COMMUNITY HERO SPOTLIGHT:
Sarah Martin
Every morning, Sarah Martin enjoys the invigorating smell of freshly roasted coffee beans. Not because she lives near a local roaster, but because she is a local coffee roaster herself. Working in small batches with quality beans from around the world, she brings the exotic flavors of Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Colombia to hand roast in Tukwila, Washington and ships them across the United States.
Sitting in the recently-opened Onward Roasters Cafe, Sarah sips a cup of their newest fall coffee. “It’s called the ‘Unity Blend,’” she says. “I picked the name because, even with all the chaos going on in the world today, the one thing that always brings people together is coffee. With all the extra noise out there, the best way to make people happy is with a Unity Blend.”
Just like the name of the cafe itself, her choice for “unity” reflects a deeper meaning drawn from her own experiences. The doors of Onward Roasters officially opened for business on October 1, 2020, but Sarah tells me about the obstacles and detours encountered along the way that made it seem like that day would never come.
“We tried to figure one thing out, and it didn’t work, so we’d roll it over and try something different; then roll it over and try again if that one failed, too.” Once she started rolling with the punches, and kept pushing onward despite them, things started to work themselves out. This was the inspiration behind naming Onward Roasters — pushing on when everything seems to go wrong, a lesson Sarah also learned through a difficult life.
With the keys to the shop still in her hand, she tells me, “It’s still so surreal that an ex-junkie like me can end up with so much responsibility.”
If you met Sarah three years ago, you may never have imagined that she would become the confident business owner that she is today. By the age of thirty, she had already spent half of her life addicted to drugs and alcohol. For five of those years, she lived under the torment of domestic abuse by an intimate partner. She also had a child, and had that child taken away from her because of her addictions.
“At twelve, I started drinking but wasn’t into it heavily until about fifteen. Not until I got into high school did I really start using hard drugs. Everyone around me was doing it. Though,” she says, “looking back on it now as an adult, maybe I constantly picked people out that were just as bad or had the same traumatic home lifestyle as I did. It just felt more natural. More normal.”
For young Sarah, the lifestyle of addiction that was slowly consuming her was normal because the negative influences in her home and school supported such a perspective. Without speaking up about her struggles, she had no idea that there was anything wrong. Her mind had acclimated itself to trauma so much that she even sought it out in relationships. In fact, according to Sarah, addiction itself remains so hard to conquer because we fail to resolve the underlying mental health issues that cause it.
“I can tell you from experience that my depression, anxiety and PTSD went hand in hand with my drug use.” But as long as only one was being addressed, she says, neither was getting fixed. “I tried other things first — antidepressants, anxiety meds — but then, I would just relapse. I never allowed myself to do the trauma therapy necessary to heal inside.”
It took time, and repeated failures for Sarah to come to this understanding. She would go through periods of sobriety and give up, falling back into old coping mechanisms because they were familiar. Not until it meant losing her daughter for good was Sarah finally ready to accept mental healthcare.
Just over four years ago, staff at a local Burger King’s called the cops on Sarah for reasons she says she was too high to understand. That day, they took her three-year-old daughter from her arms and forced her to make changes if she ever wanted her back. It was during the custody hearing that, for the first time, someone told Sarah that she might be in need of some serious trauma therapy. Since counseling was one of the optional requirements to help her chances of getting her daughter back, she did it.
“I didn’t really want to at first,” she admits. “It was just part of what I needed to do, and that was it. But at the end, I embraced it.”
She was able to reflect on her old coping mechanisms that she had never recognized before and learned new, healthy ones to replace them. Therapy helped her to see how her heavy drinking and hard drugs as a teenager were numbing tools to deal with invisible pain. Deep-rooted issues dating back to a childhood surgery had left her feeling always different, and always being treated differently, too.
“I didn’t know what it was back then; that I was numbing things. Not until I went to therapy for the first time and somebody told me what I was doing did I recognize my own behavior for what it was. Before that, I just thought I was the kind of person that enjoyed the ‘party life.’”
As an addict, Sarah says that embracing change was never her strong suit, but as soon as she started to go along with whatever came, the better she began to feel. After regaining some of her confidence in trauma therapy, she felt ready to take on, and keep a job, another requirement to regain custody of her daughter. She started working as a part-time barista at Kona Kai, a socially-conscious coffee shop connecting people at risk of homelessness to job training and experience, but at first, she was a little nervous.
“I was worried about testing myself in a place where I would have a lot of responsibilities; people counting on me. I needed to learn how to handle those things without using [drugs] over it anymore. Before, if something went well at work, I would use to celebrate. If something didn’t go correctly, I would use to numb it.”
Of course, this time, using drugs or alcohol would come with serious consequences, including the loss of her daughter. “Before, it was always so easy to throw in the towel or give up,” she says. “I could always go so far, but then stop. ‘Why keep going,’ I’d say to myself, ‘if you’re just going to fail anyway.”
But this time, simply accepting failure was not an option. Between her dedication to getting healthy and her motivation to get her daughter back, Sarah found the strength to work hard and make herself a valuable employee. First, she learned the routines, then responsibility and how to be accountable. Even when Kona Kai had to close due to COVID-19 safety regulations, there was Sarah, mopping the floors and keeping it clean to make sure she earned her paycheck.
