Tessa Domingus found purpose on the back deck of a Lincoln rehabilitation home, conversing with a man who didn’t want to spend his next paycheck on alcohol.

Sunlight shone through the leaves of a large tree in the backyard as they talked. It was the sort of day where, just a few years earlier, Domingus would have been out searching for a house party, a chance to use.

But on this warm, sunny day, she spent it volunteering with the nonprofit she herself had turned to following 10 months in prison.

The two talked the entire day about their feelings, Domingus reflecting on her own experiences of addiction. She shared coping mechanisms she had found through trial and error during her journey to recovery.

“I don’t know if he stayed sober, but I know he didn’t buy a bottle that day,” Domingus said. “And for the first time in my life, all of the terrible things that I’d done and experienced had been like they had some purpose. Like they did some good for somebody else.”

And so she stayed volunteering, eventually getting hired and rising through the ranks to co-direct the Mental Health Association of Nebraska’s operations, a Lincoln-based nonprofit that uses peer support in helping people with addiction and mental health issues in Nebraska.

On Saturday, Domingus will achieve another personal milestone: a college degree.

The accomplishment, she said, marks another stage in her recovery, her journey of returning to herself and her working to give back.

Turning Point

Domingus initially resisted her co-workers’ encouragement to pursue higher education. Five years into working at the Mental Health Association, she insisted she was fine where she was at, no college needed.

Deep down, though, she knew the reason.

”It was just still these, like, lingering thoughts that I would spend time in an education and nobody would ever hire me because I was a felon,” Domingus said.

She was no stranger to shame and guilt; Domingus described them as a “wagon” she constantly carried throughout a life of mental health struggles, drug addiction and incarceration, a generational pattern on her father’s side of her family.

Domingus’ first memory is of her and her mother surviving domestic violence at the hands of her dad, who went to prison when Domingus was young.

As a teen, Domingus thought the list of different mental health disorders doctors gave her, the associated behavior to which she attributes to not knowing proper coping mechanisms, defined her. Her mother sought support for her in ways she knew how, Domingus said, but Table Rock, the 233-person southeast Nebraska village she grew up in, had limited resources.

“Drugs and alcohol quickly became medicine for me,” Domingus said.

The first time she smoked marijuana was at 13. Her first drink came when she was about 12. By 15, she was using methamphetamines and running away from home.

Domingus’ mom admitted her to the Lincoln Regional Center, a state-run psychiatric hospital, as a teenager. Mental health care was different when Domingus stayed there, she said, than it is today. Doctors prescribed medications that didn’t work. Addiction maintained its chokehold.

In 2014, a sheriff’s deputy pulled Domingus over in Beatrice after she failed to use a turn signal, according to court documents. The deputy found a pipe used to smoke methamphetamine. 

Domingus ultimately pleaded guilty to a felony drug possession charge and was sentenced to prison after having spent more than six months in jail. More than six months into her sentence, she was denied parole. Domingus, stuck in both literal and figurative walls, wanted only to appease the parole board and get out of prison.

She joined a wellness recovery action plan group, a recovery model often referred to as WRAP, hosted by the Mental Health Association of Nebraska. It proved to be an unexpected turning point. Until then, Domingus had really only ruminated in the past, she said, with no real expectations of getting anything out of it.

“They really shifted that focus to … ‘What does your best day look like?’ And what kinds of things bring you joy?’ And I didn’t even know how to answer those questions,” Domingus said, “and I didn’t realize how far I had lost myself until that moment.”

Domingus didn’t think she could make a future for herself until her WRAP group hosted a panel of formerly incarcerated people to talk about their recovery journeys.

“It just kind of cracked the door open a little bit and let a little bit of light in,” Domingus said.

‘Spiritually Revived’

Domingus, after her release in May 2016, felt stuck. Even with the unwavering support from her family, she said, it was like she was watching a movie happen all around her. Then one day, she remembered a woman she met during the WRAP panel who told her to reach out once Domingus got out of prison.

Domingus experienced what she called a “spiritual revival” on her first day volunteering that summer as a peer support specialist at the Mental Health Association of Nebraska’s Keya house, a free recovery home in Lincoln for people experiencing distress.

“It was like I had found some sense of purpose that I didn’t know I was missing,” Domingus said.

Peer support specialists have become a method to help fill gaps in mental health care while allowing others who have struggled with mental health or addiction issues to put their lived experience to use, as the Flatwater Free Press reported earlier this year.

“I think certain folks are drawn to that kind of community-based work,” Dr. Jennifer Sparrock, manager of the Adult Psychiatric Emergency Services program at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, previously told Flatwater. “There is an overall shortage of mental health care providers in the state of Nebraska, and that goes from psychiatrist to therapists, psychologists, drug and alcohol counselors.”

Law enforcement agencies have used peer supports to help respond to people in crisis. The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services has touted its use of peer supports in the state’s prisons.

The Mental Health Association facilitates the prison system’s use of peer supports. It also has programs to help incarcerated people reenter society and navigate various assistance programs. It has a housing program for formerly incarcerated people, along with short-term housing for those in distress.

Eventually, the Mental Health Association hired Domingus to work at its transitional living house. She moved through working with different programs until landing in a position directing the association’s non-housing programs.

Steady encouragement from her co-workers, friends and family eventually led Domingus to pursue an associate’s degree. Then, she transferred to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to pursue a degree in business law. She has worked as a full-time student and Mental Health Association employee for the last two years.

Chad Magdanz, who has worked at the Mental Health Association for 18 years, met Domingus when she attended her first WRAP group meeting in prison.

Domingus credited Magdanz with pushing her to pursue higher education.

“Some of her choices had beaten her down, you know, and made her world a smaller place,” Magdanz said. “But that doesn’t mean that it limits her, and the things that she initially had set out to do were impossible, you know. And so I didn’t want her to feel that way.”

Education is one way Domingus is returning to the parts of herself overshadowed by addiction. She has found medication-free ways to incorporate wellness into her life, including reading, crocheting and playing volleyball.

With almost a decade of experience at the Mental Health Association under her belt, Domingus will soon take on a new role as the youth and family coordinator for RISE Re-entry Program, a Lincoln-based nonprofit that provides habilitative services and reentry support for those in and out of prison.

She hopes to start her journey toward an MBA next fall.

“Every day is a different day,” Domingus said, “but I do know myself well enough to know that I need to have something that I’m striving for in my career to keep me motivated, to keep me going.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/a-wagon-of-shame-followed-her-now-shes-gr...