“We only have what we give,” wrote the Chilean author Isabel Allende. “It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.”
It’s that kind of truth that Asonya Hargett has recently discovered. The realization that she wanted to help others is what set Asonya on her path to freedom from dependence on drug use and drug sales.
“I have finally gotten to a place where I can be positive about what I’m doing,” she said. “I feel free inside.”
Born in Olympia, Wash., to a Fort Lewis Naval worker, Asonya and her younger sister, Tonya, lived with their grandparents until their mother “kidnapped” them and took them to Los Angeles.
“I was 10 years old. My mom was like a movie star to me,” Asonya said. “My whole world changed then.”
Their mother dressed the young girls up like women in revealing clothing, exposed them to the nightclub men she ran with and their drug culture.
“Try this medicine,” she remembers one man encouraging her with capsules of a prescription narcotic. She was introduced through boyfriends to heroin in her teens. “My whole childhood was taken from me.”
By the time she was 21, she had been convicted of forgery for attempting to cash a check that was stolen. “I didn’t know it was stolen,” she said.
In 1989, in her mid-20s, she served a five-year prison sentence for selling heroin.
“Prison saved my life,” she said. “I worked out and took care of myself. I learned how to laugh again.”
She was 33 years old when she was released. She described the impossible predicament most face when they hit the streets after having been incarcerated: “Once I stepped out onto the street, where did I have to go? You’re gonna do whatever it is you know how to do … go right back doing the same thing that got you into trouble.”
Asonya told me about the moment she walked away from those troubling times.
“One day I woke up and realized I was preying on people’s weaknesses by selling drugs. I was so mad at myself. What the hell is wrong with me!”
She realized she would have to find a new way to survive.
Survival at first meant being homeless. It meant relying on resources like shelters and detox clinics.
“I said to myself, ‘It’s time to grow up! There’s no money worth my life!’”
So, slowly and with her focus on staying positive, Asonya learned about the resources for the homeless and people in need. She and her husband, Mike, found shelter at Willamette Center Shelter. She enrolled in the methadone clinic and started the journey of getting free and clean from drugs.
“I got to the place,” she said, “where I could be positive about what I’m doing. I just quit! I feel free inside. I want some peace.” And then she repeated: “Money doesn’t buy happiness.”
While feeling positive about herself means feeling free from a life of drugs, it also means being a part of her community in a positive way. She and Mike gained housing and focused on staying clean, and a friend introduced her to Street Roots. She went through a vendor orientation.
“I was doing things out of survival before,” she said. “Now I want to do something constructive.”
Asonya started selling Street Roots at the corner of Southwest Yamhill and Second Avenue.
“I wasn’t trying to have a lot of money in hand,” she said. Selling Street Roots “helped out so much. I started feeling good about myself.
Having gotten to a place of purpose and clarity, Asonya focused on helping others.
“I’ve always mothered people,” she said. With the help of her therapist, she enrolled in a county program for caregivers and through training achieved her caregiver’s license. Now she provides care for a woman with a brain disease.
“She’s got very particular needs,” Asonya explained. “She calls me mom! I help her bathe; I go with her on errands. I encourage her. I tell her, ‘You can do this.’ She has changed so much just in the little time I’ve been helping her. I tell her, ‘Don’t underestimate yourself.’ Since I’ve been in her life, she’s become a more positive person.”
Asonya also has participated in the poetry writing workshop at Street Roots, where she not only writes but also encourages others. One day when the prompt had to do with love, Asonya recited from memory a poem that she and Mike wrote together, one that reflects the rich ways that, in the words of Isabel Allende, Asonya “spends herself.”
Love me or love me not?
You told me once but I forgot
You picked me out from all the rest
Because you thought I’d love you best
I had a heart that was so true
But now it’s gone from me to you.
So take care of it as I have done.
For you have two and I have none.
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