(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Helping mothers find support and healing is the goal of one Southern Colorado woman who also understands the challenges in one’s recovery journey. Tiffany Kuhwede recalled the challenging time when her children were growing up.

“Everybody’s story is unique and different,” Kuhwede said. “I’m a person who started experiencing sexual violence at age five. I grew up in a home that was violent my whole life. And then I repeated that behavior. I was dealing with mental health as a result of the abuse that I had endured and I became a mom before I got my driver’s license.”

Kuhwede said she started experimenting with substances until that lead her to a period of taking and abusing.

“I had already had one overdose and ended up in the hospital for four days because of the medication that I was taking and abusing,” Kuhwede said. “And I almost died both of those times. At this point, my kids were living with my mom because I just couldn’t care for them anymore.”

Kuhwede and her daughter were outside playing with their dogs.

Once she began her road to recovery, she not only had to focus on her health but also on rebuilding relationships within her family.

“I had to relearn how to be their mom because my 15-year-old son had been the parent for so long,” Kuhwede said. “So I had to not only work on my own recovery, but I had to recover my relationship with my children because they didn’t trust me.”

Kuhwede is a Director of Coaching at HardBeauty, where she helps other Southern Colorado mothers who are working on their healing journey find the support and comfort they need.

Kuhwede works at HardBeauty and helps provide comfort and support for mothers who are on their journey to recovery.

“So when we become moms, oftentimes we’re a little separated or isolated from other people,” Kuhwede. “And when we’re also moms who struggle with substance use disorder, it becomes really scary to reach out for help because all we know is if I tell somebody I’m using, they’re going to take my kids. So, what this group provides is a safe space for somebody who might not know.”

Affirmation card at HardBeauty.

HardBeauty supports those struggling with substance use disorder and helps empower people to overcome challenges in their life like homelessness, mental health issues, sexual assault, and domestic violence.

“Hard Beauty provides services, both at our location in Colorado Springs and our location in Castle Rock,” Kuhwede. “We also do everything virtually. We have a free online platform where people can find the Tougher Together group as well as other groups that we hold every single week.”

The state launched a public awareness campaign, Tough as a Mother, which helps pregnant and parenting mothers find treatment and support. To help provide direct support in the community, the campaign launched the Tougher Together support group.

“When we started, we kind of looked nationally to see if there were awareness campaigns for pregnant and parenting people to look to for substance misuse and substance use disorder,” Marketing Team Member, Tough as a Mother, Erin Autrey, said. “And there truthfully wasn’t. So Tough as a Mother was born as a statewide public awareness campaign for the state of Colorado, our goal is to decrease stigma around maternal substance use disorder, and connect pregnant and parenting people with treatment and community resources.”

In terms of how many mothers struggle with substance use disorder and substance use challenges, Autrey provided some statistics.

“From 2000 to 2014, there was a 26% overall increase in census in maternal mortality across the United States, and that consists of substance overdose and then also death by suicide,” Autrey said. “And so that’s the most common form of maternal mortality amongst women, and they’re both preventable.”

In the collaboration between Tough as a Mother and HardBeauty, the free weekly online support group was created. The purpose – is to support Colorado mothers who struggle with substance use disorder and who are looking for a community in their recovery journey.

“So it’s a space you can come as you are and you don’t have to find a babysitter to come,” Kuhwede said. “You don’t have to stop your life to come take care of yourself. Because often as mothers, we have to do everything, and we have to make sure that we’re working. We have to make sure that we’re paying attention to our recovery.”

The weekly online support group is on Monday nights at 6:30 p.m.

“But what’s really cool is that we’re seeing a diverse amount of age, you know, a span in ages and also across the state,” said Autrey.

The need to support maternal substance misuse is a key factor in this campaign.

“So if we can really develop empathy in the community and really help people come around a mom and support her instead,” Autrey said. “Help her get the support she needs so she can seek that treatment, whether that be childcare, transportation, food security, housing, whatever those factors are, because we know those are the reasons actually, she doesn’t seek treatment.”

Kuhwede’s children expressed the impact their mother has had on their lives.

“We’ve come along and she’s come a long way with what she’s doing, and she’s teaching me a lot about just going after what you want and just being independent and just going for it,” Kuhwede’s son, Sean Everman-Hightower, said.

Kuhwede was able to change the outcome of her own life and now positively changes the lives of strangers too.

“I literally talk about it all the time to like everyone I meet,” Kuhwede’s daughter, Kendal Rose Kuhwede, said. “I tell them what my mom does.”