Jackie Wilson
There’s a saying among the men at The Healing Place: You eat Miss Jackie’s oatmeal, and you think you’re all better.
The oatmeal itself is nothing special. “Just regular old, plain, bland, cement oatmeal,” says Program Operations Manager Justin Woods. But when you’ve had a few bowls of it, after months of feeding your addiction instead of your stomach, you start to feel different. You start to feel real again.
That feeling is only the beginning. Recovery is a long road, but Jackie Wilson will feed you every step of the way.
Wilson, 64, presides over the kitchen at The Healing Place in Manchester, a free, peer-run, residential recovery program for men. She didn’t exactly choose to begin working there, she explains. She was called.
Wilson was working in food service at the Greater Richmond Convention Center, “and one day,” she says, “the spirit told me — just like I’m talking to you — he said, ‘Go to the front window and look out.’ And I did.” She saw a steeple on Grace Street. The voice said, “Go to the church.”
On her lunch break, she walked over and found a long line of people who were homeless, waiting for a meal. The police officers on duty directed Wilson to the kitchen. Maybe this was where she was supposed to be, she thought, but no jobs were available. Then, a man who recognized her said, “I know a guy that you need to talk to.” That guy was Michael Christian.
Christian told Wilson about his plans to open The Healing Place, and he called her every few months for a year. Then he hired her. Wilson remembers the day he gave her a tour of the brick building on Dinwiddie Avenue. “That’s going to be your kitchen,” he told her. All Wilson saw was an abandoned warehouse. Rats scampered around. Water dripped from the ceiling. “He had the vision,” Wilson says. “I did not.”
That was 16 years ago. Since then, Wilson has served more than 600 meals a day, including her Southern comfort-food specialties and many, many bowls of oatmeal.
The Healing Place, now part of CARITAS, is a multiphase program that invites men who are struggling with addiction to commit to recovery. These clients attend classes, get sponsors and spend seven to nine months living at The Healing Place. They take part in a workforce development program and eventually move out on their own, spending up to a year in this transitional period.
“It’s a model of attraction,” explains Megan Wilson, marketing coordinator for CARITAS. No one is forcing the men into sobriety. They have to come of their own accord. And Jackie Wilson is a powerful force pulling them in.
Everyone has an unpaid job in the building while they’re in the program (paid work is not permitted), and everyone takes a turn in the kitchen with Wilson. “It is my responsibility to make sure they all work together and get the day done,” she says. Someone on the kitchen team picks Wilson up in the mornings, as she doesn’t drive. Runners and drivers purchase ingredients at Feed More for around 9 cents per pound and collect food donated from local grocery stores, which keeps costs low.
Wilson in the kitchen at The Healing Place
In the kitchen, Wilson tolerates no nonsense. It doesn’t matter if you’re a young guy whose mama always made his bed for him, or an older man who hustled all his life. “If you struggle, she’ll support you,” Woods says, “but if you’re just lazy, she gets on you.”
Wilson’s approach has been replicated at CARITAS’ bright and modern new facility a few blocks away on Stockton Street, which houses a similar program for women as well as Recovery Residences for men and women and the Furniture Bank.
“She really developed all the philosophies and models that were applied over here, and she built a lot of the relationships that we have,” Megan Wilson says, with Feed More as well as Target, Walmart and Publix. Feed More recently donated a commercial-grade refrigerator, steamer, stove and refrigerated van. CARITAS dubbed the van “Sugar Lump,” after Wilson’s favorite term of endearment. (If she calls you “player,” you’re in trouble.)
Wilson’s gifts extend beyond the kitchen. She is a lyrical poet who recites long compositions from memory, a compassionate mentor and a spiritual guide.
“The addicts, to me, are the pure in heart,” she says. She has never struggled with addiction but often sits in on the recovery classes, listening to people’s stories. Drugs, she says, are “a world within a world” — an invisible, parallel world of slipping hands into pockets, of sneaking behind shadowed dumpsters.
Sometimes men arrive at The Healing Place with weeping mothers. Wilson comforts them, and tells them it’s going to be OK. Her phone is filled with those moms’ numbers. Years later, they still call to check in, whether their sons are thriving or have succumbed to their addictions.
It’s not easy for anyone to begin the recovery journey. “There’s a lot of people here that had money. And they lost it all,” Wilson says. They’re sad. They’re lonely. And their troubles don’t stop while they’re in the program. Bills keep coming. Their credit gets worse.
“But they stick, and stay,” Wilson says. “They take that time, and I’ve seen them get back up on they feet. And they run, and they do good. … One day they look, and they say, ‘Hey. I am somebody.’ ”
They leave The Healing Place. They begin new lives. And another arrives.
“Hey!” she calls after a man in the parking lot. “Did you eat?”
Editor’s note: Megan Wilson is a freelance contributor to Richmond magazine.
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