A Story of Hope - Bethesda Workshops

Erica Vaughn

As Bethesda Workshops’ Marketing Director, Erica helps share the hope and healing available at Bethesda. Her work includes creating our messages shared through email, social media, and on our website.

She brings experience in marketing several small businesses and non-profit organizations in the Southeast. Erica earned her BS in Business Administration in Marketing from Appalachian State University and completed a certificate program in Digital Marketing with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She and her husband have three kids. She enjoys traveling with her family to the Carolina beaches and mountains.

Shelly Gibbs

Shelly Gibbs is a nonprofit consultant and business coach who partners with organizations and individuals navigating their next season of growth. Her work centers on three pillars: strategy, systems, and staff — the building blocks of sustainable, thriving organizations.

Before launching her practice, Shelly served as Executive Director of NorthState Care Clinic and Director of Moral Revolution, two nonprofits dedicated to equipping and empowering people to live as their best, truest selves.

Shelly brings a whole-person perspective to her work, grounded in the belief that we are tri-polar beings — body, soul, and spirit — and that lasting transformation requires all three. She partners with people in their pursuit of freedom, peace, and abundance, holding firmly to this: we are better together.

She holds a BA in Liberal Studies and a Multi-Subject Teaching Credential from Simpson University. A Northern California native, she's now rooted in the Pacific Northwest.

Melissa Haas

Melissa Haas serves as the spouse-supporting therapist at HopeQuest. Melissa has a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy and is a licensed professional counselor. Passionate about spiritual community, healthy marriages, and intimacy with God, Melissa regularly facilitates small groups and teaches and speaks on these topics in order to help the Body of Christ grow relationally with God and each other.

Melissa and her husband Troy have been married for thirty-four years and have three adult children and one grand-daughter. They have devoted their lives to helping others find hope and freedom from addiction, giving back the comfort they have received on their own journeys of healing.

Daniel Kiser

Daniel is a Licensed Marital and Family Therapist in the state of Tennessee. He has earned master degrees in Marital and Family Therapy and Biblical Studies from Lee University. Throughout his clinical experience, he has demonstrated clinical effectiveness working with adolescents and families through utilization of evidenced based approaches in his roles as a counselor, clinical supervisor, and behavioral health manager. He has worked with adolescents with severe suicidal behaviors, anxiety, depression, aggression, and high-risk behaviors in residential treatment. Addressed the relational distress within the parent-child relationship created by their child’s disruptive behavioral responses, helping parents through their despair, resentment, and disillusionment. He is invested in the integration of theology and psychology, believing that activation of human longings, desires, and vitality for life is based upon both disciplines. Aside from professional development, he also has experienced the profound impact of a transformative therapeutic relationship that provides accountability, exploration of underlying wounds and thoughts, and compassionate care. Counseling is oriented towards reclaiming, rediscovering, and restoring vital aspects of human development and he is eager to help others in their process as well.

Former Healing for Women Participant

Bethesda has a special place in my heart. I was a sex and love addict for 30 years and I am so thankful Bethesda started my journey of recovery, and I have been off my bottom lines for 2 years 4 months! Praise God!

My addiction started at a very young age. I was conceived out of an affair and my mom wanted to have an abortion. My biological father never claimed me as his child. The man my mom was married to claimed me as his child and put his name on my birth certificate. At 2 years old my mom and dad divorced, and I moved to California with my mom. I didn't know it at the time, but she was a sex and love addict. She was constantly having men over. It was a constant revolving door.

She was a nurse and I'm not a 100% convinced that she didn’t sell prescription drugs. I lived with my brother, my sister, and my mom until I was about 10 years old. By then, my brother and sister couldn't take the chaos anymore. They moved out so I was alone with my mom, and the number of men coming in and out of the house only became worse. I have learned in the past couple years by doing the EMDR therapy that I was sexually abused by several men.

None of that is an excuse. It's just my story.

At 12 years old I got my first boyfriend, and I never stopped. I went from one boy to the next, to the next. I would always break up with them before they broke up with me. I ended up getting married in my early 20s when I found a nice Christian man. He was devoted to the Lord and was a devoted husband, however, after a few years I had my first affair and confessed it in therapy and said I would never do it again.

About 5 years later, I had a series of traumatic events happening that included my father passing away, my neighbor passing away, and a violent miscarriage. I didn't deal with any of it, and I ended up having a series of affairs in a period of about 4 months. I had about 7 affairs during that time and the last man I was with was who I left my husband and children for.

Obviously that relationship was chaotic and ridiculous and I spent 3 years in chaos with that man. All the while, my children had a front row seat to is. After I was physically abused by him, God graciously provided me a home. I decided then that I wasn't going to live like that anymore. My ex-husband and father of my children saw how I was coming around. I was really growing and doing well. In October of 2016 my ex-husband and I remarried. Our family was whole again!

Things were great at first and then COVID hit. I've come to learn as an addict, big stressors are important to pay attention to because I will act out. I need to label and recognize my feelings and deal with them instead of ignoring them.

I felt I wasn't important during COVID. My husband went back to work. I was working from home. I felt isolated, and I ended up having another affair in 2020. In 2022 I was discovered again by my husband and he said, “I think something is deeply wrong with you” and I agreed.

I came home from that affair and started researching women in affairs and ran across Marnie's book, and I ordered it. I read it faster than I had ever read any book in my life! I couldn't believe that there was someone out in the world just like me. I thought I was alone. I thought I was the only one who was like this. I thought I was the whore in town. At the back of her book, it talked about Bethesda workshops, and I knew that's where I needed to be.

I went to Bethesda and there was a room of women who were just like me, I wasn't alone anymore, I couldn't believe it! The exercises we did at Bethesda changed my life, especially the one where we did the maze and I was blindfolded. I was one of the last people out of the maze because I couldn't understand that I could ask for help. It was the first time in my adult life that I said “Will you help me?”. It was life-changing for me. The second thing that was life-changing for me was when we put our heads down and listened to the song Rescue by Lauren Dagle. I felt like the Lord was rescuing me with that moment.

I came home from Bethesda, and I joined SLAA and I continued to go to meetings. I used to go to a lot of meetings. Now I just go to one meeting a week. I struggled my first year with my sobriety.

In 2023 I realized that I was at the point of suicide. It was either stop talking to Him. By God's grace and mercy and my sponsor, I have been off my bottom lines for 2 years and 4 months!

I have had a handful of sponsees and have helped them walk through the steps. I have a sponsor that I keep in touch with, and I go to meetings once a week. When I'm able to share my story, I always talk about what Bethesda is and how it was the first step in my recovery process. I'm so thankful to be sober today. To be clear headed and present with my family. To be loved by God, he knows me from the beginning of my story until now. I hope to continue to help other women throughout my lifetime and stay off my bottom lines forever, but right now I still take it One Day at a Time.