“My low self-worth began to rise; I got my self-esteem back. So I worked more, and harder, and then my self-esteem went through the roof! My boss saw something in me that I don’t think anyone had wanted to see in me for so many years. When he gave me the opportunity to open my own roasting shop, it came with a sense of empowerment and hope that I never thought I could ever feel again.”
After proving her reliability at Kona Kai, Sarah regained supervised day visits with her daughter. Then, the visits were unsupervised. Eventually, she was given whole weekends. Now, Sarah’s CPS case has been closed and since August 2018, she and her eight-year-old daughter have been sharing in this new opportunity together as a family.
“I’ve been growing as a person, both for getting my daughter back and as a business owner all at once. It sounds kind of cliche,” she tells me, pausing to keep her voice steady and swallow back tears, “but I always say that my daughter saved my life. I might never have gotten sober if I didn’t have her. She was the push I needed to keep going when I didn’t want to.”
By the time the courts officially took Sarah’s daughter away, the child had turned four. Her dad was in and out of her life because of his own addictions, so she was already accustomed to asking questions at a young age. Anticipating more questions when they were finally together again, Sarah took precautions. It was important for her to discuss what happened with her daughter in an honest and healthy way, so she consulted her social worker on the best language to do it.
“At first, I told her that I made choices to put things into my body that made me sick and unhealthy. Since then, we’ve developed a very transparent relationship about what happened, at an eight-year-old level anyway. She knows why I go to my ‘meetings’ or why I can’t visit certain places or participate in certain activities. She’s seen me in treatment facilities and even had visits with me; she understands.”
Sarah thinks this experience, as difficult as it undoubtedly was for her, too, has given her daughter valuable tools for life when she gets older. “She’s learned to talk about things in a way that I never did as a child. And I know from experience that having a voice is really important. I don’t ever want her to think that she can’t feel safe coming to me and talking to me about things. The more transparent and open you are, the better — that’s how we communicate. I’m a firm believer that secrets can make you sick.”
Sarah says that being able to talk about problems without feeling shame is so necessary for dealing with them. “Emotions exist for a reason” she says, and by blocking them out, the problem will only get worse. “When I was young and suffering from trauma, I never said anything. I thought trauma was normal. I think my childhood and teenage years would have been a lot different if I knew it was OK to say something.”
Sarah knows that now, and instead of letting emotions like shame get the best of her, she practices daily patience and humility with herself so she can become a better person. Over time, she learned to take the hardships that tried to consume her life and turn them into a newfound purpose. Instead of keeping her story a secret, she now shares it in the hopes that it will motivate people facing similar difficulties.
“Maybe others — still on the streets, still on drugs, who don’t have their kids, or are just trying to find their lives again — can see my progression and find hope. From junkie to barista to well put-together business owner, independent and strong woman, mom; and every single day, recovering alcoholic and addict — I really want this hope to reach people,” she says, no stranger to hopelessness herself. “That’s become my main goal.”
Among her current ambitions, she aspires to become a motivational speaker and start a nonprofit to help connect victims of trauma and abuse with resources. Reflecting on her own experience with the police, courts and the legal system’s handling of her case, she wants to advocate for mental health training for members of law enforcement that includes addiction and dependency issues. She even plans to write a book.
“I’m not afraid anymore, about my mental health or my addiction. I don’t hide from them, or life, or responsibilities. I face things as they are now. Sure, I still struggle with low self-esteem; I don’t know if that ever goes away. But it’s empowering for a young, single mom to know that if one thing doesn’t work out, I can still go and follow another path and it’ll be OK.”
During the worst of it, when Sarah was still trying to get her daughter back, she says her family would describe her life as a bad Lifetime movie. “The cliche beaten, battered woman with low-self esteem, who turns to drugs to escape reality and loses her kids because she’s a junkie — I was all of those movies rolled into one. I felt worthless.
“That’s why I’ll never forget the day that the old board president handed me the key to my own cafe. She said to me, ‘With this key comes a lot of responsibility. I trust that you’ll take it seriously.’
“I couldn’t believe it! I hadn’t had someone hand me a key to a building and trust me with it in years! From that day forward, I knew that there was nothing I’d do to lose my role in this organization. That someone out there still trusts me and sees something in me after everything I’ve been through, I’m taking that very seriously.
“And now they can’t get rid of me! As long as people are still drinking coffee,” Sarah says, “I’ll be roasting!”
If you’re not lucky enough to live near Tukwila, Onward Roasters small-batch coffee ships nationwide. You can purchase online at www.onwardroasters.com or through the ww.facebook.com/onwardroasters. But when you buy a twelve-ounce bag, remember that you get more than an exquisite blend of hand-crafted coffee.
Your support helps Sarah, a mother, and her daughter build a new family together. Your support fuels her dreams of advocating for silent victims so they can find relief from their suffering. When you support Onward Roasters, you support community heroes like Sarah Martin who are willing to rise up despite adversity and demonstrate the kind of courage needed to make great changes, for the betterment of themselves and the world.
So when the chaos of life surrounds you and problems seem insurmountable, just keep moving onward like Sarah. With her example, patience and a cup of Unity Blend, maybe you can overcome the chaos and find your own happiness, too.
