RECOVERY : Domestic Battle : Neighbors are protesting a proposal to open a home in Ventura to help women free themselves from substance abuse.

I first met Donna at Christmastime, somewhere between the Douglas firs and the spruces.

She was standing next to a small booth where people brought their trees to pay for them, watching--in horror, I assumed--as my two children raced up and down the aisles.

As my kids rounded a corner and disappeared, it occurred to me that though this tree sale was for a good cause--the proceeds were benefiting a nearby alcohol recovery house--the most beneficial thing we could have done was to stay home.

“They’re pretty energetic,” Donna said in classic understatement. I was about to launch into my standard heartfelt apology when her expression changed. “They’re so much like mine. . . .”

She then poured out her story as if from a large pitcher. It had been months, she said, since she’d seen her child. She’d been married for six years and had a son, and then her husband decided the affair he’d been having was more serious than he’d thought.

That’s when her drinking started in earnest. She drank as soon as her son was at school. She drank until she no longer cared if he went to school. By the time she admitted she needed help to stop, the idea of putting her child in foster care was too much for her.

“I didn’t have anything else but him and there was no place we both could go,” she said. “So I finally asked my sister to take care of him while I went into the recovery home. But my husband found out and got a court order for custody. Now I don’t know if I’ll ever have him back again.”

At the time, I didn’t know how to tell Donna that it was as if a finger of memory had jabbed at my solar plexus: I, too, had had my marriage collapse years before. I, too, remembered the hollowness at night and how tempting it was to reach for a glass of something, just to make the forgetting a bit easier.

That period in my life, by the grace of God, had been brief. For Donna it had cost her a child.

That wasn’t the last time I thought about Donna, or what a lot of women with children have to go through when they decide to get sober. But it came back to me when homeowners gathered in Ventura a few days ago. They were protesting plans in their neighborhood for the county’s first women’s recovery home to allow children.

The four-bedroom residence, located on Terry Drive near Ventura College and scheduled to open in September, would house up to six women (some of whom could be pregnant) and six children for up to six months, along with two round-the-clock staff members. The home would be funded by the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs and operated by a private company called Prototypes. The mothers would receive counseling, parenting classes and guidance in putting their lives back together.

Neighbors, however, are far from happy about the idea. At a meeting last week with representatives from the county and from Prototypes, homeowners said there would be increased traffic. It would be too crowded in the house. And what would happen to their property values if they tried to sell their homes?

“No one is an island,” said Elizabeth Brinker-O’Neill, a member of the Terry neighborhood steering committee, which last week began a letter-writing blitz aimed at the city attorney’s office, the city building official, the fire marshal and city manager, among others.

“I’d like to know how six adults can reside in a house and it won’t impact the traffic. . . . Also, people with impaired living skills don’t need to be in such a cramped space. I don’t know how having that many people in that small a setting could be therapeutic.”

Brinker-O’Neill also expressed anger that none of the homeowners had been contacted about the recovery house. But Steve Kaplan, director of the county’s drug and alcohol programs, didn’t think notification would have helped things very much.

“My experience, and the experience of other agencies . . . is that it has nothing to do with what you say or when you say it,” he said. “People have a lot of fear. But over time, if the program becomes a good neighbor--and in a sense invisible--then all their concerns will evaporate.”

Whether those concerns will evaporate remains to be seen. Legally, Kaplan said, the county is under no obligation to inform neighbors about a proposed recovery house. But to Prototypes Vice President Maryann Fraser, the legality of the plan is not the only concern.

“We want to be a good neighbor, to be viewed in a positive light,” she said. “But emotionally, if we didn’t eventually get support from the community, it would be detrimental to the clients. . . . These women have been stigmatized and victimized enough.”

They also have had enough roadblocks.

One would hope that the residents on Terry Drive will remember that when they decided to move into their homes, no one took a vote on it. Neither did anyone tell them how many house guests they could have living with them, or what they could or could not do there.

The bottom line, though, is that these are women who are trying to put their lives back together--which shouldn’t brand them as undesirable neighbors. Probably half of the occupants on any given block have had personal problems--ones they wouldn’t particularly want their neighbors to know about--at some point in their lives.

These recovering women, though, don’t have the luxury of privacy. Besides having to reach out for help, now they are vulnerable to having their hands slapped by neighbors sitting in judgment.

Without recovery houses and welcoming neighbors, there are going to be a lot more mothers like Donna. And it seems to me that they, along with their children, deserve better.