Homeless to Wholeness
HOMELESS TO WHOLENESS is a ministry of Gospel Rescue Mission of Tucson, Arizona. We're a team of Christ-followers on a mission to help others find hope and restoration. Please listen in as we share inspirational stories of individuals who overcame extreme challenges and found new life in Christ, moving from homelessness to wholeness.
Homeless to Wholeness
Rainbow Crystal Dawn
When she opened her eyes for the first time, the sun cast its rays through the crystals hanging in the windows, shattering the dawn's light into a spectrum of colors, filling the cabin of her parent's traveling band bus with countless rainbows.
Rainbow Crystal Dawn has a compelling life story. One filled with redwood trees, tragedy, death, and drugs. Yet, God had a plan for her life. Listen in as Rainbow shares her incredible testimony and talks about how the Holy Spirit healed her brokenness, transformed her life, revealed His purpose, and filled her with His light. And love.
Trigger warning: this episode discusses alcohol, drug addiction with marijuana, LSD, meth, and heroin, and an incident involving date rape.
If you would like to support our ministry or you know someone who needs help in the Tucson area, please visit us online at www.GRMTucson.com.
If you would like to support our ministry or you know someone who needs help in the Tucson area, please visit us online at GRMTucson.com
Hello, and welcome to homeless to wholeness, a ministry of gospel rescue mission. We're a team of Christ followers on a mission to help others find hope and restoration. My name is Pascal Quintero, and I'm the creative manager at gospel rescue mission. But more than that, I'm a seventh generation to Sony. And I have a deep love and a passion for both its history and the people of this great community. So please listen in every other week as we share the inspirational stories of individuals who overcame extreme challenges and found a new life in Christ, moving from homeless to homeless. Thank you, everyone for joining us on another episode of homeless to wholeness. I'm here with a guest that I see every day. But her story is so special. We just had to bring her in here and share that story with you. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?
Rainbow Southard:Hi, I'm rainbow and I am the creative and Marketing Coordinator here at gospel rescue mission.
Pascal Quintero:And I'm gonna stop because I know there's just going to be a lot of people asking, is Rainbow really your name?
Rainbow Southard:Yes, absolutely it is. And there's actually a story behind that, too. When I was born, I was born in a traveling band bus. And it was shortly after dawn and the sunlight hit the crystals hanging in the window and made rainbows all over the bus. And they named me rainbow crystal dot.
Pascal Quintero:And for those of you who can't see inside the studio right now rainbow is wearing a very bright and colorful tie dyed shirt that just fits her personality so perfectly.
Rainbow Southard:Which I made myself I've been tie dyeing for about 30 years, actually. But I just did a whole batch of tie dyed crosses, which is absolutely awesome.
Pascal Quintero:That is and they look absolutely gorgeous. So you're sharing your faith and you're sharing your artistic gift to. And that is the gift that you bring here to gospel rescue mission. So talk a little bit about your job here.
Rainbow Southard:Okay, so I get to work every day on what I love to do, which is graphic design. And I get to I think my favorite part of this job is being able to talk with the guests and get their testimonies and get they share with us what they've been through and how they've been changed by gospel rescue mission. And then we get to share that with the world through social media and through our letters in our newsletters and all of that. So that's really exciting to me.
Pascal Quintero:Now. I met rainbow shortly after I started this job. And I talked to her simply to get her testimony. And in getting that testimony, I found out a little bit about her skills and her history working in the graphic design business. You've worked in that field for coming on 20 years now,
Rainbow Southard:a little bit more than 20 years. Actually, I graduated from college in 1996. So yeah, ages myself a little bit. But I have worked in all kinds of different jobs with graphic design, mostly print graphics, but I'm learning more and more every day about digital graphics and web design and all the motion graphics and all the things that I'm really excited about.
Pascal Quintero:But you also have a story to share. Yes, because you weren't always in this place that you are in now. For a while you had your own struggles in addiction. So bring us back to Rainbow dawn. Tell me about how you grew up.
Rainbow Southard:I grew up in the Starbrite bus which was holds the starbury band. And so it was the epitome of the hippie lifestyle. And we would travel around the country and my dad and my mom and the rest of the band would have gigs. And I remember from a really young age, all the music all the hippies all
Pascal Quintero:moving around. And your parents for in the band.
Rainbow Southard:Yes, my my dad was the leader, the singer and the guitar player and the songwriter. My mom wrote some songs too. So I was the kid of two singers and songwriters.
Pascal Quintero:Wow, you must have quite the memories of that time just growing up.
Rainbow Southard:Yeah, at one point when I was in about fourth grade I got really angry at my mom for moving us around so much and I thought about it later and it was really a gift at the same time as it was hard for me at times.
Pascal Quintero:You were born into that lifestyle. So you didn't No any other way to live really? No. So when did you start to get that feeling like, everybody doesn't do this,
Rainbow Southard:probably about the time that I got angry. So probably like about when I hit fourth grade, I started getting angry because I wanted to be whatever normal is. And I got angry because I was moving several schools per year, and my mom would change schools and she would change jobs. And she lived in buses and cars, and actually cave ones and tent buildings and desert. So it was, um, it was really strange for me, and I know nothing is actually normal. But that is just something in my brain that was I thought it was normal for everybody to do these things to smoke pot all the time, and to just all of the things that came along with that lifestyle.
Pascal Quintero:I really have to hear the story, though, about how you got bit by a goose.
Rainbow Southard:So I was at my grandparents farm. And when we pulled up there is this whole like flock of geese that came running up and mind you, I'm like, maybe three, four years old. I'm not very big. And these geese start coming up and I think, oh, cool geese. And there was this one, Goose there was super mean. And I don't know if you're seeing the inside of a goose his mouth, but it had, like teeth and bit me. And I freaked out. I was terrified of geese after that day. Even to this day, even to this day. I don't like geese. I can do ducks. But yes, no.
Pascal Quintero:Okay, so you did okay, until you started to realize not everyone quite live this way. But something happened and 76 Your parents split up? How did that impact you?
Rainbow Southard:I thought at first at that, before that time, everything was great. I didn't have a care in the world. Even though it was that lifestyle that you would think oh my gosh, that's crazy, awful, whatever. There was a lot of love. There was a lot of love. And I really loved my dad and my mom and my brother and my sister. And it was it was great. And then when I remember when my dad left my mom, and I just was crushed. I was like, wow, you know, everything is not okay. And perfect all the time.
Pascal Quintero:Oh, your whole world just came crashing down. Did you see it coming?
Rainbow Southard:No, not at all. It was like, all of a sudden. And I never got to really talk to him. I never talked to my dad about it even to this day, and my mom passed away. So I haven't been able to talk to her about it as an adult. So I really don't know what happened. I just know that he left and he had a new wife.
