Embracing Change: Insights from BUTTKICKERS
Joanna Free suggests putting a pacifier in your mouth or humming to yourself when cravings hit. It sounds silly, but her book BUTTKICKERS proves that breaking free from tobacco means breaking free fro…
The Practice of Listening: Cultivating Connection
Someone calls their knee "bad." But when you listen closely, that knee is doing its best to tell you something. This piece explores how deep listening,to our bodies, our past, our pain,becomes the fou…
Are We Listening?
A man stands in a service center, phone in hand, anger sharp in his voice. He's upset about a story that made others laugh. But when someone leans in and listens instead of defending, something shifts…
Are You Willing to Go to Any Lengths?
Etta Mae Lopez, five feet tall and determined, walked up to a police officer outside Sacramento Jail and slapped him. She had a plan: jail time meant she could finally quit smoking. Her unconventional…
The Writing of Recovery Allies
Alison Jones Webb trained young people in recovery to share their stories in church basements and school halls. When community members asked "What can we do to help?" she realized the answer: people n…
On Smoking and Education
A person climbing the ranks in the military notices something: the higher they go, the fewer cigarettes around them. Education shifts choices. This piece explores how learning opens doors beyond nicot…
Changing Our Lives
At six months sober, the author sat in a treatment facility not because she'd returned to use, but because she didn't know how to live without substances ruling her days. She was working in mental hea…
Smober or Sober or $omething Else?
A therapist's client walked into her office for the first time at 78, ready to transform. This story opens a conversation about what recovery really means today. It's not one thing. For some it's free…
Joanna Free: Buttkicker
Joanna was twelve when an adult handed her a lit cigarette and a mixed drink on a hot summer night. That moment set off a thirty-year battle with tobacco that would outlast her struggles with alcohol,…