Barb Williamson: owning sober living houses

Barb Williamson had a really inspiring story about how she herself opened a sober living facility after 14 months of recovery. The fact that what started out as something that seemed like it wouldn’t happen ended up expanding to 13 houses is incredible. Most people don’t have the courage or the drive to open up one sober living facility yet alone 13. Williamson talked about how she makes her rounds every day circling through her various recovery houses and how she has everything down to a system for her employees at the houses.

I think there need to be more people out there like Williamson who are willing and ready to serve the public like this. I, for one, believe very strongly in sober living houses as it is my goal to one day open one in my uncle’s honor. Seeing people like Williamson live out what is still a dream to me is so inspiring and uplifting that it can be done, can be done well and even be done on a relatively large scale. I only ever thought of opening up one house, but who knows what could happen.

Brianna Cicero

Brianna is a senior journalism major at Temple University with a concentration on Editorial Management. She is currently a Content Strategist Intern and Editor-in-Chief for Odyssey, the Editorial Director of Temple's chapter of Spoon University and the Deputy Director of Parliament Communications for Temple Student Government. This past summer, Brianna worked for her local, hometown paper, LNP and LancasterOnline, covering events and issues important to the people of Lancaster County. She is also a 2016 alumna of The Fund For American Studies' Institute on Political Journalism where she covered the 2016 election in Washington D.C for a political startup, The Stream, as well as attended briefings at publications like The Washington Post. In addition, she has previously served as a contributor for BuzzFeed, was a staff reporter for Eastern University's newspaper, The Waltonian, and was the EditorinChief of Eastern's literary magazine, Inklings. Contact Brianna at brianna.cicero@temple.edu .