Pit of Hell
Lisa was 19 the first time she became pregnant. She had been “brainwashed” at her all-girls Catholic high school into believing that a 10-week-old fetus is “nothing more than tissue,” so she went to a clinic in Washington, D.C., and aborted her baby. The experience haunts her to this day.She recalled: “It was done by a doctor who was extremely famous; later on he got prosecuted for killing a girl during an abortion ... when he started to perform the abortion, something in me knew that it was wrong. I started crying, and I remember he said, ‘Shut up, why are you crying now?’ It was devastating.”
Heartbroken, Lisa sank deeper into her life of degradation. Desperate to stay high, she endured a broken nose, broken arm, broken eardrum, cracked ribs, and an attempt to set her on fire at the hands of her violent boyfriend. They ended up on the streets for two years and in her early twenties Lisa turned to prostitution to fund their drug habit. When the pair turned to writing bad checks, the law caught up with Lisa.
“I went into a bar to get a check and the police were there, waiting,” she said. “They took me to jail ... looking back, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Lisa was incarcerated at Arlington County Jail in Virginia for 12 months in 1990. It was the first time that she hadn’t been under the influence of a mind-altering substance since the age of 14.
Change Begins With God
Lisa had an interaction during her jail time that hit her to the core.“When I got into that jail, I felt like discarded trash. But I’m telling you, I walked out of there feeling like maybe, possibly, that changed my mind.”
It would take another round of violence before Lisa saw the light. Upon leaving jail, she met her boyfriend, went for pizza and beer, paid with a bad check, and returned to their hotel to get high. Lisa was beaten up that night. She walked out of the hotel and sat on the curb.
“I looked up and I said, ‘If you’re real you need to change me, or you kill me, but I cannot live like this anymore.’ That was literally the beginning of the change,” she said.
Lisa took her life back into her own hands. She joined a 12 Step program and was immediately struck by how happy her fellow attendees seemed to be.
“These people were talking about a loving God, a God that wanted to see us succeed,” Lisa said, “but you had to take responsibility for some of the things you had done in your life, and you had to make amends. You had to go on making your best attempt every day to surrender to God, and to do the next right thing in front of him.”
Lisa attended her first 12 Step meeting on April 5, 1991. Now, 31 years sober, she still attends meetings today. She met her husband, Joseph, when she was a year sober, and credits him for his unconditional support. But Lisa’s past haunted the couple in the early years of their marriage when they started trying for a family.
“Every month I got my period ... it was devastating. All I ever wanted to be was a mother. That’s really when I have an even closer relationship with the Lord,” she said.
“I always wondered, did the drinking perpetuate the abortion? Or did the abortion perpetuate the drinking and the drug use? It was such a vicious cycle, because abortion just undermines your authority as a woman. It takes the very thing that God gave you.”
‘It’s in the Valleys That You Grow’
In 2003, Lisa started a prisoner reentry program for women, New Vision, to help incarcerated women transition back to society. She ran the program for nine years, building a residential home with funding from Doris Buffett, and celebrated a zero percent recidivism rate for all women who came through the program.One of the biggest challenges in getting the program off the ground was Lisa’s residual self-doubt, but the success of the program spoke for itself. After nine years, Lisa felt called by God to move on to a new project.
“I served on a Senate subcommittee that studied reentry,” she said. “I was able to submit bills to the General Assembly that were passed and put into law.
“It’s kind of funny, because here I am; I’m a high school-educated former offender, recovering drug addict, sitting on this committee with the Assistant Attorney General, the head of department corrections, and I thought, ‘Well I’m here, one way or another. I might not ever be asked back, but while I’m here we’re going to do something!’”
Today, a happy mom of two, Lisa champions the pro-life movement and has used her radio show to garner traction for her message. “I wanted to know if there’s any women who do not regret their abortion after 10 years. No one called in,” Lisa said. She firmly believes abortion is a “coward’s way out.”
“There are other options,” she said. “There are three families for every infant born, waiting to adopt the baby. If you abort that baby, not only will that baby die, but the very innate nature of you as a woman will die with it. Every life has value.”
Lisa raised her kids with honesty and transparency, sharing her story little by little as they grew.
“We would have conversations when they were little about God, about how you live your life, about what’s good, what’s right, what’s moral,” she said. “We would pray together ... a personal relationship with God was so celebrated.”
Lisa’s 25-year-old son is married, very involved with his church, and recently passed the bar exam. He wants to work with disenfranchised communities. Her 28-year-old daughter had a liver transplant seven years ago, despite never drinking or smoking. But her faith gave her the resolve she needed to stay strong.
“We always say, ‘The mountain tops are glorious, but it’s in the valleys that you grow,’” she said.
To date, Lisa has penned three books: “Overcoming Obstacles of Re-entry,” “This Is Your Life – Not A Dress Rehearsal,” and “Light In Our Darkness.” She believes in justice, claiming it was the consequences of her actions that pushed her to change her life.
She insisted, “I’m nothing special. But I’m special with God, and I don’t take no for an answer!”
