‘It’s just giving back a little hope’; North woman pens book about recovery

Paige Renee Jeffcoat was plunged into a dark world as she battled drug, alcohol and other addictions in her life.

She’s hoping a book she wrote about her recovery will offer some hope and insight for others on the same journey.

The North resident self-published a book titled “God Spoke To Me Today.” It is a 110-page odyssey into how she battled back from her addictions.

“It’s my recovery journey. It’s my testimony. It’s basically what it was like living that life and how my life changed through recovery and then finding God,” Jeffcoat said.

Jeffcoat, the daughter of North couple Earl and Barbara Jeffcoat, works as a bookkeeper at Jeffcoat’s Tax and Payroll Service in North. Her father is the town’s former mayor.

She said she wanted to share her experiences with others “to let them know that it’s OK to share your problems with others because until we admit our problems, we can’t fix them.”

Jeffcoat is director of Rivers Oaks Assisting Recovery LLC, a nonprofit to which she’s donating 100 percent of her book proceeds. She is also working on procuring a site for the nonprofit designed to assist others in their recovery journeys.

“What I have been doing right now is helping people get into recovery … or giving them a helping hand up after they’ve been through recovery. I just recently helped someone get their driver’s license back so he could get back and forth to work,” said Jeffcoat, who is a volunteer certified peer support specialist with FAVOR SC.

FAVOR SC and its chapters provide fee-free recovery coaching in the state through volunteer-certified peer support specialists as part of its services.

“I’m working on a business plan now to open an outpatient/inpatient recovery center in North. … I’m hoping those proceeds will eventually get great enough that it will help me open this because the funding is high. I’m applying for grants as well,” Jeffcoat said.

She continued, “I’m also partnering with two different ministries, Rainbow Promise in Gaston and The Remnant in Swansea. We’re all going to work in conjunction with each other because each one offers something different. The one in Swansea will offer like parenting skills, life skills and different things like that and, hopefully, we’ll be able to open what I guess would be like transitional housing.

“But we’re going to all work together because it takes more than one. It takes a bunch of us to work together. There’s a few of us in North that are working together to get this going, but it takes time.”

In the meantime, she hopes her book that outlines her climb upward from addiction will be a beacon of light for someone in darkness.

“It took me three years to write it. It was growth, growing through that and letting people know that just because you let go of the alcohol and the drugs doesn’t mean the problems aren’t still there. The problems are there.

“It wasn’t the alcohol and drugs that were the problem, it was the underlying issues that we never faced. It’s just that those substances covered them. It’s just about giving back a little hope and a little testimony that it might not be easy, but it’s doable,” she said.

Jeffcoat’s book can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/God-Spoke-Today-Paige-Jeffcoat/dp/B0B5RWKPVW.