Cassie Person, 36
Alcohol and drug counselor
Mom of two biological children and two “bonus” children
Home town: Naytahwaush
Tribal affiliation: Member of White Earth Nation
Seven years of sobriety
Cassie Person spent her childhood in foster care, living with several families until she found a longer-term home. As soon as she aged out of that system, though, she returned to White Earth. There, she found that her biological brother and her sister were both using drugs. Without any support system, Vicodin became her way to cope with her childhood trauma. When that became too expensive, she switched to heroin.
Person tried various treatment programs, but none stuck. She took the Suboxone she got at a St. Cloud treatment center and sold or traded it to buy heroin and meth.
When Person got pregnant, she worried that the hospital would try to separate her from her baby. She knew her medical chart listed her history of drug use; providers sometimes made disparaging remarks about it, she said. With drugs in her system, she knew she would not be allowed to retain custody.
In this case, Person’s mother-in-law, Grandma Nona, came to the rescue and offered to care for the baby. Eager to get home to the baby herself, Person texted a friend: Is MOMS still open?
Person asked Grandma Nona to drop her off at MOMS directly from the maternity ward. Unlike the treatments she’d tried in the past, MOMS felt right, she said.
Like the other women in the room, she is wearing a ribbon skirt, a garment that can symbolize womanhood, adaptation, and survival. (Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, a member of White Earth, wore a ribbon skirt to her swearing-in ceremony and recently sported one in Vogue.)
The skirts the women wear were made by a member of the community. Hers is red, black and blue. Her wavy brown hair falls over a red White Earth Treaty Powwow 2022 T-shirt and beaded red, yellow and black earrings. “I wanted to be at the building all the time,” Person said. “It was my safe place.”
And it still is. Person stayed in MOMS for two years, relapsing a couple of times until her partner agreed to join the program. When her counselors suggested it was time to move on, she agreed only when she found out she could stay with the treatment program as an employee.
“The cool thing here is to be sober,” she said.
Person has been sober since Dec. 27, 2016. Last April, she gave birth to her second child at the same hospital. This time, she said, the staff was much more welcoming.
The series is part of a reporting fellowship sponsored by the Association of Health Care Journalists and supported by The Commonwealth Fund.
