Patricia “Trish” Jackson wants to hear the part of a person’s story that gets lost when everyone is focused on what went wrong.
“There is often a story behind the struggle,” she explains, “and sometimes people need someone willing to listen to that story instead of judging the ending.”
That belief runs through her approach to peer support. It also helps explain the many ways she contributes at Voices of Hope Maryland: researching resources, helping coworkers organize their training records, teaching alongside fellow peers, and helping someone new get started.
Today, we celebrate Trish as one of our newest Certified Peer Recovery Specialists. To understand what makes this achievement meaningful, it helps to look at the work she has already been doing—and the thoughtful choices that brought her here.
Before entering the CPRS program, Trish was approaching eight years in recovery and had worked in three treatment centers. She brought both professional experience and a personal understanding of how difficult change can be.
She was also feeling burnt out.
At home, she was newly married and preparing to become a mother for the first time. Her life was growing in meaningful ways, while the question of how to balance it all was becoming harder to ignore. She cared deeply about the recovery field. She also needed to find a way to keep contributing without losing herself.
“I found myself questioning my purpose and trying to figure out how I could continue making a difference without losing myself in the process.”
Acknowledging that took honesty. Trish had already come a long way, yet she allowed herself to recognize that she needed something different. She entered the CPRS program ready to reflect, learn, and reconsider how her experience could serve others while supporting her own growth.
She brought resilience, determination, and adaptability with her. Those qualities had helped her keep going through difficult circumstances. Recovery and personal growth were helping her use them in healthier ways.
She also brought a particular kind of understanding.
Trish knows what it feels like to struggle internally while other people see only outward behavior. Her experiences with mental health challenges and substance use shaped her desire to look more closely, listen more carefully, and remember that a person’s circumstances never tell their entire story.
She wanted to help others recognize their worth and their ability to change.
Through the program, she developed clearer ways to put those values into practice. She strengthened her understanding of active listening, boundaries, advocacy, and ethical peer support. She learned to consider when sharing her own experience would help someone else feel understood and empowered.
“I learned that being a CPRS doesn't mean having all the answers or trying to fix someone,” she says. “It means supporting people as they identify their own strengths, make their own choices, and work toward goals that are meaningful to them.”
That respect for the whole person can be seen in her attention to practical barriers.
Trish and a colleague researched pet-care resources, including temporary fostering and other forms of assistance, and shared what they found with the team. Trish reached out to an animal-services contact as part of that work.
Pet care may seem far removed from a conversation about recovery. Yet responsibilities at home can affect which options a person can realistically consider. Researching those resources widened the team’s knowledge of what support might be available.
It is a concrete example of looking beyond the first question. Offering a resource also means considering whether someone can use it, what responsibilities they carry, and what else they may need.
Trish has brought that same attention to learning about community providers.
She toured Brantwood Family Services with a colleague and prepared a detailed report for the team. Her notes covered services for women and children, parenting support, education, and other aspects of the program that could help peers understand available options.
She also joined a visit to LT’s House of Grace to learn about a women’s recovery residence in Harford County. At the VoH center, she met with a representative from Leading By Example, took part in a question-and-answer discussion about services, and helped introduce the organization to Voices of Hope Maryland.
These conversations require preparation, attention, and follow-through. They build the knowledge a team draws on when someone asks for help. Through her visits, questions, and documentation, Trish has contributed to that shared understanding.
Her care for her own team is equally practical.
When staff needed to keep track of training materials and certificates, Trish created binders to help organize them.
A binder is a simple thing. The time someone spends putting one together can make another person’s responsibilities easier to manage. It gives their work a place, helps them keep track of progress, and offers a useful tool they can return to.
Trish has also reached out about additional classes for herself and other Harford coworkers, including learning opportunities beyond what was required for certification. Her interest in professional growth has included the people working beside her.
That willingness to help extends to those just beginning.
When a new intern needed assistance with onboarding, Trish agreed to work through the paperwork with them. She followed through and returned the signed documents. She has also offered to train and work with volunteers.
For an organization, these are necessary tasks. For someone arriving in an unfamiliar place, having a person willing to help can make the beginning more manageable.
Trish contributes to those beginnings while continuing to develop her own skills.
She attended facilitator training, observed experienced Narcan trainers, and went on to help deliver an in-person Narcan Train the Trainers session with a colleague. She also co-facilitated Voices of Hope Maryland’s Harm Reduction Basics training.
Her interest in teaching came with a willingness to keep learning.
She was willing to prepare for the responsibility she wanted to accept.
That matters in peer education, where lived experience and continued learning work together. Trish brings her perspective into the classroom while building the knowledge and skills to share it responsibly.
Outside the classroom, she has represented Voices of Hope Maryland at community events, including outreach at Anna’s House and Breathe 379 back-to-school gatherings. Those efforts brought recovery information and Narcan into spaces where families and community members were already coming together.
At the Upper Chesapeake Pride Festival, Trish joined Hannah Pupillo and Michael Warren in sharing resources and connecting with attendees.
Trish was part of making that effort possible: showing up, engaging with people, and helping bring useful resources into the community.
She has also contributed to the preparation that allows community events to happen.
There is care in preparing a space where people will gather. There is responsibility in handling the details before anyone arrives. Trish’s contributions reach into that work, too.
Taken together, these actions reveal the range of what she offers. She can contribute to a training, learn about a provider, organize materials, help a new intern, prepare for a gathering, and support daily operations. Each calls for a different skill. Each serves someone beyond herself.
There is also warmth in the way she recognizes other people.
She makes room for other people’s progress even while pursuing her own.
Her words about recovery help explain that approach. She describes growth as a continuing practice of honesty, willingness, accountability, and support. She wants people to understand that they are worthy of help wherever they are starting.
The CPRS program also helped her apply that understanding to herself.
“One of the biggest things I took away from the program was the realization that I don’t have to be ashamed of where I’ve been,” she shares.
She can acknowledge her past without allowing it to determine her worth. She can take responsibility for her choices while recognizing the strengths she has developed. She can keep learning without needing to have everything figured out.
“My story is not one of perfection,” she writes. “It is a story of struggle, learning, accountability, and growth.”
That honesty gives her story its depth. Trish entered this chapter with experience, questions, and a need to reconnect with her purpose. Along the way, she has continued finding ways to put her strengths to use—for the people seeking support, the coworkers beside her, and the community beyond the center’s doors.
We celebrate Patricia “Trish” Jackson, CPRS, for the achievement she has earned and the many contributions that surround it. We see the preparation, the resource research, the teaching, the teamwork, and the everyday willingness to help someone take their next step.
She has given careful thought to what her experiences can mean moving forward. Her own words bring that choice into focus:
“My past is part of my story, but it is no longer the thing that gets to write the ending.”
