Henry County Women's Recovery Center

A quiet place to begin restoring what addiction took.

We walk alongside women ready to leave addiction behind — healing the mind, body, and spirit underneath it, not just the behavior.

No woman is turned away for inability to pay. Scholarships are made possible by donors.

Woman looking out toward the horizon, a moment of hope and freedom

New Castle, Indiana

Our WhyThe story behind the center ProgramsHow the healing works Our TeamWho walks with you GiveSponsor a woman's healing

A hand resting open, a symbol of release and healing

"My deliverance isn't just for my freedom. It's to be shared — to provide hope and proof that the best days are yet to come." A member of our founding team

Our Why

This center exists because someone finally reached one of us.

This center wasn't built from a business plan. It was built by women who had already lived through addiction and found their way out — women who know that freedom comes first, but healing takes longer, and means finally facing the trauma underneath the addiction itself.

They didn't create a program and go looking for women to fill it. They built the place they wished had existed for them — one where women are known, healed at the root, and walked with until they're truly, fully free.

Read the full story

What Sets Us Apart

We treat the whole woman — mind, body, and spirit. And we start with the mind.

Most programs focus on stopping a behavior. We start earlier — with why it started.

Where we start

Mind

Trauma-informed care and brain-rewiring practices help women get to the root cause — not just manage the symptom.

Our focus

Where it takes hold

Body

Recovery lives in the nervous system. We help women calm survival responses and build lasting steadiness.

Where it's anchored

Spirit

We're faith-based, and it quietly shapes what we do — with no requirement to believe before you belong.

Our approach

Trauma-Informed,
By Design

Before we ask a woman to change a habit, we ask what that habit has been protecting her from. We heal the trauma first — because addressing the root is what makes the change actually last.

We're a faith-based center — quietly, not loudly. Never a requirement to walk through our door.

Programs

How the healing actually happens

Our offerings grow as the center does — this is a picture of how we work, not a fixed schedule.

Brain Rewiring

Using the brain's own ability to form new, healthier patterns to calm survival responses and build lasting peace of mind.

Inner Healing & Coaching

One-on-one coaching that gets to root causes — releasing what's been carried, and building a real plan for what's next.

Equine Therapy

Time with horses builds trust, self-awareness, and calm in a way that doesn't need words to work.

No woman is turned away for inability to pay — scholarships are available.

Explore All Programs

In Their Words

What women in the program are saying

"I've been faithfully doing my brain rewiring practices every day, and the noise that used to be in my mind is finally quiet."

Julie, Program Participant

"The inner healing sessions get to the root cause of my addiction and allow real healing in ways I never thought possible."

Stacy, Program Participant

"This program has given me hope for my mental health without a diagnosis and medication — exactly what I'd been looking for."

Dana, Program Participant

Your gift becomes someone's turning point.

Every gift helps fund scholarships and coaching for women ready to heal.

Sponsor a Woman's Healing Read Our Story

Our Story

We didn't set out to start a nonprofit. We set out to survive.

This is the honest version — where the center came from, and why it looks the way it does.

Long before there was a building, a board, or a name, there were just a few women in Henry County who had lived through addiction and come out the other side — and who couldn't shake the feeling that they weren't done yet.

Our founder's story starts young. Abuse in the home at thirteen led her to alcohol not long after, and it became the thing that felt closest to her — the one constant she could count on, even as it slowly took everything else. By her mid-twenties, she was exhausted in the specific way that only comes from trying and failing to quit something on your own, over and over. A coworker invited her to church almost as an afterthought. She went, and something in her knew it was time to change.

But faith didn't erase the addiction overnight. That's a detail she's always been honest about. Sobriety and healing turned out to be two different things, and the second one took much longer than the first. It meant finally going back into the trauma she'd never actually dealt with — the abuse, the shame, the years of using it to disappear — and letting that be healed instead of just managed around. Emotional healing work gave her a way to forgive, to grieve, and to break patterns that had quietly passed through her family for a generation.

That process became the blueprint. When she felt the pull, years later, to start something for other women in Henry County walking the same road, she didn't build a generic treatment program and hope it helped. She built the thing she wished someone had handed her — one that treats trauma as the starting point, not an afterthought, and one where faith is present but never forced on anyone walking through the door.

She wasn't alone for long. Other women with their own histories found their way to the mission — a former foster and adoptive mother who had watched addiction move through generations of the families she cared for; a woman who was arrested at twenty-five in the depths of an eight-year addiction and found, days later, that her life could still be completely rewritten; a family engagement coach who has spent two decades advocating for children and families in crisis, and who describes her own recovery as something she now exists to hand back to others. Read more about the people carrying this forward on Our Team.

