256 Odyssey House Journals - Kim Gomez256 Odyssey House Journals - Kim Gomez
Odyssey House Journals
Kim Gomez recounts her journey from teenage homelessness, addiction and domestic violence to long-term sobriety and founding Kourageous Vision for women. The conversation highlights faith, practical support, and the power of sharing lived experience in prisons and treatment centres.
30:00•7 Aug 2026
From Smoking Meth Out of a Light Bulb to Leading 1,900 Women: Kim Gomez’s Kourageous Vision
Episode Overview
- Open communication with adolescents about family changes can reduce confusion, anxiety and long-term trauma.
- Familiar but harmful environments, such as violent relationships, often repeat when there is no healthy roadmap or support.
- Addiction can coexist with work and apparent stability, making the deception of "functioning" substance use especially dangerous.
- Faith and community support can be central to some people's turning points, including sudden shifts away from drugs and alcohol.
- Structured life-skills teaching, practical help and consistent relationship-building can help women start investing in themselves after addiction and incarceration.
“The last time I ever got high was smoking meth out of a light bulb.”
Experience the emotional and inspiring tales of recovery as Kim Gomez shares how a teenage spiral into homelessness, addiction and domestic violence eventually led to a life devoted to helping other women. You'll hear how a 15-year-old girl, caught in the fallout of her parents' divorce and shut out of honest conversation, drifted into couch surfing, gang culture and daily drinking while still trying to make it to school.
Kim talks openly about being "smoking meth out of a light bulb" at just 108 pounds, cycling through violent relationships and juggling motherhood with a chaotic drug-fuelled lifestyle. Her daughter grew up in the midst of this, and Kim doesn’t sugar-coat the guilt or the compromises she made for substances and men.
The turning point comes in a Las Vegas motel and then a small Christian church in Salt Lake City, where she says she walked in with "high heels, mini skirt, tank top, no bra, black eye" and walked out on a Wednesday night having given her life to Jesus. By Friday, she says she "couldn't smoke, couldn't drink, couldn't even smoke a cigarette" and has been sober for around 22 years.
From there, Kim describes building a career at Huntsman Cancer Foundation, keeping her past quiet for years, before feeling called to start Kourageous Vision, a women's non-profit grounded in faith, life skills and her own story. She now teaches in prisons, treatment centres and sober living homes, reporting contact with over 1,900 women and offering classes, clothing and haircuts.
With host Randall Carlisle and clinical therapist Jackie Buckman gently probing and validating Kim's experiences, the conversation mixes hard-hitting detail with practical hope. If you're looking for raw honesty, a faith-based recovery journey and ideas on how women can invest in themselves after trauma and addiction, this one is likely to resonate and might spark questions about where your own turning point could come from.
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