Pascal Quintero:And what changed for you. For me,
Rainbow Southard:it was my mom is a single mom. And like I said we lived in vehicles in all these weird places. And I thought it was just normal and my mom became like my idol like she was supermom
Pascal Quintero:and later on you became a supermom yourself following in those maybe because you idolized her kind of but you took on that role when you wound up having kids? Yeah,
Rainbow Southard:well, I idolized her. But at the same time, I vowed that I was not going to be like her as far as she was like, she was again the epitome of the hippie lady that was all about free love and had a boyfriend after boyfriend and I swore I was not going to be like that. So I had this conflicting thing where she was, I was idolizing her at the same time as I did not want to be that part. And I also did not want to move my kids later in life all over the place, but I ended up doing it.
Pascal Quintero:Well, let's keep talking about the way you grew up. Your mom eventually remarried. And what was life like when she married Jim?
Rainbow Southard:Yeah. It was actually amazing. It was the first time I had what I had. thought was normal. We had a house. I loved him so much. I called him Dad, I changed my last name to his last name. It was amazing. We moved I remember there was a sign we put on the back of our vehicle that said California or bust when we moved to get the Redwoods in California. And we built a teepee, a giant 30 foot teepee with a deck and a loft and I just, I just thought he was amazing. And I just loved my life at that point.
Pascal Quintero:Now when I'm picturing a teepee, I'm picturing a wooden tent surrounded by skins, animal skins. That's not what it was.
Rainbow Southard:No, it was canvas. And when my mom had the canvas sewn, the people were like a 38 foot teepee Are you crazy lady? What are you going to use for Polo? Wasn't she said, Didn't I tell you we're moving to the redwoods. And we did I remember planing Redwood poles to put in this giant teepee. And we built the deck first. And we built the loft. And we even had like this. I don't know what it was a tub thing. It was like a metal tub that we heated up with the generator as a hot tub. I mean, it was not like what you would think of a TV ad.
Pascal Quintero:Where did you go to school? Oh, I
Rainbow Southard:went to school at the local school that I remember. I remember my teacher's name my not her real name. But we called her Mrs. B and I went to first grade, I never went to kindergarten. So
Pascal Quintero:the kids treat you a little bit differently because you were the strange hippie family that lived in the redwoods. And
Rainbow Southard:I remember them calling me hippie kid rainbow and Rainbow Brite. And I didn't really care about all that at the time. The thing that I cared about was the fact that we were super poor. And my mom would sew a lot of my clothes and she would make me wear. Wear garbage bags as a raincoat. And when we walked down to the school bus and I get super embarrassed about that.
Pascal Quintero:Yeah, kids can be really mean. So you're living the hippie lifestyle. And it wasn't that long before you first got your exposure to marijuana.
Rainbow Southard:It was when I was almost seven, I was six years old. And it was after my mom had and Jim had split up. It was just around. And I remember smoking my first joint with a girl that I had met and that I kind of adopted into our family. She was 13. And I was set. I did it a couple of different times. And I remember one time eating peanut butter cookies and passing out because I just thought they were normal cookies.
Pascal Quintero:That's kind of funny. Yeah.
Rainbow Southard:My mom was like, where the cookies go. And I was in the back of the station wagon. And I pass I'm like, oh, yeah, later found out they were green cookies.
Pascal Quintero:You walk me through your childhood, what are some memories that really jumped out in your mind.
Rainbow Southard:I remember sitting on the top of the school bus and coloring with colored pencils with my brother because there was like a ladder going up to the top of the school bus. I remember singing songs with my mom and dad and later. Like in my adulthood. My dad played some of those songs. And I knew the words it was really weird to me do that. So I remember the music. I just there's a lot of bright, colorful people. There was also some bad stuff, but most of it most of it was pretty good when I was really young. When I got a little bit older, it got
Pascal Quintero:worse. What happened when things started to go downhill for you? Um,
Rainbow Southard:I actually was molested when I was really young, and kind of took my my innocence away. And then that's when I started smoking pot. And with my big sister as I called her I kind of said you're not going home because it was a bad situation at her home. And she said okay, and my mom agreed. So she lived with us for several years. But she was a lot older than me and she was into drinking and smoking pot. So I did that
Pascal Quintero:more with her. And it was just a way for you to deal with Yeah, feeling
Rainbow Southard:feeling like it was like I was dirty. I didn't want to talk about it. And but it was it was weird. It was like I didn't know what it was about. But I knew it wasn't good.
Pascal Quintero:And at that time, were you still living in the forest? were you living in a house?
Rainbow Southard:Oh, no, we hadn't moved around so much Pascal. We were living with a guy named Sam Harris in a big biker guy in a trailer in Oregon. Then we moved to these cabins that were built in the forest and we lived in another school bus. I remember a giant party at one point with Cracker Jacks and we were in the attic. All the kids were in we opened all these boxes a cracker Jackson, like squished them into the floor getting all of the prizes out. I mean, there was some weird memories. From that part of my life.
Pascal Quintero:You moved around a lot, a lot. And it wasn't just because of the band. Your mom just traveled.
Rainbow Southard:Yeah, it was after the band. So I remember the first time my mom did a gig by herself because my mom started playing her own music and writing her own music. And so she did a talent show and she was really scared at first and she kind of clammed up and then I started singing in the back and I was quite young. And as soon as I started to sing, he was good.
Pascal Quintero:So let's fast forward a little bit to when you're a little bit older. You mentioned that your mom's house was raided
Rainbow Southard:Yeah, at that point, I was 14, I believe, and I was living in we were living in Oregon, and I was living in the school bus in the park in the driveway of our house parked in the driveway. And my mom just was my mom, she smoked a lot of pot. And that was pretty much what she did. And I had kind of gone punk rock and was hanging out with some crazy people. And I was asleep in the school bus and cops came in. And it was because my friends in middle school had run away several of them and they were rich kids. And their parents were extremely rich. And they called the cops and said my mom was smoking pot with their kids because their kids came to our house when they ran away. And that was my first experience with having a loved one go to prison or jail. And with cops. And so I grew this, like fear of the cops and hatred for the cops. And it was really weird. It's unhealthy.
Pascal Quintero:But you started to develop not only that fear for authority, but you had a rough time growing up. So you got a little bit callous. Yeah, you became very hard. The people in your life did you let people get close to you?
Rainbow Southard:Absolutely not. I built a giant wall around me. I actually was really into Pink Floyd the wall and wood. That's how I felt. I felt like I didn't want anybody to come through my wall. And I was really mean I was even thinking today, but I was really mean. And I went to punk shows and started drinking heavily did my first line of methamphetamine was always hard to get close to and I was hard to love.
Pascal Quintero:When did you first start getting into LSD?
Rainbow Southard:14 or 15? No, it was 14 the first time that I ever took acid but my sisters had found some in when the hippie, the hippie house they were staying at and they're like here. We've been doing this all week here, take this and then they fell asleep on me and I just had the craziest trip. And after that I liked it because it was an escape. It was an escape from reality. And I had a really tough reality.
