PRENATAL CENTRE GIVES ADDICT MOTHERS NEW HOPE

Photos Paint Picture of Success

Patches Parisian isn't happy with her photograph.

Taken just two days after her daughter Danika was born, the
21-year-old looks proud but weary, staring straight into the camera,
cradling her tiny child in her arms.

But the fact that the photograph is there is reason enough for
Parisian to smile. It is just one of perhaps 60 pinned to a poster
board that covers an entire wall, each one a photograph of a smiling
mother and her young child.

Each photograph represents a success story. And here, there are
many.

So many, in fact, that staff at the CUPS prenatal centre have been
forced to start pinning photographs to another wall. That one, too,
will soon be full.

"This wall is really something," says Parisian, holding Danika while
the three-month-old quietly giggles.

"I mean, look at all these photographs, all these really happy mothers
with their babies. This wall, it's nice. It makes me feel good."

The wall also acts as a reminder of a past life.

"The sad thing is, I used to smoke crack with that woman," pointing to
a colour photograph of a woman and her child. "And I used to smoke
crack with that woman, too," she says.

"They were my friends," Parisian says.

Three years ago, Patches Parisian was one of Calgary's top-3 crack
dealers, an 18-year-old lost on the downtown streets of Calgary.

Wanting to feel the high of the drugs she was selling, she smoked
crack -- just once -- just to feel what her clients felt. From that
day, she was hooked.

She left her foster home to live rough downtown, tooting crack cocaine
almost every day. She watched through dazed eyes as her life collapsed
around her.

She did that for three years, selling drugs, smoking crack, continuing
the downward spiral. But when a good friend died in suspicious
circumstances, she decided to quit.

And she did.

"I looked at myself and I didn't see myself anymore," she says. "Ever
since then I've had a different look on life. I just don't want to be
like that anymore. I look back and I feel sick when I think about what
I was doing.

"I was living on the street, doing the old crack dance. I just got
stuck in a hole. But I crawled out of it."

Then, just one month after quitting cold turkey, she discovered she
was pregnant, something she was completely unprepared for.

"I was kinda scared, because of all the drugs I was doing that were
still in my system. I had done enough to take an elephant down and I
was worried," says Parisian.

"I didn't want anything to be wrong with my daughter. That scared
me."

Through friends, Parisian heard about the pre-natal program at Calgary
Urban Project Society, something she credits with saving her life and
the life of her newborn child.

The program, part of the CUPS Family Resource Centre, offers
assistance to new and expectant mothers, from helping them rid
themselves of serious addictions, to providing parenting advice.

The mothers often have nowhere else to turn -- living on the streets,
or well below the poverty line, they have no access to family doctors,
often have poor role models from their own childhoods, and struggle to
buy the very basics, such as diapers or bottles.

At CUPS, they can access a staff physician, have regular health
checkups and talk to other mothers in similar situations.

The resource centre will this year benefit through the Calgary Herald
Christmas Fund, with money raised going to the drop-in facility for
children and families living in homelessness and poverty.

"We are a multi-disciplinary group, and our aim is to provide quality
pre-natal care," says Loretta Major, the program's women's health
advocate. "We try and be a one-stop shop."

Parisian quickly became a regular at the program, attending Best
Beginnings clinics every Thursday and baby checkups every Tuesday.

"No matter what your situation is, or what type of person you are,
they always give you a chance," says Parisian. "Now, I just come here
to talk to other women, other mothers.

"Just coming here makes me feel like I've done something. It's
great."

The 21-year-old is now giving back. She has become an inspiration of
sorts to other mothers, sharing her story with whomever cares to
listen, hoping it will show them they, too, can succeed.

"I know what they are going through. I tell people straight up what I
think, I hold nothing back," she says. "I feel good being able to tell
these women that I used to do crack, and I quit for my kid."

She hasn't touched drugs since giving them up. She says her drug now
is her daughter.

"Now I feel I have something to live for. I can get out of my bed for
something that I love and enjoy instead of something that I need.

"I thought I would never get out of that hole. To see my life now,
it's really amazing."