Best gift ever for twin girls: A sober mom

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Amber Gleave plays with her 3-year-old twins Jayde, left, and Jaycee, right. Gleave has been in the House of Hope treatment program since March and will stay at House of Hope with the twins during the holiday season. House of Hope is a residential treatment program for drug-addicted women and their children. It has more than 45 women who will be spending their holidays at the center trying to stay drug free.

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Nothing could relieve Amber Gleave's holiday hurt like heroin -- until the threat of losing her children led her to the House of Hope.

Now, the mother of two is approaching Christmas sober for the first time in years, thanks to the residential treatment center for women. The facility on Salt Lake City's scenic South Temple Street looks more like a bed-and-breakfast than a home for recovering addicts.

"This is what I want," Gleave says. "I want to be here over the holidays. I need to get through a holiday sober."

So Gleave -- with her 3-year-old daughters, Jaycee and Jayde -- will spend the mistletoe season at the House of Hope, where dozens of mothers are battling their demons of addiction and learning how to parent their children.

Outside of a reformed mom, Gleave has little to give her twin girls this Christmas. The young mother has spent eight months recovering from a drug habit, not making a living. So her daughters' wish lists for baby dolls and Dora the Explorer backpacks will depend largely on do-gooders who, each year, provide Christmas at the treatment center.

"Our women typically have nothing," says Melinda Murchie, director of House of Hope. "So all of Christmas comes from the outside -- from donations alone."

The same is true of many other nonprofit treatment centers such as Odyssey House and First Step House in Salt Lake City, where former addicts forfeit family gatherings and holidays at home to beat their

"Due to the economy, we have more people seeking services than we have a capacity to help," says Pat Fleming, who oversees Salt Lake County's substance-abuse division. "Most have families with young children. It is times like these that we need help from the community."

Salt Lake City's House of Hope is expected to have 44 women and 28 children under its care on Christmas morning. That's not counting almost 50 women in outpatient programs with more than 100 children who will lean on the House of Hope to provide presents for their families.

This long list of holiday needs leads the House of Hope into the community searching for donations. The center then offers those gifts to its mothers in exchange for completing chores, doing community service and plodding closer to their goal: drug-free living.

Gleave could have spent her Christmas at home. But she didn't want to, not when she still suffers from the seasonal depression that year after year dragged her into drugs.

That addiction has threatened to tear apart her family. The state warned her last spring that she could lose her daughters if she didn't seek help. So she did.

Now Gleave wants to come clean -- for them.

"My biggest fear," Gleave says, "is that when I walk out these doors, is the person I have become going to walk out with me?"

So the former addict is getting help through the holidays, hoping to stay sober even when facing those yuletide blues.

"If I don't stay sober, I don't have my kids," she says. And keeping them "is the most important thing for me."

Murchie says Christmas donations from the community make the holidays less stressful for people such as Gleave and help them learn to provide for their children the right way -- through work.

"These kids need healthy moms, especially during the holidays," Murchie says. "If we can help them be good parents for their kids and give them a safe holiday together, that is the best thing we could offer."

And even without money for toys and trinkets, Gleave is determined to give her daughters their best-ever Christmas gift: a sober mom.