Pascal Quintero:I can see that as being an easy way to get to that place where you are no longer hurting. Yep. Is that what the attraction was?
Rainbow Southard:That's absolutely what the attraction was. And even though I was on LSD, when I was date, raped and lost my virginity, I still did more of it. It still was something that took that pain and that shame away from me. So it wasn't like I blamed the LSD, I blamed the guy.
Pascal Quintero:So you start going into your teenage years. And when was your first daughter born?
Rainbow Southard:In 1990, I was pregnant at 16. After the incident I just talked about I was pregnant at 16. I had her at seven team. I was in the hospital by myself when I had her she was really teeny. She was perfect. And I swore off all of that other stuff. I actually let my Mohawk that I had grown, grow out and decided I was gonna have a baby and be a mom. Everybody said I was crazy because of how I was at the time.
Pascal Quintero:Did it change you being a mom?
Rainbow Southard:Absolutely. Absolutely. Even though I did go back to some of my ways, it was never anything like it was in my teenage years. And and yeah, I just completely fell in love with her.
Pascal Quintero:I remember you saying that. You really admired the strength of your mother. So when you took on that role yourself, you took on some of the attributes that you may be admired in her.
Rainbow Southard:Yeah, absolutely. I I really lived for my kids. And Katrina being the first one. And if she hears this or she goes by cat now, so she gets very upset. What do you call her? Katrina? So, but when she was a baby, she was Katrina. So I got my own apartment. I got a vehicle I would or I had a vehicle. I was living in the van at first but I moved to an apartment so I would have some stability. I was trying super hard to have that stability,
Pascal Quintero:and the only way you could achieve that stability was living on your own.
Rainbow Southard:That's how I felt. That's what I thought. Well, it all blew up.
Pascal Quintero:How did it fall apart?
Rainbow Southard:Um, I was going to school I had a babysitter. My babysitter was sick. So I let this guy I knew that I did not know how just escaped from a juvie and I let him watch my daughter, the cops and CPS Since Oregon came to my school and told me they had taken my daughter and I went ballistic. i She had never been away from me except for to go to school and she'd never been away from me overnight and she was 10 months old and I was just completely crushed and broken. And it turned out some people I kicked out of my house for not cleaning up after themselves getting their own food and for doing drugs in my house. I kicked them out and they called CPS on me and told CPS that I was smoking pot with my 10 year month old baby, which was just ridiculous, but they wanted to get back at you. It was their way. Exactly. And I did smoke pot at that time, but not in my house.
Pascal Quintero:So you entered a battle with CPS for the first time. Yep. How long did that take for you to get custody again? Well,
Rainbow Southard:I didn't actually get full custody until she was like over two years old. But I was fighting the battle in Eugene, Oregon, and my grandparents lived in Salem, Oregon, and it I wasn't getting anywhere with them. They were not going to let me have my daughter back. So I moved to my grandparents house in Salem, and they gave custody to my grandparents and I got to live there, which was a really strange situation. But it was a good thing. My grandparents were amazing.
Pascal Quintero:And when did your second daughter come along?
Rainbow Southard:Oh, right after cat cat got taken into CPS. I think I was really longing for her. I was pregnant again, like within two months. And I don't know. It was like kind of a subconscious thing. I wasn't trying to get pregnant. But I was. So I was pregnant with a two year old at my grandparents, and going to school and doing community service was quite the thing.
Pascal Quintero:You must have been doing really well to have all that responsibility at such a young age, and still try and finish high school.
Rainbow Southard:Yeah, there was a really amazing program in Salem, Oregon, called the teen parent program. It was actually connected to the School for the Deaf, which I thought was really cool, too. But it was all teen parents and you could go to school, Monday through Thursday, you could stay until you had the baby in your classes. And then when you had the baby, you could bring the baby with you to class for six weeks. And they had like rocking chairs to breastfeed they had little plate pans, put the babies in and bassinet and then after that they went to the daycare on site. So I got to take cat to daycare and as soon as I had Kyla, I didn't even miss a day of school. It was crazy. These other girls they were looking at me like what the heck. Yeah, so
Pascal Quintero:that's really awesome. Yeah. So you eventually were able to get that high school diploma working through that program.
Rainbow Southard:Yeah, I got actually got straight A's my entire final senior year at that program,
Pascal Quintero:and I'm trying to remember when chin came it was he soon after or years later,
Rainbow Southard:he was like soon after Kyla. And the thing is, is when I graduated in Salem, after all that stuff, I went through a CPS. I was I was doing great. I could have just stayed in Salem. But I had I had vowed that I was going to leave Oregon and I wasn't going to stay there anymore. I was very angry at the state. And as soon as I got custody back and I graduated high school, I took the father of Kyla and Jen and I wasn't pregnant yet. But we went we just drove road trip to Arizona to my mom's to Tucson. And yeah, then I got pregnant, like almost immediately after getting here and the father of he had an addiction to heroin, and I didn't know it, and I hated heroin and meth and I was I just seen stuff with it. I tried to stay away from all of that. So I tried to get him away from that because he was the father of my daughter. And he found it again.
Pascal Quintero:And that destroyed him.
Rainbow Southard:Yep, absolutely. And I, I told him I remember I put him on a bus and told him, I can't raise four kids. I found out I was pregnant with Jin and I was just torn. I was like, I didn't know what to do. And I fought with it for about two weeks and I finally decided that I he had that father had to go because I was going to have this baby.
Pascal Quintero:Wow. That was a big decision. Especially because you were alone. Yep. But you had your mom here. But you were basically going to be the sole provider for your three kids. Yeah. Did you have a job at that point. Nope.
Rainbow Southard:I was living with my mom and I was on welfare. And I don't know, I was determined to make it work. Yep. My move to Bisbee, actually, and moved with my mom's best friend since I was born and got a place on my own there in Bisbee. And was was pregnant there.
Pascal Quintero:What did you end up doing in Bisbee?
Rainbow Southard:I had a boyfriend, new boyfriend. And he was awesome. He checked on me every day. He didn't live with me or anything. He checked on me every day. And a lot of people thought for years afterwards that he was the father of gin, because we had gotten together shortly after I got there. And I wasn't even showing yet. So yeah, I just had my my house, my sister and my middle sister, my sister Amber dropped off a chow chow dog that was pregnant, and she popped out 13 puppies. So I had a three year old. One year old, I was pregnant, and I had 13 Child puppies that would like get out of this fence. And I was constantly fixing holes in the fence. It was crazy.
Pascal Quintero:Now this boyfriend that you had at the time, did you think he was the one
Rainbow Southard:I really did? And he probably would have been, but he got chickenpox at 21 years old. And they moved into his throat. And he went to the hospital in Bisbee. And they had to air back him out of there because it moved into his lungs. Wow. And he ended up getting viral pneumonia and buying. How fast did that go? It was like a matter of like three days. That's insane. Yeah. But at the time, I felt like I was gonna break into the hospital because I just knew in my heart that he was not going to make it.
