Piotr grew up invisible.

Just a week ago, I was standing in the doorway of our office at St. Lazarus House, number 4, when I met Piotr. The first person who came to us as part of our collaboration with the Prison in Koziegłowy. He sat down opposite me and started to speak. I listened in silence, and my heart grew tighter and tighter.

His story began before he could even write it.

Piotr's family home smelled of alcohol and the silence that followed arguments. His parents, worn out from work and lost in their own pain, had no eyes for their son. Piotr grew up invisible. When he was fourteen, someone gave him drugs. For the first time, he felt something inside him stop hurting. He started to run away—first from home, then from himself. He frequently ran away from home to forget for a while, to have peace, to not hear the fights when his parents had drunk too much alcohol.

At eighteen, he left home and never returned. He chose drugs over reality because reality had never been kind to him. Somewhere along the way, alcohol appeared. Somewhere along the way—Magda. And a child. A little human who deserved a father.

But Piotr was drowning.

The day came when he couldn't make it out. A suicide attempt. Psychiatric ward. And somewhere out there—another life was growing inside Magda's womb. He wanted to be better. He wanted to earn, provide for his children and partner, fix what he had destroyed. Instead—he found a shortcut. Dealing drugs and counterfeit clothing was supposed to be a way to make big money. It ended behind the bars of a correctional facility. Three years—in various forms, in different institutions—three years ripped from a life he had never truly savored anyway.

Today Piotr lives in the House of Saint Lazarus.

There's no triumph in his eyes. There's something else—the caution of a man who has fallen too many times to believe easily. But there's something else, too. Spark. Small, fragile, but alive.

This is a new beginning. As he himself said – St. Lazarus House is the first sober house in his life.

Thanks to your help!

Without the donors, Piotr would have nowhere to go back to.

St. Lazarus House exists thanks to people who believe that no one deserves to be on the street. Your donation gives the fragile spark in Piotr's eyes a chance to ignite into a real fire.

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