If you feel like life has knocked you down from addiction, financial hardship, or just…

There's one thing that is a hallmark trait about conservatives is that conservatives never give up. No matter how hopeless things may seem, there is always a path back, whether it be elections or your life in general. And a person that embodies this spirit is back with us today to talk about her experience and also a private member's bill that she sponsored. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kelly DeRitter back to Northern Perspective. Thank you. So Kelly, you stood up in the house not too long ago and you talked about your experience. You told about this off camera and it really is, it's almost like a movie in some respects, in how far away you were from even a normal life and you managed to work all the way back from where you were now into the center of governance in the halls of parliament. Just talk us through what that was like, where you were and how you found the strength to get through it. So it can be hard to talk about sometimes, but I think it's just really important to share the story, my personal story of how you can struggle, but then you can conquer and then you can change your life and you can do different things. The reason why I think it's so important that I share my stories is because I really, the narrative in this country right now of people are addicted, let's just keep them there, let's just give them drugs, give them paraphernalia, give them what they need to be kept in the clutches of addictions, it's not okay because we don't have to be. We do not have to be kept in the clutches of addiction. For me personally, and I know the story is true with a lot of others, is that the root cause of addiction is trauma. All of our stories are different. It's a different level of trauma. It's all different, but it's trauma. It's our personal trauma that we have to work through to be properly healed and rehabilitated. That was my story, is that I had my own trauma, very young. I fell into addiction very young in high school and made terrible choices that I even had to personally own. You have to own your choices. You have to own your decisions to get out of it and you have to heal that trauma. I did that and that's literally all you have to do to get out of the clutches of addiction is just heal the trauma. I decided at 21 that that wasn't the life for me anymore. I was literally in a trap house, that's what I call them, drug dens, trap houses. I was looking around and it's dirty and gross and like, what am I doing? This isn't what I'm supposed to be doing while I'm here. I just decided I'm going to change and I did. I went to school to keep my mind occupied and I had no idea what I wanted to do actually. I applied for early childhood education, radio, broadcast, and television, or mechanical engineering specializing in robotics and automation because that sounded so cool. The only thing that I was accepted to was the robotics and automation, so that became my path and sometimes you don't know your path, you just got to take that step. Then I completed my schooling and built a career for myself and then decided that I wanted to do this crazy thing and blow up my life, run for parliament, and here we are today. It wasn't an easy time early in your life. You were homeless. On park benches and there's a specific park that you remember, maybe not fondly, but importantly. So Victoria Park is where I've slept. When I was in the Clouches of Addiction, it was a very different world at that time too. I didn't sleep in the open. There's a little forest area in the back of the park and it wasn't on the park benches, it was hiding. It was a very different world. There were no tent cities, there were no open drug use. It was very hidden when you had addiction issues. There were a few people that the community always knew at that time and most homeless were names, had names and the community took care of them. There was the few that were out in general public, but it wasn't the norm. The community didn't know me as living in tent city, didn't know me on those streets. I was young and I was trying to navigate my path and in Victoria Park, back hidden, I had slept a couple of nights and I stayed at Mary's Place, which was downtown Kitchener at the time. It doesn't exist anymore, but that was the women's shelter downtown. At the time, you make these choices and you end up where you end up and then you have to make different decisions for yourself. I do think of Victoria Park very fondly, actually, because I have great childhood memories in Victoria Park as well. You used to be able to skate on the lake there and so I would go with my mum and we would skate on the lake and Victoria Park has this symbolic, it's a piece of me, because I have great childhood memories there, I was also homeless there and now I'm the member of Parliament representing that park, so Victoria Park is a beautiful part of my past. I'm never going to feel regret for my past because it's made me who I am today and I actually am very proud of what I've overcome and the trauma that I've healed and what I've walked through to be the person that I am today. Anybody who's kept in the clutches of addiction right now, there's nothing to be ashamed of, nothing. You've made some choices, you are where you are, but you can totally change it and become a completely different person and there's this big, beautiful life on the other side of addiction. You just have to walk through your healing and your trauma to get to the other side of it. I think a lot of people are feeling some hopelessness in Canada right now, they're not necessarily an addiction, but they're in a spot where they're getting further and further behind on their bills or they're struggling with relationships or things like that. These are the stories that I think are really important to be told because it demonstrates that no matter how far you fall, you can always climb back up that mountain. Absolutely. Yeah, and so there's a couple of things that I would say to anybody who feels that they're falling right now is sometimes you need to fall to build. It's actually a part of life, it's like a cycle, right? You have to fall to build and we've all been through those cycles, but don't give up. Don't give up on Canada, don't give up on your government, don't give up on yourself, don't give up on your relationship, just don't give up. Push through and grow, grow from your fall and just have hope for your future because you're not going to be there forever. This isn't going to be forever, none of it ever is forever. You can change where you're at today, again, by just taking a step forward. Just one step forward to get out of whatever it is that you're going through right now. I know it can seem hopeless for a lot of people, especially if you're choosing between gas and groceries right now. I get that, I absolutely get that. It's a struggle for a lot of Canadians right now, but again, I'm saying this isn't going to be forever. We are going to change this and Canada will become the Canada that we knew before again.