Pascal Quintero:And that's difficult to think of because chickenpox you know, it's something that's so common, we mostly get it as kids. And yeah, it's pretty bad for a few weeks, and then it goes away. But we don't think that it really is a very serious illness. Yeah. Especially if you're older. Yeah.
Rainbow Southard:Yeah, it just totally threw me for a loop. I was just blown away. I couldn't believe. Like, I went to visit him at his house when he first had it. And it seemed like, yeah, he was sick. But I didn't think nothing of it till he was in the hospital.
Pascal Quintero:And how did you cope with his passing,
Rainbow Southard:I completely clammed up. I bent six weeks, just me and my son, super close, didn't really talk to anybody. And then after that, my sister, my youngest sister had moved in with me in my house and was helping me take care of the girls. And she started helping me take care of gen two. And I started drinking heavily, like every night, I was really, really bad. And she had packed up everything in the house and was like, we're leaving. I've heard it too many times. Let's go. And I took my two cars packed to the gills and my kids in the dog in Oregon.
Pascal Quintero:Where do you wind up living in Oregon Grants
Rainbow Southard:Pass, got together with another guy that was toxic. And he ended up being an alcoholic and a Speed Freak. So that's when I started doing speed a lot. And that's also when I decided I was gonna go to college. What did you study? I studied graphic design and computer analyst analyst computer analysis.
Pascal Quintero:So were you only taking speed when you were going to college?
Rainbow Southard:Nope. I was dropping acid. And when I would go out because I love to dance. So I would go out dancing at the bars after I turned 21. And I would drink like one drink the entire night. But my boyfriend would just get wasted. So I am yeah, that's pretty much what I did. Every weekend. I would do speed and LSD most weekends and then go back to college on Monday. The reason it was like that is because when I decided to go to school, right after that, my mom died. And I had just come down here for a visit for Christmas. And I came back and she had had a brain aneurysm and she was just gone.
Pascal Quintero:Okay, so So that happened very suddenly.
Rainbow Southard:Yeah, totally suddenly. And it was this pattern that it started to develop of, of death, and of having to deal with death. And it was super hard for me. I didn't I didn't even know there was any kind of help.
Pascal Quintero:So you went into this phase of your life that lasted years, where it was numbing the pain, just what you had to do to take care of your family work. But emotionally, you were Yeah,
Rainbow Southard:I was broken. I was so broken. And I would I can't tell you how good it feels today to not have to put a mask on every day and act like everything's okay. A and if something's not okay, I can say something's not okay. And then I couldn't, what would you do? Put on some makeup, wear some sunglasses and go through the motions. And I, I would I would hang out with my kids a lot though every chance I got I really I did a lot of things for my kids with my kids when they were little, I got
Pascal Quintero:the impression from the beginning that you just wanted to be the best mother you possibly could for your kid. But you had a lot of things going on emotionally that you just couldn't cope with, though the alcohol, the drugs became a way for you to cope and get through the every day to function. Yep. How long were you living that way?
Rainbow Southard:years, lots of years. It was also to cope with the toxic relationships that I would get into. I left Oregon went back to Arizona. It was like a pattern that I got into and I was leaving to get after I graduated college with honors and all of this stuff and everything was supposedly great. But that boyfriend became very abusive, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I put my kids in a van I bought and moved a three bedroom house into a van and left for Arizona yen to go find myself. But in the process another guy had just like fallen for me. And I was just like, No, dude. I gotta go. Yeah,
Pascal Quintero:but you were doing that.
Rainbow Southard:I was doing speed the whole time. Like math was it became that big purple gorilla on my back that wouldn't ever seem to go away.
Pascal Quintero:And what did that do for you?
Rainbow Southard:It allowed me to have tunnel vision, to not see or feel anything that was not in my direct line of vision. This is what I'm doing. This is the goal. I'm going I'm going I'm going I'm not feeling it would shut off the feelings and just give me that straight tunnel vision.
Pascal Quintero:So as a band aid Yeah, to get you through the week. I read this quote, I could not live without getting high. Don't talk about that a little bit. That
Rainbow Southard:was after I started heroin though. Because the speed it was just to do things. It wasn't something I'm gonna just sleep a lot and eat a lot. If I didn't have it. It wasn't until I started doing heroin that it was like, I'm gonna die if I don't have that fix in the morning.
Pascal Quintero:So when did that start? Heroin. Oh, that started
Rainbow Southard:after I decided to move to Pennsylvania or actually moved to okay, that started when I decided to move to Maryland, because I could make more money there. And because I wanted to get my kids living back with me, because I had left them with my dad. When I got really bad on speed. I had the foresight to see this is going to get bad. And I brought them out to Arivaca to my dad and his wife, and they live there for a couple years. And I have tried and tried everything I could but I couldn't get away from it here. So I decided to move to Maryland with a friend and make more money and have my kids with me. So then I hurt my back later on. And you know, the pain pills stopped working and it was cheaper to get heroin and another guy that I was with says, Oh here, this is a great pain killer. Try this. And I didn't even put two and two together until I had tried it and was like, wow, that's this stuff that I hated that started all this stuff way back with my kids
Pascal Quintero:as Father. So now you were addicted to meth,
Rainbow Southard:and heroin. And I was working making super good money. But I can like the this point that's when I said I can't live like if I don't have that heroin in the morning. I can't function. I'm gonna be sick. I'm gonna die. I meant don't remember how many times I told people, you can die from kicking heroin. And it's true, but I sure I wasn't gonna die.
Pascal Quintero:When did things finally come to a place where it all came crashing down and you could not pull yourself back up?
Rainbow Southard:Okay, so when it finally came to a place where it came crashing down, so my world pretty much blew up like literally, I was living in this giant house. My sister my my middle sister was living with me in the apartment upstairs in the house and her three kids and it was 2005 December night. I was driving to New York and I got a phone call from my daughter's boyfriend. And he was just kind of babbling on about a fire in my house and my niece Sierra and I He told me to call my neighbor and I call my neighbor or my sister got on the phone and she was crying and she said that the house was on fire and that car didn't get out. Oh, my. And I did a U turn through the median on a three lane highway on both sides going about 80 miles an hour and drove into a snowstorm back to my neighborhood.
Pascal Quintero:There was a snowstorm yet there was still a fire. Oh, yeah.
Rainbow Southard:It was the first big snowstorm of the year in December in Pennsylvania. And this fire burns so hot that at first the fire examiners, please, whoever he said that, that we could probably never know what caused the fire because it burns so hot and it was during a snowstorm. Wow. Well, there's this sighting called T 111. And it was the best Firestarter when we had like pieces of it like straps when my son would go out and find them. When we had an ice storm had to use the woodstove. He would go find scraps to start the fire and the sighting to my house was the best fire starter should have been a little bit of a clue. Yeah, and we had really high ceiling. So it's just like the air hit that and it just went
Pascal Quintero:through is a combination, a lot of bad things just working together to add fuel to this fire in this case, quite literally.
