Missie Parran: Mapping a Life Beyond Survival
Before she was Missie the Peer Support Specialist – guiding people through recovery, earning her Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor credential, and winning the hearts and respect of her colleagues at the SPARC Foundation – Missie was a survivor of trauma, addiction, and her own inner doubts.
As a child in Michigan, she was an excellent student while navigating an upbringing heavy with mental illness and abuse. Neglect and violence shaped her worldview long before substances ever did. Eventually, drugs entered the picture, and it was decades before the life of her dreams came back into focus. “I did drugs for 12 years, every single day,” Missie says plainly. “And then I was clean for 11 years before I even heard the term ‘peer support’ and landed at SPARC… that’s when I really started the process of healing.” That distinction, between being clean and being healed, informs every step of her personal and professional life.
Missie didn’t start using until she was 35, after years of raising kids, navigating poverty, and enduring domestic abuse. When addiction took hold, it moved fast. She lost her home, her health, her children, and almost her life. “I was skin and bones. My mom was picking out clothes for my funeral,” she says. “I didn’t see a way out.” In 2008, after a suicide attempt she miraculously survived, Missie checked herself into a hospital. Nine days later, something shifted. “I believe in my heart that God finally answered my prayer and took away that problem,” she says. “That feeling to use never came back.” But staying clean wasn’t the same as being well. “I was clean but I wasn’t healed. I wasn’t recovering. I hadn’t even started yet.”
For more than a decade after getting clean, Missie believed her professional path had already peaked. She’d earned her GED years earlier, but after a dozen years of daily drug use and the upheaval it caused, she assumed her options were limited. She worked hard waiting tables, in convenience stores, and even became a general manager at a national pizza chain. Then she heard about something new: peer support – a role that uses lived experience and a code of ethics to guide others in recovery. Typical training cost hundreds of dollars, but she learned about a discounted program through Sunrise Recovery Community. “I didn’t have $350, but I had $30. And I thought… maybe this is a way to bring meaning to everything I’ve been through.” She drove to Franklin, NC for several weekends of coursework, earned her Certified Peer Support Specialist certificate, and for the first time in years, saw a path forward. That path led to SPARC.
Her interview at SPARC Foundation almost didn’t happen. “Missie didn’t show for her first interview because she was sick – from fear,” says her supervisor and mentor, Carrie Menke, Licensed Clinical Addiction Specialist. “She later told me that calling Jackie [SPARC’s Executive Director] to reschedule was the bravest thing she’d ever done.” The team decided to give her another chance. “SPARC hit the jackpot when we got Missie,” Carrie says. “What we would’ve missed!” From the start, Carrie saw something rare: “Her smile, her down-to-earth personality, her genuine care and concern – it all comes through the first time you meet her. Those qualities make her tops in her role.”
Looking back, Missie now sees her seemingly disjointed career path with fresh eyes. “All those jobs I had, they were preparation. It was all on-the-job training for what I’m doing now. I had to learn to be organized and talk to people, to come out of my shell again. Everything I went through became a map.”
Since joining SPARC in 2018, Missie earned an associate’s degree in Human Services with a concentration in substance use, graduating with honors. She then took on the arduous process of becoming a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor in 2021: 6,000 hours of field work, 270 hours of continuing education, and passing a national exam. She officially earned her CADC credential this summer in July. “Her experience and education only enhance her already natural ability to connect and serve,” Carrie says. She also helped develop SPARC’s Family Centered Treatment Recovery (FCTR) program, contributing ideas – like a client notebook – that remain central to the experience and success of clients today.
The impact of her work is already visible. Missie has watched former clients step into roles helping others, some even entering the recovery field themselves. “It gives me goose bumps,” she says. “It lets me know I’m on the right path.” Her own family has been part of that ripple effect. Her daughter, once struggling with addiction herself, has been in recovery for eight years, reclaimed her medical career, and is thriving.
For Missie, recovery is now about so much more than survival – it’s about dreaming again. While healing physically from the years of substance use and reconnecting with her adult children, she and her son began watching The Amazing Race. They’ve now seen all 37 seasons. “It became part of my recovery and our healing,” she says. “So symbolic – the challenge, the journey, the teamwork. It gave me hope.” Her next big goal: to compete on the CBS show with her son. “The only reason I’d ever hit pause on school is if we get called up to race! We are already working on our tape to apply for the show this year.”
Until then, she’s starting a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a focus on addiction this fall. “I’m a lifelong learner,” she says. “I’m doing well in school again, like when I was a kid.” Carrie saw that drive from day one. “We talked early on about how her substance use had kept her from life, from doing all the things she’d always wanted to do. Now she’s on fire to do them. Like a kid in a candy store.”
Missie still has moments of self-doubt. “I don’t cuss myself out in the mirror anymore though,” she says. “But I’m still learning to love me.” She has learned she belongs at the table with therapists, doctors, and other professionals. She’s built a family with her SPARC team. She’s helped create programs, passed tough exams, and walked with people through their darkest days. And she’s still dreaming – of the next degree, the next family she can support, and maybe even conquering a global reality show. “Everything I went through—looking back, it was a map,” she says. “And this work is where it was leading me all along.”