Finally sober, April looks to months ahead

April Boshard grinned as she scurried through the parking lot of Seacoast Church, hefting a box of second-hand clothes for the needy.

Dressed in jeans and a sweater jacket, her red hair neatly pulled back from her face, Boshard looked like a suburban housewife putting in a few hours of community service at the church.

The truth was, she'd been sleeping in the woods just days before, her life as rough as anyone in the crowd seeking help.

Boshard, 36, has spent the better part of five years living on the streets of North Charleston, drinking and drugging away her days.

Then, five months ago, she reached out for help. But on the cusp of sobriety, she nearly lost her lifeline when the troubled Faith Haven sober-living program collapsed in Charleston last month.

She found herself at a crossroads, staring at the promise of a new life while confronted with the demons of her past.

"I had everything I needed right there, and it was just ripped out from under me," she said. "I didn't know what to do."

Boshard's long slide began one day in 2004 when she called police on her husband for beating up their 10-year-old daughter. He had taken care of everything in their lives, from grocery shopping to paying the bills.

When he was sent to prison for two years, Boshard didn't know how to function as a single parent with four daughters.

She started drinking to take the edge off, to make her problems disappear. Soon, she was drinking all the time -- missing work, missing bills, missing life. By the time the state took her kids away that year, she already was well on the road to self-destruction.

Boshard landed on the streets, chugging vodka, smoking crack, shoplifting to get by. When she wasn't in jail, she lived in a scrubby patch of woods off North Rhett Avenue, in a ramshackle camp tucked amid the pines. No home. No family. No future.

"Once you get to that point, you can't even see the tunnel, let alone the light at the end of it," she said.

Last spring, Boshard stumbled into Seacoast Church's North Charleston campus looking for some clothes and food. People there were nice. They wanted to help. For the first time in a long while, she felt a sense of family.

She returned to the church and came to a decision: It was time to get sober.

Then came Mother's Day. All the well-wishes and thoughts of her daughters. Once again, she turned to the bottle. She got "tore up from the floor up." Stumbling drunk, Boshard lifted a 12-pack of a beer from a convenience store. She was off to jail again.

By the time she left jail, Boshard had been clean for five weeks. She was determined to make it stick.

Friends at Seacoast helped her get into Faith Haven. She couldn't believe she got to live in a nice home, with her own room, a hot shower and space to put her things. So different from the woods and cold jails she had learned to endure.

She set her mind on going to meetings, working her program.

Boshard trembled with emotion at her graduation ceremony eight weeks later. She'd done it. Now if she could just stay on there a while longer until she got back on her feet.

She didn't hesitate when Faith Haven founder Wendy Johnston asked her to speak at a luncheon on James Island for potential volunteers and donors. Boshard believed in Faith Haven and wanted to help, so she got up in front of a roomful of strangers and told her story.

Some thanked her. Others cried. She hoped it would help.

Not long after that, problems surfaced at Faith Haven. The rent hadn't been paid on its stately mansion near Colonial Lake, and people had begun to question a long list of unpaid debts tied to Johnston.

Boshard and others had helped with fundraising, yet the home always seemed to lack toilet paper, gas to get to meetings and other essentials. Arguments erupted as residents questioned Johnston's decisions.

The program finally shut down in early October as Johnston was fired and hauled off to jail, accused of forging her board president's name on a vehicle purchase. Johnston has denied any wrongdoing and has insisted her intentions were always good.

Boshard and several other residents had left about a week earlier after a row with Johnston. She stayed with a community volunteer for a week or so and then bounced around between friends.

Desperate, disillusioned and out of options, Boshard finally returned to the North Charleston woods she had left months before.

She showed up at a homeless friend's campsite with her few belongings and a bottle of vodka. This is where she had started on her journey to sobriety. It seemed fitting it would end here as well.

Boshard drank until her world blurred and went dark. But when she woke, she pushed the bottle aside.

"I realized the answers to whatever problems I have are not at the bottom of a bottle," she said. "All I got was a hangover, a headache and a stomach ache, and all those problems were still there."

She stayed in the woods for about three weeks, bathing in rainwater and shooing away possums as she tried to sleep. But she didn't relapse again. She returned to Seacoast and spent her days attending services, healing and helping others in need.

"This is the only place I've ever felt I've belonged," she said. "Everything people do here is completely out of love, and you don't find that very often."

Taylor Middleton, who runs the Seacoast Dream Closet, gets choked up when she talks about Boshard's return and the work she puts in on the church's behalf. "I can't imagine her ever going away again," Middleton said. "She's an example for people to look at and realize that anything is possible."

One day last week, a family from the church gave Boshard a place to stay until she can afford a home of her own. She's now knocking on doors and looking for jobs.

Boshard also is trading e-mails with her oldest daughter, who's 19 and living with another Lowcountry family. The communication has been tentative, a reflection of the hurt and emotional distance between them.

Boshard is hoping to close that gap and be reunited with all of her girls someday. She knows it will take time, and that she has a lot to prove. But she's ready for the challenge.

"I just hope someday my daughter will be able to say she's proud of me," she said.