Rainbow Southard:Absolutely. Yeah, I beat myself up for a long time. Because of the week before that I had yelled I was so frustrated with everything going on in my house and the bills and the things happening and just all of it that I put my hands in the air and I said I just wish this place would blow up. And yeah. So how did that
Pascal Quintero:feel for you when you came back? And those words were ringing in your mind. And when you saw your home, absolutely devastated by this fire and to deal with the loss of a family member.
Rainbow Southard:Yeah, I couldn't even go back to my house for a month, like exactly a month. And then when I did go there, I had to have people go and help me because I was really traumatized by it. And I just couldn't even grasp the fact that Sierra was gone. And every time I would think about anything that was in the fire besides Sierra, I felt so guilty for even caring about any of that stuff. My cats died in it, and they kept running back into the fire.
Pascal Quintero:Did it affect you at all that you weren't even there?
Rainbow Southard:Yeah. Guilt. The guilt was horrible. I mean, my sister was there. My kids were asleep. I thought everything was good when I had left the house, and then it wasn't. And yeah, it was pretty horrible. And at first I thought the neighborhood and the community was going to come together and help us.
Pascal Quintero:But that did not happen. That did not happen. Instead, there was an awful lot of finger point. Absolutely. It
Rainbow Southard:was in the newspaper. It was I had I had had some involvement with CPS before this. And I was right on the verge of like Monday morning I was going to court to get full custody back because I had had care of my kids but not full custody. And then the fire happened on late Thursday night for early Friday morning. So I had no home and I had no address and I had no stability for them. And it Redcross came together got us a hotel room for a week Salvation Army came together got us a hotel, I mean an apartment for a month. That's really cool. Yeah, but it wasn't so cool because CPS came and took my kids from the apartment, saying I was a flight risk because I wanted to go to Arizona to CRS funeral services
Pascal Quintero:course you wanted to go to Arizona. Exactly.
Rainbow Southard:And they had told me that I couldn't go with my kids. I just had to tell them, you know, my itinerary. And I was so mad at myself for not getting in and writing. I literally had it written on a sticky note. And I was so mad about that because she's she says what do you know what flight risk means? And I was like, Of course I do. That's what this is about you. It was like five days before Christmas at this point. Yeah, so they I was alone in this apartment. The newspaper had printed the address to the apartment. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So I was freaked out. I had plane tickets for all of us to go because the CPS had said that we could, but my kids couldn't. But I could. So my daughter called me and said this is what I'm her. She was a teenager at this time. And she said, Go, she said, Mom, go for us go for Sierra. They're not going to let you see us anyway. It's Christmas time. And you can't be alone during this. So I did, I flew to Arizona,
Pascal Quintero:and then who took the blame for that fire?
Rainbow Southard:Well, shortly after I got to Arizona, the night before Sierra services, I got a phone call. And it was from CPS in Pennsylvania. And they told me that my son had been arrested for the fire that killed his cousin. And he was in custody. And they had questioned him without me there for like three hours and supposedly got a confession. After putting him on a lie detector test,
Pascal Quintero:how old was he, at this time, five years old. They put a 12 year old on a lie detector, yes, without his parent's permission,
Rainbow Southard:but they didn't even record it. And they didn't have it written down. And they said they had a confession, but they never had anything. But my son ended up doing seven years in custody and for a murder to and ours after a long battle that I had with Pennsylvania, and just trying to fight and they took my girls to and it was it was horrible. It was it was like I felt a lot like I was in the middle of a wolf pack. And I was trying to fight these people off. And it was just me, because my sisters had left. And I didn't blame them. for that. I was go, you know, you can.
Pascal Quintero:And at this point, you already had like this negative perspective of law enforcement. And they do this.
Rainbow Southard:Yes, exactly. Like they made my son out to be this horrible, horrible thing. He was 12 years old. And they printed in the newspaper his mugshot, and called him an arsonist and a murderer. And it was horrible.
Pascal Quintero:What did that make you feel like? Absolutely. Like
Rainbow Southard:my hands were tied behind my back. Like I had no control at all, over anything. I was completely lost because I had lost my identity and put it into them. I was mom. I wasn't rainbow. I didn't even know who I was. I lived for those kids. And when this happened, I would go over to people's houses, friends, and I'd say connect me in your kitchen and make some food for you. I mean, I didn't have my home. I didn't I had run my businesses from my home, didn't have my home, didn't have my business, didn't have my kids and car was gone. And I couldn't even feel like bad about losing all that stuff. Because I felt guilty because Sierra was gone.
Pascal Quintero:You lost everything in one moment. Yeah. How did you deal with those seven years?
Rainbow Southard:Okay, so there was something that happened. I thought I was getting full custody back of my girls at least. And I had all the proof everything that they wanted, I had renovated a three story house, had everything had more than what they'd asked. And I showed it to my lawyer and my public defender and said, Here, this is everything. And I thought for sure I was going to be bringing my hot girls home with me that day. And I brought three of their best friends with me. And they didn't even look at my stuff my evidence at all. They my public defender said, Oh, that's all I have. And I said, Well, that's not all I have. I said, What about everything I just showed you? And the judge said, wait till you're asked a question. And I just broke, I broke inside. I was like, There's nothing I can do. They're literally not going to give me my kids back and they don't care. And so I was in tears totally just mortified. And they said, Do you want to have a community visit which means I could take my girls with me. I said, Of course I do. And so I took them to the mall with these other three girls. And my daughter sold a pair of shoes right under the camera. And they were paid. They were like we got her like they literally sat on this down one time we knew she was up to something we could just never prove anything. So as soon as that happened, they pushed it to the full extent of the law. And I lost my full time salaried graphics job I had gotten lost my property, lost my parental rights and did almost six months in county jail for my daughter stealing a pair of shoes.
Pascal Quintero:They must have been some shoes.
Rainbow Southard:I they were ugly $36 pair of shoes. It was I felt like it was in some kind of Twilight Zone. Honestly I was like, people have asked me why I was there and I tell them I stole a pair of shoes. My daughter stole a pair of shoes I didn't even steal nothing and I have retail theft on my right it now. And the thing is, is I didn't have to tell them anything because this was all smeared on the news in the newspaper on the TV. Just horrible. I mean, I was sitting in my cell, like the second night there, and they said, Buckingham you, you're on the news. And I came out, I was like, what? And there was footage of my son in handcuffs, my house burnt down and me in handcuffs, and I just was disgusted, went back to myself and was just like, Whatever, I'm gonna do what ever I can do, nothing. Can't do nothing. felt hopeless, absolutely hopeless and helpless. But when I was in that jail, they said, Oh, we have church service. And that was the first time that I felt the Holy Spirit. And I was just like, wow, I was blown away in Florida. I was like, This is real. I couldn't believe that, because I had had bad experiences, where people would try to push Jesus on me and, and, and I just the way I was raised, I didn't believe in any of it. I thought it was all whatever. And then when I felt the Holy Spirit, I was just
Pascal Quintero:describe this feeling to me what happened to you? Oh,
Rainbow Southard:I was praying with the people that had come in. And all of a sudden, I had like this tingling from the bottom of my toes. And it just kind of raised up through my whole body. And this warmth came over me and I felt like I was literally being hugged. And nobody was touching me. And I just went back to myself just on air and just was like, This is
Pascal Quintero:real. What did you do with that feeling?
