ANEW’s Recovery Clinic: Can-Do Spirit

 

 

“Women Owned | Women Led” is stenciled on the front doors of ANEW Chemical Health Services and ANEW Health & Wellness Clinic in an office complex on the east side of Saint Paul. Beneath the bold words etched by founder and CEO Michaelene Colestock is a whimsical drawing of a bulldog with the inscription “Pardon my French.”

In tandem, both greetings describe the culture of this holistically focused behavioral health organization. ANEW serves about 100 women a day with residential and outpatient treatment for substance use disorders, mental health counseling, sober housing, and a child care center for infants through age 10.

ANEW is a joyful place, with art on the walls, lots of plants, comfortable furniture culled from Facebook Marketplace and Goodwill, and motivational sayings (“Recovery is not linear and that’s okay”) on digital screens throughout the one-story, 35,000-square-foot space. But the joyfulness supports a more somber mission.

A mural of a large tree with the words “We Recover” leads into a wing that houses 40 residential clients. Women sign the wall when they graduate from the six- to eight-week program. A white bench on the lower right has the names of former residents who did not make it — not only because they relapsed, or “returned to use,” as Program Supervisor Nyasia Arradondo-Russell puts it — but because they died.

An Extensive Women-Led Team

Both Colestock and Arradondo-Russell were nominated for the Women’s Press 2024 Changemaker Award — Colestock for “lifting up underrepresented populations and tackling the stigma associated with substance use disorder,” and Arradondo-Russell, a songwriter and vocalist, for “utilizing her platform to raise awareness and initiate important conversations surrounding the journey to recovery.”

Every person on the leadership team, and all but two members of the 55-person staff, are women. These women are key to the camaraderie at ANEW.

“All human beings are stronger together,” says Arradondo-Russell, who oversees day-to-day operations. “The opposite of addiction is connection.”

Though not in recovery herself, Arradondo-Russell grew up around addiction in her extended family and says “divine intervention” landed her in this field — and at ANEW. She is earning her bachelor’s degree in social work at Metro State University, and is the only leadership team member whose office is within the treatment center. Clients slide notes under her door and often step into the low-lit space that serves as a refuge from the noisy energy of the hallways.

Arradondo-Russell, who is Hmong and Black, says she would like to see more women of color in the treatment field, in part to mirror the client base. “Being a woman of color, I am granted an experience that is different from my white counterparts,” she says. “It helps with my insight and ability to communicate with a wide range of people.”

Planting seeds for growth

Colestock — a licensed clinical counselor and addiction counselor — is at heart an entrepreneur. She worked 13 years at Twin Cities–based Wayside Recovery Center, which also focuses on women and families, and bought her first sober home in 2009 when she noticed that women who finished the Wayside program often had no safe or affordable place to go. Colestock’s parents loaned her $10,000 for a single-family house in north Minneapolis, at a time when the recession had sunk housing prices. Each client paid $200 a month in rent.

After buying a second sober house and incorporating as Spence Specialties LLC, Colestock was awarded a contract from Ramsey County in 2013 to provide housing for women trying to maintain sobriety. Three more sober homes and an 11-unit apartment building followed. By 2018, after studying with WomenVenture for nine months, Colestock was ready to launch her own treatment center. Today, ANEW Recovery Services for Women is expanding to accommodate more office space and client lounges.

Spence Specialties is among the first sober housing programs in Minnesota to allow clients to live with their children full time. Colestock created the counseling center — the only nonprofit portion of the ANEW organization — when she noticed that mental health issues were restricting women’s recovery. The licensed child care center, added in May within steps of the clinic, meets “the growing needs of our clients,” Colestock says.

Eighty percent of ANEW’s clientele have children. Clients range in age from 23 to 32, and 40 percent are women of color.

Colestock chose the name ANEW because it evokes themes of starting over — finding the “safety, sobriety, recovery, and family” clients are seeking. “For some women,” says Colestock, “they’re starting over many times.”

“See a need, fill a need” is the action step Colestock encourages people to take. “We see the barriers and needs our clients face, and we try to fill or remove them,” she says. “If we cannot personally fill the need, we will refer them to someone who can.”  Learn more: anewchemicalhealthservices.org