Building Power from Pain: Community Spring’s Fellowship

I grew up with an alcoholic mother. When I was 6 years old, I would steal some of her beers out of the fridge and bury them in our backyard with my bare hands, hoping that hiding them from her could make a difference. A few years later, she died by suicide. My attempts at curbing her alcoholism had been deemed insufficient. I knew it was sad, I knew it was a tragedy, and yet I couldn’t cry. From that point forward, I internalized my unworthiness – believing that my own mother would rather leave this planet than stay with me.

I started using drugs when I was 12. Like many addicts, my dependence got worse over time, and I hit rock bottoms - multiple times. I spent the first week of high school in a juvenile detox center. I went back four times throughout 9th grade. There were many times in my adolescence and young adult years when I thought I had finally had enough, but somehow I kept digging even deeper holes of despair, finding ways to survive through full-time crises. Hospitalizations, detoxes, and institutions became my norm. I lived in the agony of wanting something different but doing the same thing.

In 2020, I got clean in an attempt to be a better mother to my 4-year-old son and break the generational cycle of addiction and tragedy. At the time, I loved someone who was also an addict. He was returning home from prison soon and had planned to have a clean life with me. I couldn’t wait. But within 90 days of his release, he fatally overdosed. Once again, I faced a death I felt I wasn’t good enough to prevent. I fell to the floor and screamed in despair. In shock and mourning, I went back to drugs for the next year and a half.

When I was arrested in 2021, I had never spent more than a night in jail. This time, my length of stay was unknown. And to top it all off, I was pregnant.

The suffering in jail as a pregnant woman was different from anything I’d experienced before. In the past, I was high and numb. While inside, it was nothing but me and my raw, unfiltered feelings. I missed my son, his face, his smile, his little hands and feet. I felt rushes of guilt and shame wash over me every day regarding my motherhood, even as I was growing another human inside of me. I didn’t know if I was going to prison or what poverty awaited me upon release. I cried and begged for help for months in jail, but no one was willing or able to help me. I was alone.

I learned about Community Spring while in jail from the newspaper. I learned that they had a program called Just Income that gives financial assistance to people coming out of incarceration. Like everyone in the jail that day, I wanted to remember this program and try to be a recipient of the money when I got out.

I wrote the website down on a piece of scrap paper, put it in my belongings, and forgot about it. Eight months later, in the summer of 2022, I was released and able to secure a temporary living situation. Nine months pregnant, I sat on the floor of my room, sorting through my jail belongings. There it was, the scrap of paper with the Community Spring website scribbled on it.

I checked out their website and saw language I had never seen before: ”breaking the cycle of incarceration,” “no one should be too poor to be free.” At the bottom of the website, there was a “contact us” form. I wrote my life story in the form, just in case someone would listen. A couple of days later, I received a call from a guy named Kevin Scott. He worked at Community Spring and had read every word.

He listened to me and responded with compassion. I was too late to receive Just Income funds, but I wasn’t too late to get involved with Community Spring’s other work. Whenever I could, I showed up—at focus groups, for social media interviews, at events. I did it all while on house arrest with a newborn in tow.

A few more months went by, and Kevin told me to apply to be a fellow. I didn’t even know what a fellow was, but I knew that Community Spring was doing things that made me feel like I was worthy, and things that made positive change in the community. Whatever it was, I was going to apply for it.

In 2023, I was hired as a fellow at Community Spring. Here was a place that valued me for my experiences. They told me that I was an expert in my experiences and to use them to create change. They paid me to do this. I could not believe it.

Being a fellow at Community Spring reset my entire view of my past and my future. I wasn’t the pregnant drug addict in jail who felt worthless anymore. In fact, my experience in jail was actually part of my value as an advocate and organizer. I was asked for input on decisions within the organization on many occasions. I was closest to the problems and therefore closest to the solutions. Over the next several months, my self-worth and self-esteem improved consistently. I began to believe in myself, in my worth, and contribute to meaningful change in my community. Most importantly, for the first time in my life, I stayed clean.

When my fellowship ended, my career and network expanded. I went on to work in restorative justice at The River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding, then in direct services for people coming home from incarceration at Released Reentry. I even traveled to cities across the U.S. to train in criminal justice advocacy with the nationally recognized non-profit Dream.Org.

I am now four years clean. I work and I spend quality time with my children. I am in a healthy relationship! Addiction may have taken my mother’s life, but it did not take mine.

Kelly’s children James and Sophia.

I have now come full circle, back at Community Spring. I am the Operations Coordinator, and you can find me here smiling at the front desk as soon as you walk in our door.

I get to work with thoughtful and creative people. I get to look someone in the eyes who's been beaten down by the world and tell them they matter and that I believe in them. As the person who now develops and oversees the fellowship that changed me forever, I hope I can give future fellows a fraction of what I experienced here.

I get to build power from pain.

Kelly Lynch
Community Spring
klynch@csgnv.org

Kelly, her partner Zach, and the kids at Legoland (2025).