Rainbow Southard:Um, I went to every single church service after that, I started reading the Bible, but I was reading the King James version from the beginning. And I was very confused, honestly, at that point. I didn't really know what to think about it. And then when I got out, I was right back trying to fight the state. And then they tried to slap me with a $30,000 civil suit for not cleaning my mess up quick enough for my house spraying down. Yeah. At this point, I was just determined. I was like, okay, they did my shed my shop did not burn down. So I moved into my shop and started tearing my house down with a chainsaw and, and, and chains in a truck and burning it in a bonfire in my yard. I was mad. If very angry, then this was all in the news. Like, I'm like, what? You want me to clean my mess up? I'm cleaning it up. What? And it was going to work at the same time.
Pascal Quintero:Crazy, crazy. Crazy. Yeah. I definitely would say your life was chaos. Yeah,
Rainbow Southard:absolutely. Yeah, I mean, as they say, in the 12 steps, my life was unmanageable. And I was powerless, powerless, powerless. And that was, I mean, it was horrible, because they managed to keep me from having contact with my daughter's for about six or seven months and my son for almost two years, while they had him locked up in the harshest juvenile detention center around.
Pascal Quintero:Eventually, things started to look up a little bit for you. Tell me about your time moving back to Tucson. You know what brought you back here.
Rainbow Southard:Okay. So after I lost after I went to jail, and I lost my parental rights and all this stuff I just said, My daughter turned 18. And she called me one day and said, Mom, this may sound like a stupid question, but can I come home? And I said, where are you? And I went and picked her up. At this point, I was about killing myself. Like literally, almost died several times because of the amount of heroin I was doing. And I was doing that too. But I was very addicted to heroin. And I felt super bad and super convicted. I mean, I had lost custody and parental rights. But here she is coming home. So I just said I'm going to I had a truck at the time. I said, I'm going to go back to Arizona. I'm going to quit all of this and go back to Arizona and I literally flushed everything I had and packed my truck full of everything I own and started driving with my daughter in tow. Wow. Yep, longest road trip I ever did.
Pascal Quintero:Where did you wind up staying?
Rainbow Southard:I had a friend that had helped me to get out here that was a manager at an apartment complex and we started living there. And I was still collecting unemployment because most almost all the time from the time I graduated, I was working. I always had a job. And it didn't matter how messed up I was I was working. So
Pascal Quintero:it sounds like you were making pretty good money.
Rainbow Southard:Oh, I was making really good money at one point before in Maryland. Yeah, so I came back here and I had that apartment. But I was still using meth. And my daughter was now using meth. It just didn't get better using the map. And I didn't use heroin for years after that. But I started using again, slowly like pills, and then it was heroin. And then it was IV drug use, and it got really, really bad.
Pascal Quintero:It was it all just that same, numbing the pain just to get through the day.
Rainbow Southard:Not just that, no, because after the house fire, I developed a really bad PTSD. And I had night terrors, like I would literally like scream and thrash and talk and stuff in my sleep when I would sleep. So I would do the math, not to sleep. And I would do the heroin when I finally had to sleep. And I didn't want to have those night terrors, or remember them.
Pascal Quintero:Did you realize it was PTSD at the time?
Rainbow Southard:I just, I just was trying to get through. I didn't know there was any kind of help for any of this. I was self medicating. I didn't realize all of the issues I had even.
Pascal Quintero:And when you say issues, you're talking about more than just the PTSD? Absolutely.
Rainbow Southard:Absolutely. Yeah, I developed a lot of bad habits over the years I the PTSD plus, I also was diagnosed bipolar. So even without the drugs, I would sleep for a long time get really depressed. And then I would stay up and be all active and doing everything. So it was like, even without it, it's that way still sometimes make do a bunch and then just kind of go down.
Pascal Quintero:So at what point did you finally decide, okay, enough is enough. I need to get off of this once and for all.
Rainbow Southard:Um, I just had had it. I was sleeping on a friend's couch. I was scraping by. I didn't have a job. And I was really addicted. And I call started calling everybody I knew. And they'd heard it before. They'd all heard it before. And they were like, yeah, yeah. And they weren't really believe in me. And I called this guy Eric, who was my friend, camis brother. And he was like, where are you at? He's already he's already gotten on. I don't want none of that. I want to quit. And he said, well get your butt over here. And I did. And he helped me. I mean, he just helped me get off of that stuff. However, we were both doing math. So it was I mean, I didn't do heroin again for a long time after that. But I did math. And yeah, then we got rated,
Pascal Quintero:starting to sound like a familiar story. Yeah.
Rainbow Southard:Yep. It was around and around with this stuff. And yeah, this was like the story of my life. Literally. So
Pascal Quintero:after you got rated, you probably didn't want to live that way anymore. When did you decide to kick the meth to?
Rainbow Southard:Okay, well, what happened is Eric went to jail. And he was facing the charges. And for the the raid for dealing to an undercover cop and, and I, I was there with them. And then he got charged er, he got sentenced. Okay, so he got sentenced to three years probation, but he couldn't stay clean. So he ended up going on the run, and I went with them. And his sister who was also at the house when we got raided, had started going to gospel rescue mission in the recovery program. And she started talking to him and suggesting that I go there, and that he go turned himself in. And so finally he said, If you go, I will go turn myself in. And so I was kind of begrudgingly, but I was like, okay, you know, let's do this. And I went to gospel rescue mission the first time in like 2014.
Pascal Quintero:So what was your first impressions of the Women's Center?
Rainbow Southard:Okay, so when I first got there, I was super freaked out. I was like, This is crazy. Like, these people are cold. They're nuts. They're all raising their hands hallelujah, and amen. And and I was just like, this is this is just weird. And if it wasn't for Kami, like, I probably would have left. She literally told me she's gonna beat me up if I left.
Pascal Quintero:But then that's some tough love right there
Rainbow Southard:for real but then it didn't take long. It didn't take long until I was like, oh, okay, I remembered this Because I had had that experience in that encounter with God when I was in jail back East. But I had just gotten so far away from it and back to my old ways.
Pascal Quintero:Okay, you said that that was your your first time.
