For Brittney Gant, a simple t-shirt changed The Spring forever.

She was eight years old and visiting her mother for the weekend at what was then called DaySpring Villa. This kind of visit wasn’t new to Gant — during her mother’s long struggle with addiction, she’d sought shelter from more than one abusive relationship at more than one domestic violence shelter in the Tulsa area. Sitting in the car while her father drove her to DaySpring Villa, Brittney’s thoughts were bleak. 

“All I could think about on the way there was, why me?” she recalls. “Why can’t we just be normal people?” 

But the car stopped, Gant bade farewell to her father, and she went inside. When her mother greeted her inside the main lobby, Brittney became cautiously optimistic. Something seemed different about this visit — she just wasn't sure what it was. 

“Mom was sober and taken care of,” Gant says. “She was in a safe place. She felt it.”

The Spring looks different now than it did in those days, renovated to provide a more welcoming experience for guests. But Brittney can still walk right to the room where her mother led her, the room they shared during these weekend visits. She can easily recall memories of her time at the shelter: games with other children inside, time on the playground, eating meals in the dining room. But what she remembers most vividly — what changed the trajectory of her life in many ways — was that t-shirt. 

It was a simple white shirt, featuring a rainbow decorated with rhinestones. An advocate had taken Brittney and her mother to the donation center to replenish their wardrobe, and there it was. The shirt. It was enough to completely shift eight-year-old Brittney’s attitude towards the place where her mother had found safety. 

“I’m eight, right?” she remembers. “And we’re at another shelter, and I’m probably having an attitude with my mom. I’m probably being a little sassy. We were just looking at the donation closet, and I saw that shirt, and that shirt changed my life.”

The change wasn’t temporary, either. It's not an exaggeration to say that the t-shirt has stayed with her as an adult.

“Even now, when I’m having a rough day, that shirt comes to my mind. It’s the strangest thing. It changed my whole perspective about this place.” 

It’s also the reason Gant spends time volunteering at The Spring years after she first visited her mother here. It’s the reason she specifically asked to volunteer in the donations center, away from the public eye, sorting and cleaning and folding the clothes that guests can browse like she and her mother did. 

“If I was going to do this, to volunteer anywhere, it was going to be here,” she says. “I believe in full circles.” 

A Curve in the Road

To say that Brittney Gant’s home life was challenging would be an understatement. Her mother had long struggled with addiction and mental health problems, and that tension eventually led to her parents’ divorce when she was five years old. Due to her mother’s situation, Brittney’s father retained full custody. 

It was in the years after the divorce, when Brittney’s mother began dating different men, that she first became a survivor of domestic violence. And it was during this period that the Gants established their visitation routine: Every other weekend, Brittney would visit her mother in whatever environment she happened to be living in at the time.

“Sometimes Dad would let us go see her more, but it depended on who she was with at the time and the situation,” she recalls. “I can probably count on two hands the number of times that my dad didn’t have to come rescue me from those weekends or the choices that my mother was making.” 

Brittney’s young age was a difficult time to be forming core memories of her mother, but her father tried to ensure that she and her siblings could focus on the good.

“He kind of sheltered us from things,” she says. “My dad will tell you that my mom was a beautiful soul. She was very bright, and she smiled everywhere she went. There was just the addiction, you know?” 

The Spring eventually became a place of true refuge for Brittney and her family. It provided stability for her mother and allowed the family to rely on an established routine. Before, her mother would unpredictably skip out on weekend visits, sometimes even finding herself in jail due to her addictions, but The Spring seemed to bring out the best in her. 

“This was the place where she was clean, and she was in town, and she was out of jail for the longest period of time,” Brittney says. “When she was staying there, it got to the point where I couldn’t wait for weekends because I wanted to see her that badly.” 

Now, Brittney finds herself looking back on her mother’s life with a different perspective. She’s engaged, has children of her own, and has her own experiences to look back on — difficulties, triumphs, joys, and disappointments that place her mother’s struggles in a different light. 

“I was kind of like my mom until I became a mother myself,” she says. “Not in the same way; I didn’t struggle with drugs or anything like that. But I made poor choices. I job-hopped. I kind of went from house to house. I was young.” 

Because of her mother’s mental health challenges, Brittney has focused on prioritizing her own mental well-being.

“I think Mom really struggled a lot mentally back then, but I don’t think they had the help and the resources that we do now. I don’t think it was such a priority,” she says. “I actually got diagnosed as bipolar, and I was fortunate enough to get it treated and taken seriously early on.” 

In 2003, Brittney’s mother died due to an intentional overdose, the end to a decades-long battle. While the wound of that loss hasn’t fully healed, the Gant family has worked towards peace, and Brittney can look back at her mother with clarity and gratefulness. 

“She was this amazing person. She really was,” Brittney says. “I just think people struggle. She tried so hard, over and over and over, and I think it got exhausting. Sometimes people just lose their battle.”

Beginning Again 

Given this family history, imagining Brittney’s struggle when she returned to The Spring for the first time as an adult isn’t difficult. It wasn’t something she had to do, even though she remained close by, but she chose to work through those complicated memories and return. 

“I think when you grow up in a situation like that, you’re really self-doubtful. That plays a huge part in your self-image,” she says. “I struggled with that for so long.” 

In 2015, however, Brittney made the decision to follow the Lord and be baptized, and she has felt God’s steadying presence in her life since then. She’s also felt Him calling her to speak about what she experienced growing up rather than turn her back on it. That journey led her, in a roundabout way, back to The Spring. 

“I was praying and asking God to show me something bigger than myself, and I just decided that this was where that something bigger could be,” she says. “I got on the website, sent an email about volunteering, and here I am. I feel very much in my heart that this is where I’m supposed to be.” 

Brittney serves every other week in The Spring’s donation center — sorting, folding, cleaning, and preparing clothes for guests to use as they begin their own journeys of recovery and hope. She views it as paying it forward on behalf of that eight-year-old girl, two decades ago, who discovered a t-shirt that changed her life. 

“Starting out in the donation center isn’t always what people would expect when they come and volunteer,” Brittney says. “But it’s been the absolute best place for me to be.” 

Someday, she might volunteer directly with guests, serving in the supportive role that The Spring provided to her mother. And if that moment comes, she’s ready. She's had time to consider the simple message she’s determined to spread. 

“I’d just tell people that they’re worth it,” she says. “That even though you might feel worthless now, just not important, you are always important. You always matter. I’d tell them that.”