The Princess of Wales heard moving stories from people recovering from addiction and praised the outdoors as "so vital for healing" during a visit to a garden where people in recovery can embrace nature.
Kate visited Garon Park in Southend, Essex, where charity the Forward Trust hosts weekly gardening sessions for recovering addicts it supports. She was shown around the cricket ground, which has a wellbeing walk and gardening area where people on the Forward Trust’s Southend Treatment and Recovery Service (Stars) can go to walk and talk, or try their hand at gardening.
Service user shares personal story
Kate met service users including recovering alcoholic Steph Sampson, who told the princess how in the depths of her addiction she lied to her children about her alcohol consumption.
"I found out that there was a trauma that I buried so deep that I didn’t think was a problem, but actually it really was," she told the princess on Thursday. "I had counselling for that, which was a massive sigh of relief."
Ms Sampson, 45, of Leigh-on-Sea, told Kate of a moving letter her daughter Mia, 21, wrote to her begging her to give up alcohol which was a turning point. She has now been sober for more than six months with the help of the Forward Trust.
Princess praises 'fantastic environment'
Kate congratulated Ms Sampson for her hard work and said "I bet" when Ms Sampson said her children are "so proud" of her. Ms Sampson, who is now a peer mentor at Stars, told reporters Kate was "very touched" by her story.
"You could tell she (the Princess of Wales) was genuinely pleased for me, and (she) could tell that I had come a long way," she said.
Kate lauded the greenspace as a "fantastic environment" and told Liam King, who leads conservation at Garon Park: "Spaces like this are so vital for lots of different organisations to be able to come together and use. Often people don’t know where to go."
Addiction Awareness Week campaign
The Princess of Wales, who is patron of the Forward Trust and made her visit to mark Addiction Awareness Week, said the outdoors is "so vital for healing". She met people on the Forward Trust’s treatment and recovery service who were planting seedlings as part of the weekly gardening sessions.
Kate spoke to people about the importance of "understanding the root causes" of addiction and "starting the conversation". She launched the first Addiction Awareness Week in 2021 on behalf of the trust.
For this year’s campaign week, which began on Saturday and runs until Friday, the Forward Trust is aiming to start 17,000 conversations about addiction, to mark the number of lives lost to drug or alcohol-related causes in the UK each year.