Rainbow Southard:So I was there for about nine months, Eric went to prison. I went into jobs program was denied the recovery program, because of all my skills and my history and all whatever. So I got a place I got a job, I started working. And then shortly, like, probably about almost a year out, I relapsed on meth. And then shortly after that on heroin, oh, no, yeah. And Eric was in prison, we were engaged at this point, he was in prison, and I was lying to him the entire time. And I was using the entire time and I got kicked out of one place, got another place stayed at people's houses while I was getting the other place. And it was just, I only got to go visit him like three or four times and almost three years. Because he was a long ways away, though.
Pascal Quintero:And the reason you relapsed? Was it just dealing with the stress of him being in jail? What was going on in your life at the time, part of
Rainbow Southard:it was that, but I think the biggest part of it was that I just didn't have the tools to know, myself and to know because it's, it's real. I mean, that addiction and the world that it comes from is real, and it's there, and it's everywhere. And you're going to run into that kind of thing. And if you don't know, being an addict, myself, and anybody that is an addict, if you don't know what your what your triggers are, what to stay away from how to do these things, how to live life clean. It's it's not an easy thing to not do. And I Okay, so one of my favorite scriptures is First Corinthians 1013, that says, No temptation has seized you except which is common to man. But God is faithful, He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he'll provide a way out so you can stand up under it. I like to kind of paraphrase that last part is he'll provide an exit sign so you can run away. Because he does, he's faithful. But at this point in time, I didn't know any of it.
Pascal Quintero:You couldn't find that exit sign, I could know how to look for it.
Rainbow Southard:And the thing is, is that that old way of living, and that addiction was so comfortable. And it was such a it's described a lot of times in recovery as ruts in a road. Like if you got if you're driving down a road, it's got those ruts in it a dirt road, and you try to pull the truck out of the ruts, it's gonna go right back in you got a really yanked that wheel to get the truck out of the ruts. And it was just comfortable went right back into that rut.
Pascal Quintero:So how did you finally get the strength to pull out of that rut?
Rainbow Southard:Okay, so I was working at the same place. For the entire time. All this craziness was going on putting on a mask every day, it seemed like everything was good. And then Eric got out of prison. And he found out that I was using heroin and totally busted me out. And he was using he was using dealing meth within like two weeks. He ended up falling right back into his own right.
Pascal Quintero:But you both were able to get out of that.
Rainbow Southard:Amen. Yes, we were. So what happened is he got busted again. And in the meantime, right after he got busted. I lost my job. Was it related to that? Not at all, I was trying to just go through the motions again, and it just got too much for me. And I messed up a job really bad at work. And they, they dropped me they gave me a urinalysis. And I was dirty, and I was fired. So when I lost that job, shortly after that, I lost the apartment. And I wound up sleeping on people's couches, and I was again almost killing myself. And the whole time I could hear God, because I had been saved. I had read the entire Bible in six months from cover to cover this time, the NIV when I was at gospel first time, but I didn't have those recovery tools. And I was ashamed and I was guilty and I wouldn't even open my Bible, I would look at it and I would look away. I wouldn't even pray and I felt like unworthy and a shame. But I could hear God telling me just come home. Just go just go back. And I hear it all the time and I would just get high and try to forget about it. And then finally I just had enough and I called kami of all people Eric says stir. And I said Cami, I'm ready. And she had been waiting. And she came in grabbed me, and took me up to the Women's Center. And I remember driving up there and she's blaring the first day of the rest of your life. Radio, and I was just like, Okay, here we go. And that was January 17, of 2019. And I have not used anything since. Wow. Yeah. So and in this meantime, though, Eric was at the, the men's center, the old men's center. So he had gone there, like a month before I went to the Women's Center, and he was constantly just gotten out of jail, the county jail and he was facing charges. So he was constantly when you're gonna go, are you ready yet? So when I got to the Women's Center, they were like, oh, Bout time. Here you are.
Pascal Quintero:That must have been a little strange, as in one sense, you were hearing the Holy Spirit speak to you. You're hearing Eric, vocally speaking to you. And Cami and Cami. But you had this thing that was holding you back? Was it fear of what you'd find when you go went through those doors again? No,
Rainbow Southard:honestly, at that last month, it was just, I had to secure all our stuff into storage. I had to detox myself from heroin. And I didn't want to do it in a detox center. So I did that on my own. My friend helped me and then I was ready. I just had to do all the things and tie up the loose ends. But before that, I thought I was gonna die. I literally thought I was gonna die if I quit. It was the worst feeling. I can't even tell you. I was horrible. How long did that last? Actually, it was about two weeks, I stayed with my friend. I had been living in a trailer with no electricity way on the south side. It was horrible. My friends said, if you can you come to my mom's house, you can come here and I'll help you. So it's about two weeks. And she just helped me she helped me just lower the amount and just detox and then I had some pills to help me sleep until I could take suboxone for three days. And it was just I was God, it was God. Because there is it's unheard of, to detox the way that I did. So after
Pascal Quintero:a 15 year addiction to all these different substances, what was it like for you to walk through the doors of the Women's Center again, for the second time?
Rainbow Southard:It was, it was actually awesome. It was different because there was a lot of things that had changed. But it was like coming home. I didn't feel shamed. I didn't feel guilty. I didn't feel anything but love and like they were welcoming me with open arms.
Pascal Quintero:But this time you were also in the recovery programs. Finally you were where you needed to be. Yes. Not only were you in the program that you needed to be in, but you were also in the headspace where you're ready for it. Yes, absolutely. You were ready to receive that recovery.
Rainbow Southard:Absolutely. I wanted it. It wasn't just because Eric Han had said he was gonna go turn himself in or even because Eric was bugging me to get there. It wasn't any of that it was I was just ready. I was tired. I was tired of all of it. I was tired of hiding. I was tired of lying. I was tired of having to have it get high every day,
Pascal Quintero:when you entered into the recovery program. Walk me through the Genesis program, the tools that you received while you were in recovery here.
Rainbow Southard:Okay, so before I even got to the Genesis program, there was classes like managing emotions, anger management, Bible 101. I mean, all these classes that just got got me primed for the next step and just got me calm down and stable. Then it was phase two, and I got all of these other classes, I got to go into seven steps to freedom which I got to forgive. I wrote lists and prayed and forgave all these people that did all this stuff to me, and just gave them to God. And that was the best feeling. That must have been very healing. Oh, it was I mean, I mean, Miss Betty did it with me and she had had a whole trashcan full of tissues by the end and she was like, You're excused from Chapel tonight. You're good. Go lay down. It was just like, healing like pulling all of that stuff out and giving it to God. Wow. Yeah. And then I went through overcoming childhood trauma and the spiritual journey which is like a step study with the 12 steps but with Jesus I Then I entered Genesis and you got to learn how your brain works. And you get to find scriptures to to counteract all of those lies that you've told yourself or that other people have told you about yourself that your entire life, then you get to understand why you do some of the things you do. And then you get to go through relapse prevention steps and, and scenarios of what might happen if this happened. And then you make accountability cards and give them to people in case you start doing these things. I mean, there's so much that I learned in that amount of time.
