Treating addiction drives a former dancer

Kenyatta is an African American woman who became addicted to cocaine. Mother to one daughter, she had done jail time and became pregnant again while she was addicted.

Toni is a white woman who came to Wisconsin from Iowa. She had been sexually molested when she was 8, had come from a family where drinking alcohol was a common coping and escape mechanism, and became an alcoholic who would drink herself to sleep every day after work.

Both were able to turn their lives around at Meta House, and both of their stories are featured in Meta House’s annual report on its work in 2008. They were among the 311 women served during that year, and Kenyatta’s children were among the 165 children benefiting from the program that year.

Meta House is a Milwaukee-based facility that provides treatment for women with substance abuse disorders, and provides treatment and support for their children as well. It was founded in 1963 and today has a budget of about $5 million.

And for the past 26 years, it has been directed by a former ballet dancer. In fact, it was initially the opportunity to study dance that brought Francine Feinberg, 63, to Milwaukee from her native New York City.

“I danced my whole life, right through high school,” Feinberg said in a telephone interview on Dec. 9. She wanted “to balance my desire to go to college and to keep dancing. At the time, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was the only school that had a degree in classical ballet.”

And yet, at the back of her mind was an interest in psychology. She had a cousin who was a high school counselor, and Feinberg would visit her house and read her psychology books. Moreover, Feinberg said she had a thought that if or when she would retire from active dancing, she would go into dance therapy.

When in Milwaukee, however, she decided to switch fields. Dance became her minor, and she earned a master’s degree in psychiatric social work in 1976.

Shortly after becoming executive director at Meta House in 1983, she earned a doctor of psychology degree from the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology.

Meta House was one of the pioneers in understanding that women most of the time become substance abusers in different ways and for different reasons than do men, Feinberg said.

“When I started, the prescribed treatment for women was like that for men,” Feinberg said. “There was little to no understanding at that time of gender differences in how substance abuse starts in women, of the co-occurring mental health disorders that occur in women, of the different in physical impact between men and women.”

“The major difference that we found,” Feinberg continued, “was that in women with substance abuse disorders, the majority have histories of severe childhood trauma, including childhood physical and sexual abuse, which needs to be addressed and treated. Substance abuse is a symptom, a way of coping with that history.”

While it is not unheard of for men to have similar histories, it is not nearly as common. “Ninety-five percent of the women we see have that history.” Moreover that phenomenon exists “across the country, regardless of race, religion or ethnic background.”

Feinberg also said Meta House was one of the pioneers in understanding how women’s roles in society, especially as caregivers and mothers, need to be part of a treatment program.

In 1987, she said, Meta House instituted a program whereby women could bring their children to residential treatment. “They were no longer in that no-win situation of having to make a choice between getting treatment and having to leave their children,” said Feinberg.

This effort also gave Meta House staff members the opportunity to recognize the effects of mothers’ substance abuse upon the children and to treat them as well, she said.

Meta House has seen very few Jewish clients over the years, Feinberg said, and “that is not because [substance abuse among women] isn’t a problem [in the Jewish community]; it certainly is.”

But by and large, “there are other resources that Jewish women have in the community,” she said. “The majority of the women that we serve have long histories of poverty.”

Moreover, residential treatment “is something that seems only to get paid for by public funds,” which means people have to be impoverished enough to qualify for them, which most Jewish women are not, she said.

The woman behind Meta House apparently is not only well-organized, but hasn’t lost her creative streak, according to people who know her.

Roberta London is chair elect of Jewish Family Services. She has known Feinberg for some 23 years, both because they are related (“her grandfather and my grandfather were brothers”) and through London’s volunteer work at Meta House.

London said she watched Feinberg earn her doctorate while running Meta House and raising her daughter. “She had to be very organized and committed to each of those avenues in order to get it all done,” London said.

London also said that Feinberg “has this creative streak” that “some people wouldn’t expect” from an administrator. For example, Feinberg claims not to be competent at cooking or entertaining, “but if she volunteered to bring something, it was always with a beautiful presentation.”

London also pointed out that Feinberg was a pioneer feminist. When she married psychologist Ned Rubin some 32 years ago, she kept her maiden name, and “that wasn’t that common a thing to do then,” said London.

Hirsh Larkey, director of psychological services at JFS, said he has known Feinberg for approximately 20 years, and tends to think of her most often as the mother of his daughter’s first babysitter. “We were getting a babysitter with an expert consultant in the background,” he said.

But he has also worked with her and Meta House in various professional capacities, such as implementing a pilot parenting project.

“She is an incredible model of somebody who has really over the long term created something very special,” he said. “The work that she’s done is important not just in terms of sustainability and endurance, but in terms of this isn’t how things were done.

“She really looked at the needs of women and children, and said ‘traditional models of how to treat people are not relevant here, and something else is called for.’”

Feinberg herself said that while “there’s frustrations and challenges,” her work has been “remarkably rewarding. It is a fulfillment in my mind of tikkun olam [repair of the world]. Not only do I get to work and earn a living, but I get to give back in a way that’s very satisfying. I’m reminded of this everyday when I see the women that we serve and their children.”

Formerly op-ed editor, Leon Cohen has written for The Chronicle for more than 25 years.