"The Lord revealed to me that it was time — time to step into the calling that had been placed on my life a long time ago." Meagan Kraus, Co-Founder & Executive Director

Today, Henry County Women's Recovery Center exists to offer that same path to any woman ready to take it: a faith-based, trauma-informed program that treats addiction as a symptom and works patiently toward the root cause underneath it — restoring mind, body, and spirit, in that order, one relationship at a time.

We're still growing. Our programs shift and expand as the center does, and we're working toward a future home — a quieter, residential space in the countryside where the same healing can happen at an even deeper level, alongside horses, open sky, and room to breathe. What doesn't change is the why: someone reached us when we needed it most, and now it's our turn to reach back.

Looking ahead

A Home
to Heal

Nestled in the quiet of the countryside, our future home is envisioned as a true sanctuary for healing — a residential space that nurtures the whole woman through evidence-informed brain-rewiring practices, paired with the grounding presence of equine therapy.

Surrounded by open sky and fresh air, it's designed as a calm, unrushed place where women can step away from life's noise and reconnect with themselves and their faith. This vision is still being built — through the generosity of donors who believe Henry County deserves a place like this.

Support the Building Fund

Ready to take the next step?

If you or a woman you love is ready to leave addiction behind, we'd be glad to talk with you.

Explore Our Programs Contact Us

Women's Program

A path built around each woman, not a one-size schedule.

HCWRC offers a supportive, faith-based program for women choosing to leave addiction behind — built around weekly rhythms tailored to each woman's needs, aimed at healing in mind, body, and spirit.

Our programs and schedule evolve as the center grows — reach out for what's currently offered.

What's Included

Seven ways we work toward the root

Brain Rewiring

Grounded in neuroplasticity — the brain's own ability to heal and form new, healthy connections. Women learn to recognize a dysregulated nervous system stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, and how to calm it, opening up the part of the brain where real change, creativity, and connection happen.

Addiction Recovery Coaching

Individualized, one-on-one coaching is at the center of the program. Women meet regularly with a recovery coach to set goals, monitor progress, and identify the specific challenges and triggers that get in the way — leaving with a real plan for maintaining recovery.

Inner Healing

Sessions that create space to release forgiveness, work through a traumatic past, break generational patterns, and replace old, false beliefs with something truer — the work that makes the rest of recovery possible.

Equine Therapy

Time spent building a real connection with a horse cultivates self-awareness, trust, and emotional healing. Horses lower stress and anxiety in a way that regulates emotion, builds confidence, and teaches healthy coping — no words required.

Bible Study

A gentle study of who God is, offered as one part of the program rather than the whole of it — for women who want to explore that side of their healing, at their own pace.

Life Skills Coaching

Working from the values a woman identifies with her coach, this coaching tackles the practical life skills that often went undeveloped during years of addiction — the everyday footing recovery needs to stand on.

Family Relationship Coaching

Tools for families to engage well — both during the recovery process and long after it — because healing a woman almost always means helping her family heal alongside her.

No woman is turned away for inability to pay.

Scholarships are made possible by generous sponsors who believe every woman deserves the chance to heal, regardless of what she can afford.

Sponsor a Woman's Healing Ask About Enrolling

Teen Support

Reaching the next generation, before the pattern takes hold.

Addiction rarely starts in isolation — it's often carried, generation to generation, through unresolved trauma. As Henry County Women's Recovery Center grows, part of our vision is reaching teen girls and families earlier, before that pattern has the chance to repeat.

Several of the women who lead this center have watched addiction move through their own families — as mothers, as adoptive parents, as former foster parents who've cared for children whose biological mothers couldn't escape it. That experience is part of why teen and family support is part of our long-term vision, alongside the women's program.

The goal is the same trauma-informed, mind-body-spirit approach we use with the women in our program — adapted for teen girls and the families around them, with an emphasis on early support, healthy coping, and breaking generational patterns before they take root.

This part of our mission is still taking shape. Reach out below to hear about current offerings and how to get involved as they grow.

Get in Touch About Teen Support

Help this part of the mission grow.

Every gift toward Henry County Women's Recovery Center helps build toward a future where teens and families have somewhere to turn, too.

Give Toward Our Future

Our Team

Every woman who leads here has walked this road herself.

Meet the community leaders who share a common calling: to walk with the women in our program the way someone once walked with them.