Pascal Quintero:So just a little side note about the recovery program. Most other programs in Tucson are just a one month, two months, this is a year long process. So that gives you the time that you need to work through all those childhood trauma issues, to learn all these new tools to retrain your brain yet to break those old habits and learn new ones.
Rainbow Southard:So at 30 days, you're just barely even stable as 60 days, 90 days, you're getting a little bit better, but at 90 days, that's when you're just to the point where we were entering Genesis, okay, in Genesis is an entire book with 12 phases. So you go through these processes and you I would go and talk to my Genesis counselor and and process these things that I had done in my workbook and studied and just the healing there is just huge. And so the entire time I was at Rossville, it was I tried to soak in every bit of everything I could get because I knew it wasn't going to last forever. And it was the best feeling I could literally walk out of my room and within a couple steps find somebody that would pray for me or with me, I'd have people knocking on my door Remo can you pray for me about so and so this and that. Just that part of it alone was amazing.
Pascal Quintero:Wow. You were also going through that part of your life during an interesting time in American history. I say that because it is history now absolute, which is the beginning of the COVID pandemic. But you're in a place that seemed to be protected. From all of that.
Rainbow Southard:It didn't just seem to be it was his still is. It's very protected. Not only because we were in there, and nobody left and we were on lockdown. But because God has that place in a hedge of protection that like no other like, literally, you can go in there and feel it. It um, it was amazing. It was so cool to be somewhere that I knew I was all right, even though all this other crazy stuff was going on. And then we started all this remote stuff. But I preached my first sermon there during that time. Awesome. Yeah, because we couldn't get the technology to work, right. And then I called the director of the program at the time. And he said, well just bring on board. And so I went and prayed about it and did.
Pascal Quintero:So shortly after you left there is when I first met you, I sat down and interviewed you for the first time to hear your testimony. And I remember you showed me one of your paintings. And I'm like, she's got some skill. Yeah, I
Rainbow Southard:think I showed you my portfolio too. But the painting was definitely the highlight. Yeah, it was when my program was actually over. And I was going into the housing and jobs program. And I came over here, suddenly, actually, they told me you're done. You go into their coop, and it was a little bit salty about it for a minute. But I came over here and then you had asked me to do my testimony, then got a job in recovery. And left here, I wasn't even going to go into graphic design I had decided because of everything that I had gained in this program, that I didn't want to go back and do something that was not going to help people that were in similar situations. That wasn't going to do something good for the kingdom of God.
Pascal Quintero:And you were helping people. Yeah, actually, I don't want to put that in the past tense because you are actively helping out women in recovery. Learn their way.
Rainbow Southard:Amen. So at first it was women and men because I worked for a A secular coed rehab, and it was a great job but, and it was kind of cool being able to go to work and and share my faith without blatantly sharing my faith because it was not allowed. So but that was cool. But then I decided I had to come and volunteer because of everything I got from here. And I came for the volunteer tour. And I was being toured around the center of opportunity. And then you came running up to me and said, Hey, Rainbow, we have an opening, you should check it out. You shouldn't apply
Pascal Quintero:in graphic
Rainbow Southard:design in graphic design. And I went home and I was like, God, I just felt like God had just gone. You know what, baby girl, I care about you and your talents and your special gifts this much. I'm going to give you your wish in all aspects. Because not only do you get to give back to gospel rescue mission, you get to help people and you get to do what you love to do in graphic design. I mean, what kind of good God do we serve? Come on.
Pascal Quintero:In what has been your experience working here?
Rainbow Southard:I love my job. I love coming to work. It's never been like, a job for me. I mean, yeah, we have deadlines. We have things. We gotta get fun. We have stuff. But it's always it's always something that I'm excited to come to work and be able to do these things. And I know they're all good. They're all good. They're all for God. They're all for people that help people.
Pascal Quintero:And you're getting the message out to people who need to hear that message of hope to hear that recovery is possible.
Rainbow Southard:Yes, very much so. And that's the thing is that this entire time, this whole crazy story of my life, I never knew that there was any help out there. I never knew like if somebody would have told me about someplace like this. I know I would have gone, I know I would have at several different points in my life. Because I just thought that I had to do it. I had to carry the weight of the world. And I just didn't know.
Pascal Quintero:So what is your message now to people who are struggling in their addiction?
Rainbow Southard:I would just have to say that if you are struggling in your addiction, and you feel like there's no way out and you feel like you can't make it through a day without getting high. And you feel like it's scary and you don't know what's gonna happen. Just take that step of faith, that first step of faith and just do it. Just do it, you're worth it. You are worth it. And and there's people that will care and they will help you. And God is there. And he's real. And he's good.
Pascal Quintero:What is that first step?
Rainbow Southard:First step is showing up at the center of opportunity and waiting in that line. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday before eight o'clock and coming in, and just seeing seeing what what what is there is available to help you. Because I know it seems like it's the end and like you're not worth it. And like there's nothing but that little world in your addiction. But there's so much more.
Pascal Quintero:Amen. So it's important to note that the Gospel Rescue Mission is this huge ministry that's connected to citigate network. So there are gospel rescue missions all over the United States. Yeah. And there are faith based recovery programs all over the United States. So yes, if you are in Tucson, absolutely. Come and check us out. But wherever you are at, find out what's around you. Yes, where you can go and just talk to someone. You don't even have to commit to anything right away. Just talk to someone. Yes. Who can maybe guide you, yes, to tell you what resources are available to tell you what your options are.
Rainbow Southard:You know, there's one more thing I'd like to say as they growing up, even though my mom didn't ever teach us about Jesus or about the Bible. She didn't tell me one time and I remember clearly she said if you ever feel like you're in a bad place, or you need help, just find the closest Christian church. Oh, yeah. And that's that that rings true today. If you don't even have to find a mission. Just go to find somebody that that you can talk to and that can help you.
Pascal Quintero:Amen. Quick Last question, what role did your faith play in your recovery?
Rainbow Southard:Okay, so every bit of it had to do with God. There was so many times that I quit that I tried to quit that I tried to change that I tried to do all of this stuff with everything else I could imagine. And nothing more. And nothing stuck until I was 46 years old. So it was all God, it was all God, if I had not found Jesus, it wouldn't have worked.
Pascal Quintero:He was the one that came into your life gave you the strength to transform your
Rainbow Southard:life. Absolutely. Like my first scripture I memorized was Philippians 413 that says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And that's exactly how I did it is through Christ who strengthens me. I wasn't the strong one. And this is absolutely not about me. It's about God. It's about what he can do and what he did to help me
Pascal Quintero:and what he can do to help you. If you'd like to support our ministry, or you know someone who needs help in the Tucson area, please visit us online at grm tucson.com.
Rainbow Southard:Cool beans
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