In April of 2021, I came to Ranch House Recovery broke and broken. I was struggling with alcoholism and addiction, and I had reached a point where I genuinely could not see another way of living. My world had gotten incredibly small. I wasn’t thinking about owning a home, graduating from college, building a career, serving on a board, getting married, or becoming a father. I was trying to figure out how to get through the day. Somewhere along the way, drinking and using had gone from being something I did to something that controlled almost every part of my life. I knew the way I was living wasn’t sustainable, but I also couldn’t imagine what a different life could possibly look like.
Ranch House Recovery and Simple Promise Farms gave me a place to begin finding out. What makes the program so special is that recovery isn’t treated as something that happens in isolation. At Simple Promise Farms, there is an understanding that rebuilding a life requires more than simply removing drugs and alcohol. It requires purpose, responsibility, community, accountability, and the opportunity to become useful again. Through the structure and community surrounding Ranch House and the work at Simple Promise Farms, I began learning how to show up, contribute, accept responsibility, and become part of something bigger than myself. None of those things sound revolutionary on their own, but when your life has been consumed by addiction, they can be the building blocks for an entirely new way of living.
One of the things I appreciate most about Simple Promise Farms today is that it creates an environment where people can begin to see themselves differently. Addiction has a way of convincing you that your past is your identity and that your future has already been decided. The work being done through Ranch House Recovery and Simple Promise Farms challenges that idea every day. Men are given the time, space, support, and responsibility to begin rebuilding trust in themselves and with the people around them. For me, recovery started with doing the next right thing and then doing it again the following day. Eventually, those small decisions began adding up to a life I never could have envisioned when I first arrived.
Since leaving Ranch House, my life has changed in ways that would have seemed impossible to me in April of 2021. I went back to school and graduated from college. I have continued to grow professionally. I became a homeowner. I married the love of my life, and together we have built a family and a home that mean more to me than I could ever adequately put into words.
Most importantly, I became a father. My son will never know the version of me who walked into Ranch House desperate for a different life but unable to picture one. He gets to know me as his dad. I get to be present for him, provide for him, watch him grow, and build a future with my wife that once felt completely out of reach. Those things may sound ordinary to some people, but to me they are extraordinary. They are the life I once thought was unavailable to me.
Recovery hasn’t made life perfect, and Simple Promise Farms doesn’t promise that it will. What it offers is something far more valuable: a foundation on which people can build. Life still brings stress, disappointment, responsibility, and uncertainty. The difference is that today I have tools, relationships, and principles that allow me to face those things instead of running from them. Accountability, humility, hard work, service, community, and consistency were things I began practicing during one of the most difficult periods of my life. Five years later, they continue to influence the way I approach my family, my career, my education, and my recovery.
Today, I have the privilege of serving on the Board of Directors of Simple Promise Farms. There is something incredibly meaningful about going from needing an organization like this to having the opportunity to help strengthen it for the next person who walks through the door. I know firsthand what can happen when someone who has lost hope is given a real opportunity to rebuild. That is why I believe so strongly in the mission of Simple Promise Farms and Ranch House Recovery. Supporting this work isn’t simply supporting a treatment program or a farm. It is investing in people, families, futures, and second chances. In April of 2021, I could not have imagined the house, the diploma, the career, the marriage, the board seat, or the little boy who would one day call me Dad. Simple Promise Farms helped give me the environment and the opportunity to start building that life, one day at a time. I am incredibly grateful to now have the chance to help make that same opportunity possible for someone else.
-David Bassett, Simple Promise Farms Board Member
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