Meagan Kraus

Co-Founder & Executive Director

Meagan is the co-founding Executive Director of Henry County Women's Recovery Center. She's a certified Addiction and Recovery Mental Health Coach and a certified Restoring the Foundations minister, with years of ministry experience including Bible Study Fellowship and a local Pregnancy Care Center. She's also the author of a children's book on identity and purpose. Meagan leads the center's community relationships and long-term direction — driven by a desire to see women set free from addiction and restored in mind, body, and soul.

"It's time to step into the calling that was placed on my life a long time ago."

Susan Elsworth

Associate Director & Family Engagement Coach

Susan holds degrees in Criminal Justice and Business Management, along with a Master's in Mental Health Coaching from Light University. She's a certified Peer Recovery Coach and Indiana Foster Parent Trainer, and has served as Executive Director of two family-focused nonprofits. Susan spent two decades as a professional advocate for children and families facing special challenges — and, as a mother of thirteen children, most adopted through the foster system, she brings that experience directly into her work here.

"My deliverance isn't just for my freedom. It's to be shared — to provide hope and proof that the best days are yet to come."

Shelly Hanson

Brain Rewiring Coach

Shelly's own recovery began in 2003, and since then she's pursued the study of mind renewal deeply — training in Transformation Prayer Ministry, Sozo, and Restoring the Foundations, and serving as an Emotional Healing Minister for fifteen years. She holds a certification in Brain Rewiring Coaching and previously served as a Next Generation Pastor. She's also a Chaplain at the Henry County Jail. Shelly is married with six children and four grandchildren.

"My purpose in life is to liberate wholeness in others."

Join the Team

We're always glad to hear from people who share this calling.

From recovery coaching to fundraising and grant writing, there are a handful of ways to get involved beyond a program spot.

View Volunteer Roles

Give

Your gift becomes someone's healing.

Every dollar helps fund scholarships, coaching, and the programs that walk women from addiction back to themselves. Give below, and tell us what moved you — it helps us see what's resonating, without tying your gift to any one thing.

What Your Gift Supports

Where the need is right now

These reflect our current priorities — they're meant to show you the impact of giving, not to lock your donation to a single outcome. Every gift goes toward keeping the mission moving, wherever it's needed most.

Mission Sustaining Fund

$10,165 of $78,500

Keeps the day-to-day ministry running — coaching, curriculum, and staff who walk with women week to week.

Scholarship & Sponsorship

94 gifts so far

Ensures no woman is turned away for inability to pay. This is the fund most gifts flow into.

Equine Therapy Program

Ongoing

Covers the care and upkeep that makes equine-assisted healing sessions possible.

A Home to Heal — Building Fund

$170 of $2,000,000

Our long-term vision: a residential home in the countryside for deeper, longer-term healing.

Prefer to give supplies instead? See our monthly Amazon wishlist — reach out and we'll send the link.

Make a Gift

One-time or monthly — every amount helps.

Frequency

Amount

What made you interested in giving?

Our Story & Mission The Women's Program Equine Therapy A Home to Heal (Future Home) Teen & Family Support Something Else

This just helps us understand what resonates with donors — your gift supports the mission as a whole, not this specific program, so it's never at risk if plans shift.

I'd like to add $2.90 to cover transaction fees

A quiet place to begin restoring what addiction took.

This center exists because someone finally reached one of us.

We treat the whole woman — mind, body, and spirit. And we start with the mind.

Mind

Body

Spirit

Trauma-Informed,By Design

How the healing actually happens

Brain Rewiring

Inner Healing & Coaching

Equine Therapy

What women in the program are saying

Your gift becomes someone's turning point.

We didn't set out to start a nonprofit. We set out to survive.

A Hometo Heal

Ready to take the next step?

A path built around each woman, not a one-size schedule.

Seven ways we work toward the root

Brain Rewiring

Addiction Recovery Coaching

Inner Healing

Equine Therapy

Bible Study

Life Skills Coaching

Family Relationship Coaching

No woman is turned away for inability to pay.

Reaching the next generation, before the pattern takes hold.

Help this part of the mission grow.

Every woman who leads here has walked this road herself.

Meagan Kraus

Susan Elsworth

Shelly Hanson

We're always glad to hear from people who share this calling.

Your gift becomes someone's healing.

Where the need is right now

Mission Sustaining Fund

Scholarship & Sponsorship

Equine Therapy Program

A Home to Heal — Building Fund

Make a Gift

A Big Thanks to Our Sponsors

Which program are you registering for?

Experience Freedom From Addiction You Desire

Trauma-Informed,
By Design

A Home
to Heal