COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Buckeye Ranch is hosting its fourth annual celebration, “A Positive Note,” at Kemba LIVE! Thursday night.

Organizers said the event pulls back the curtain — for both the community and their partners — on the healing opportunities made possible at The Buckeye Ranch, for the more than 7,100 kids it has served in central Ohio.

“Me and my sisters, we literally sat in the room and we all cried together because we knew that I wasn’t going with them,” Jamie Huddleston, one of the organization’s recent success stories, said about how she and her sisters spent their last night together in their mother’s home.

Huddleston was just 15 at the time she was separated from the three younger sisters she had grown accustomed to caring for.

“My mom just had gotten in like this relationship and started to, like, she relapsed,” she said.

Within one day, after reluctantly contacting children services, Huddleston’s sisters went to live with their godfather. After a year of living with her great aunt, Huddleston said that’s when she noticed her mental health really begin to suffer.

“I think it was my 16th birthday, my mom and dad both told me they were going to show up and neither of them showed up,” Huddleston said. “So, I was like, ‘Ok, my family really don’t care about me.'”

That’s when Huddleston ran away, eventually being expelled from school. It was then that she was sent to The Buckeye Ranch’s Residential Treatment Campus.

“Healing is hard,” The Buckeye Ranch’s Casey Sudzina said. “We really try to provide support through youths’ healing journey and we feel very honored to walk alongside Jamie and her healing journey.”

Huddleston spent six months at The Buckeye Ranch. Her days included assigned chores, working with clinicians and mental health technicians, and participating in variety of group exercise work.

“We also try to develop programs at The Buckeye Ranch really, so we have a continuum of care for kids,” Sudzina said. “So, as youth leaves our residential placement, they can transition out into an independent living placement.”

While Huddleston said that the group work was most beneficial to her progress, it was missing her sisters that was the biggest motivating factor.

“I wanted to be out and like, be able to be around them,” she said. “I felt like I was missing so much.”

Now, with two kids of her own, Huddleston said that she’s living at home and that she and her sisters are now closer than ever before.

As a new mom, on Thursday at the celebration, Huddleston will be recognized as a sign of hope and healing action.

“Everybody just tells people it gets better; it actually does get better,” she said. “But you have to be able to actually want to change and, like, want to put in the work to get better.”

Huddleston just finished her first year of college, saying she ultimately wants to get her masters in social work and go back and help other children who were like her.

The Buckeye Ranch’s fourth celebration even starts at 8 p.m. Thursday at Kemba LIVE! Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. and there will be live music.

For more information on tickets or how to support the Buckeye Ranch, click here.

To learn more about Buckeye Ranch and the variety of services it provides, click here.