Heroin addict is now a heroine: Mitchells Plain mom on a creative high after bettering her life
For more than a decade, she was hooked on drugs and went into a downward spiral.
Fast forward 13 years, Constance Heneke, from Mitchells Plain, is is an entrepreneur, hooked on making people smile, with her creative mind.
Constance, 36, owns engraving company Naturally Rooted, which makes anything from earrings to personalised wooden gifts.
She told the Daily Voice that she never pictured herself married, a mom of two and a businesswoman.
“I was still in school when I started experimenting with heroin. I thought I was just gonna try it and in the end, I couldn’t get myself out.
“By the time I woke up, I was far gone, like ek was nie meer daar nie (I wasn’t there anymore).
“I begged on the streets for my next hit, for 11 years … I never pictured this. I just pictured myself dying and no one would care or miss me,” she said.
Heneke’s life changed with a flyer she received from Victory Outreach Church, inviting her to a show called Puppet Master.
“I remember I was on my way to the drug merchant, when I got the flyer.
“I put that flyer in my back pocket and I still went to the drug merchant to buy my stuff and ended up at a drug house to go smoke.
“But while smoking, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I put something in my pocket, I read it and saw it was a show about drug addicts being controlled.
“I got home and my mother got the exact same flyer; I argued and said to her: ‘I don’t have a problem.’
“Then on the Friday, I ended up going to the show because I didn’t want to fight with my mom again.”
There and then, Heneke changed her life.
“I can’t explain it but that evening, I broke down, I think God just needed me to be there. I couldn’t stop crying, right through the show,” she recalled.
“The lady praying said she can take me with, and I agreed. My life has never ever been the same since.”
Now, Heneke has her own family and is living a happy and healthy life.
She also aims to get her own space to expand her business, and where she can, employ people from the Cape Flats, as well as inspire them to do better.
“I want to be the person who also gives them the benefit of the doubt that they can change and be the change for someone else.”
tracy-lynn.ruiters@inl.co.za
Daily Voice