Life knocks you down sometimes, and you either get up or you don’t. Sherri Clements got up.
On Sunday, she will be inside MetLife Stadium cheering on her son, Broncos linebacker Shaun Phillips, who will be trying to be a champion, just like she has proven to be.
All these sober years later, it isn’t easy for the strong, proud woman she is today to talk about the weak girl she was way back when — when her oldest child was 10 or 11 and virtually oblivious to the demon that was her drug use. It is a part of her life she has never before shared.
“My mom went to rehab to get herself better, so that was probably my ultimate low,” Shaun told The Post.
Sherri grew up in North Philadelphia. She gave birth to Shaun when she was 16 years old, while she was living at home with her mother Jacqueline.
“[My mother] was a big part of helping us growing up because she didn’t believe in abortion,” Sherri told The Post. “She was a big part of our life helping me to raise him. She would watch him for me while I went to school, because I had to finish my 12th grade year at school.”
She never married Shaun’s biological father, George Dennis. She was asked what the stresses were that led to her substance abuse.
“Basically just trying to, I guess, keep the family together as one, and being stupid,” she said.
Asked how bad it got, she said, “I couldn’t say it was like really bad where we were living in the street, but it was bad enough where you don’t have a job, you’re going back home, trying to salvage what’s left of your life with a child. It wasn’t like we were in the streets, but it was getting to that point.”
She used most of her earnings from her job, sorting mail at the post office, for her undisclosed drug of choice.
“It wouldn’t say it was spiraling out of control, using a lot. … You can spend $200, you can spend $50, it ain’t going to change it,” she said. “It’s just that you’re spending money on something that you really know that you shouldn’t be buying.
“So eventually you start not eating, even though Shaun would eat, but you wouldn’t eat because you had to make sure he’s going to have food to eat. So you got to come up out of there or you stayed further in.”
She came up out of there after 30 days at a rehab facility in Hershey, Pa.
She was asked what it was like for her and for her son during that time.
“Just, Mommy’s getting better, she had to come here to get herself together so we can get on with our lives.” she said.
They went on welfare for maybe a year until Sherri landed a customer service job at PSE&G. They moved from the Logan section of Philadelphia to Willingboro, N.J., when Shaun was in the eighth grade.
“I attended NA meetings for maybe about 10 years or so,” she said.
She listened to the stories, saw and heard the horror stories firsthand, and knew she had to head in far different direction.
“It wasn’t a way of life that I wanted,” Sherri said. “I was being a follower, not a leader.”
Shaun grew up to be a leader at Purdue, then with the Chargers and now with the Broncos. Sherri had just finished a March of Dimes walk when Shaun called with the news that he had been drafted by the Chargers.
“I was screaming,” she said.
The NFL was not where Shaun dreamed he would be one day.
“To be honest with you, he was dreaming about more so the NBA,” Sherri said. “He played a lot of basketball.”
Whenever Shaun records a sack, he makes a bowling motion as a tribute to Sherri’s mother, who loved to bowl.
Sherri and her husband Mark and her other son Marcus, her stepson Mark and her stepdaughter Jahnise will make the 75-minute drive from Burlington, N.J., Thursday to join the other families at the Super Bowl.
Shaun is as proud of her as she is of him.
“She hasn’t done anything probably in the past like 20-something years,” Shaun said. “She had a problem, she got out of her problem, fixed her problem, and never went back to it.”
When she watches her son run onto the field at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, it will be a victory in itself.
“A joyous moment,” she said. “I probably will be crying. I was looking at his jersey yesterday on his Instagram page.” Now she chuckled and said: “I was about to cry.”