XENIA, Ohio — Women struggling after drug addiction now have another place to turn for housing and to find work.

What You Need To Know

  • Melissa Shelley said she struggled with drug addiction for two decades before she got clean and used what she went through to help 

  • She started the 'Hope Hub' in Xenia, a place that houses women trying to get back on their feet after addiction 

  • Shelley says so far the house has been full but she hopes to expand and add volunteers to the program to help 

For Melissa Shelley, it all started at a coffee shop. She was in recovery from a drug addiction that crippled her life for 20 years.

“The thing that took me the furthest was heroin, it started out with marijuana when I was about 13 or 14 years old, I had experienced some sexual abuse as a young child... and so I didn’t know how to deal with it,” said Shelley. 

She said she lost everything to drugs, her home, her family, but she said even after jail time and recovery centers, she was still at a loss.

“I had nothing to my name, no license, no car, no clothes, and so I had to completely rebuild my life. I had to restore my relationship with my children. I had to get a job, get my license, take care of probation, and my first instinct when I stepped out was like, ‘Holy crap, this is way too much. There’s no way I can do this,’” said Shelley. 

That’s when she found faith and ‘The Coffee Hub,’ a small shop in Xenia, which gave her a job, her second chance.

In fact, she says many of the workers employed here are in addiction recovery, so she continued hers, started to manage the shop, and started something new.

Almost ten years clean and she now runs her own nonprofit, ‘The Hope Hub’ in Xenia, a place that helps women in recovery get back on their feet and have a place to stay while they’re doing it.

Shelley said she’s currently helping four women, and has some on the waiting list.

“There are multiple places where women can go to treat the symptoms of addiction immediately and the piece that we serve is after treatment, so it’s like, now I’m sober. So now what do I do with my life?” said Shelley. 

She said she hopes to expand the program and give more women another chance to live and work.

“I don’t think we do something magical here, I just think that like we’ve lived it and god has given us the opportunity to give to someone else what’s been given to us,” said Shelley. 

If you or someone you know is suffering from drug addiction and needs help, you can find more information about ‘The Hope Hub’ here.