GREENFIELD — Every once in a while, Carol Wright and Linda Ostewig have to pinch themselves.
There were times they thought this moment wouldn’t come. Even as they assured community members it would, as they pleaded with county boards and grant-givers for funding, they worried that their dream of opening Greenfield’s first recovery house would never come true.
Still, they planned. They worked hard. They hoped and prayed.
Every once in a while, they still can’t believe it all worked out, they say.
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The Talitha Koum women’s recovery house is set to officially open its doors in early September. They plan to hold open houses next month to let the community see firsthand what’s been accomplished.
It will have space for 10 women and cost about $80,000 to operate the first year, including salaries and utilities.
Construction crews are putting the finishing touches on the house, located at 527 E. Main St. in Greenfield; and the nonprofit board that will oversee the location, Friends of Recovery, is working to hire and train the staff.
But all the pieces are in place after more than three years of preparation and hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the community, Ostewig said.
Soon what was a rundown old house in the heart of downtown Greenfield will be a place where those struggling with addiction can turn for help. It’ll live up to its name: Talitha Koum is Hebrew for “little girl, rise up.”
Ostewig announced in the spring of 2015 her plans to open a women’s recovery center.
For years, she’d been working with people battling addiction — including her own daughter — through the Celebrate Recovery ministry at Brandywine Community Church and The Landing, a teen peer-counseling center Ostewig also founded.
But at the height of the opioid crisis, she found herself attending a series of funerals for addicts who had lost their battles with addiction. Sick and tired of seeing young lives cut short, she decided to do more.
She rallied a few friends. Along with Wright and Wright’s husband, Gary, a local pastor, she created the nonprofit organization Friends of Recovery and started raising money.
Over the next 20 months, they collected about $170,000 during various fundraisers to make their rehab facility a reality.
County leaders — after deciding the county was in desperate need of an affordable recovery house — also chipped in $150,000 of taxpayer dollars to help complete construction and cover operating costs.
In November 2016, the group took ownership of a gutted $40,000 house along Main Street in Greenfield and got to work, tearing down the old siding, installing new wiring and pipes and leveling the backyard to make it usable.
For what felt like forever, they say, the old house had no walls. Its interior was just a maze of studs. They had to imagine the library, the office, the kitchen, the upstairs bedrooms.
Now, there’s no imagination needed. The drywall is up and painted a bright blue-gray color. The lights in the office are working. The stove, the refrigerator, have both been installed.
They’ve still got furniture and mattresses to purchase, and they’ll need to add some landscaping to the backyard, Ostewig said. But finally the place is beginning to look the way she thought it would, she said.
The progress Friends of Recovery has made goes beyond bricks and mortar: they have established a recovery program, a curriculum and standards they want their clients to adhere to.
It’s modeled after the program offered at the Indianapolis-based Dove Recovery House, which enrolls some 50 women annually and boasts a nearly 75 percent success rate, meaning woman leave the place clean, with a job or heading to school, ready to be self-sufficient.
When Talitha Koum opens, it’ll have a staff of about five people — a director, a counselor and office manager along with a few part-time folks who will work in the evenings as resident aides. The place will rely heavily on volunteers. A crowd of about 50 community members came out to a volunteer call-out meeting recently, interested in learning how they could help, Wright said.
It’s a testament to how the community has embraced the project, Ostewig said; to how residents’ and public officials’ minds are shifting.
They see the need. They want to help, she said. And soon it’ll all be real.