Ali’s Recovery Story
Ali’s recovery runs through a horse named Rebel, a 6 a.m. men’s meeting in Spokane, and a recovery home for mothers in Maine. Nearly seven years in, she describes it as a tangled ball of yarn, loosene…
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The Power of the Pen
Sick, isolated, and numb, Carole Fontaine bought a journal and started going to a meditation class. The practice brought her back to wellness, and it held again through breast cancer.
The Bold Question
When an employee asked Fors Marsh what it did to support its own people through substance use and recovery, CEO Ben Garthwaite didn’t have a good answer. Here is what the company changed.
A New Path Forward: Sweetser’s IOP Brings Recovery-Focused Care to Brunswick
Sweetser’s new Intensive Outpatient Program in Brunswick offers structured, evidence-based treatment three hours a day, four days a week, so people can keep working, studying, and caring for family.
‘Fine’ or ‘Bad’
Early in recovery, many people have two words for how they feel: fine or bad. Naming feelings is a skill that goes quiet during substance use and comes back with practice.
Becoming a Writer in Sobriety
Leslie Johansen Nack got sober, raised a family, and graduated from UCLA at 31 before she began writing. Telling the truth in her Fourth Step became the foundation for her memoir and the books that fo…
Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired
HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) works better as a question than a checklist. A look at how a body running on empty gets mistaken for a character flaw.
Strength Training for the Soul
On the assault bike, Monique Coombs’s coach asked how she’d empty Sebago Lake, one bucket at a time. Almost seven years sober, she finds in strength training a mirror for recovery: progressive overloa…
Live Free and Thrive
Brandy Rickaby is the executive director of New Generation, a shelter for pregnant women and mothers with young children. She also sits on the board of Hope on Haven Hill, where she once lived.
Anchored in Connections
After 20 years living on a sailboat, Carole Fontaine learned that you can be surrounded by people and still feel the void. Through chronic illness, sober living, and breast cancer, her closest friends…
William Bruce on the Path
William Bruce carries a tattoo with the number “40” at its center: four decades in recovery that began at 23 after a motorcycle crash, an opiate prescription, and an intervention. He reflects on the p…
Recovery in Plain Sight
Most people picture recovery as something that happens behind closed doors. But research on social recovery keeps finding the same pattern: connection is not a side benefit of recovery—it is part of h…
Dealing with Outstanding Debt in Recovery
People in recovery often face financial challenges, and outstanding debt can feel overwhelming. Brittany Eaton and Nicole Lemieux of Town & Country Federal Credit Union offer a practical path: know wh…
Recovery Already At Work
“Recovery-friendly workplaces do not bring the problem into the workplace,” says Eliza Zarka of the National Recovery-Friendly Workplace Institute. “They’re bringing solutions for the problem that alr…
Love Beyond Walls
Demetrius Davenport is a Christian hip-hop artist known as DD-11 and the author of Love Beyond Walls. His first song, "OMG," shares the faith and healing he found after prison.
Full Circle of Light
Leslie Johansen Nack is an award-winning author, married 35 years to David. They recently shared their sobriety stories at a treatment center, as a sober couple once did for her almost 40 years ago.
In the Heart of Phoenix, a Recovery Movement Rises
On a Monday night under park lights in Scottsdale, more than twenty people in recovery circle up for volleyball. No church basement, no folding chairs. Just movement, music, and laughter. In Phoenix,…
The Body–Recovery Connection
A client sits with her counselor and names it plainly: another health crisis, another reason to give up. Chronic pain, untreated illness, a broken tooth. Each one whispers that recovery isn't worth th…
Got a Craving?
Your brain is lying to you about what you need. A small dip in energy feels like crisis. Everyday stress feels overwhelming. This article explains why cravings feel so powerful, how your brain misread…
Pathways to Recovery
Someone recovers in a hospital bed. Someone else sits in a church basement. A third person decides at their kitchen table that life has to change. Each of these moments looks different, but they all p…
Tim Sample: Finding Peace in the Unknown
Maine humorist Tim Sample has nearly 30 years in recovery. Now approaching 75, he recently retired after thousands of shows. Recovery taught him to rest in the unknown and accept life as it is.
Surprising Truths About Addiction
Patrick Chester looked like he had everything: a wife, two kids, vacations to Hawaii. No one saw the secret eating him alive for nine years. His gambling addiction left no bruises, no visible wreckage…
Beyond Dry January: Self-Observation
Sarah reaches for a glass of wine at five o'clock, same as every weekday. She doesn't think about it anymore; her hand just knows the routine. But when January arrives, she pauses. What happens when a…
Thriving During the Holidays: What Employers Can Offer
When December hits, your payroll shifts. Shifts get missed, focus scatters, performance dips. For employees in recovery, this season carries sharper risk. Employers notice it first as absenteeism and…
Rethinking Gatherings
A conference organizer noticed attendees clustering near the bar, making small talk. Others lingered at the edges, disconnected. By shifting focus from cocktails to structured networking and creative…
Why Waiting for “Rock Bottom” Can Cost Lives
Sarah watched her brother spiral for three years while people told her to wait for rock bottom. Then he nearly died from an overdose. What nobody told her is that rock bottom is a myth, and a dangerou…
Alaina Knox
Alaina Knox, 36, is five years sober and Director of Recovery Services at Sweetser. She lives in Portland with her husband, Dylan, and works alongside others who have lived experience.
Finding Strength in Sobriety
Monique Coombs has been sober since January 2019. As director of programs for Maine Coast Fishermen's Association, she brings counseling and wellness support to commercial fishermen.
The Hidden Power of Hope: Why Believing Changes Everything
Someone walks through the door of their first support meeting, hands shaking. One small act, but it proves something to them: change is possible. This is how hope works in recovery. It's not inspirati…
Hope as Medicine
Two hundred fifty-five people walked into rehab on the same day. They received identical treatment. One year later, only those who arrived believing recovery was possible showed real improvement. The…
Learn To Love Your Wobble
Rebecca guides her yoga students into Half Moon pose, offering three difficulty levels. "Go where you could embarrass yourself, but without hurting yourself," she says. Then comes the real lesson: "Th…
Kenny Williams Choosing to Be of Service
Kenny Williams, 58, has been in recovery since 2001. He works at a Los Angeles medical center, where he advises patients experiencing homelessness on housing, mental health and medical care.
The Phoenix Building Strength and Community Through Sober Active Living
Scott Strode founded The Phoenix after recognizing that recovery needed more than abstinence. Through rock climbing, yoga, running, and weightlifting, this nonprofit builds community where people in r…
Rethinking Gatherings Recovery Friendly for Everyone
At a networking conference, a professional in recovery watched colleagues cluster around the bar while she stood alone with sparkling water. Event planners are rethinking gatherings to welcome everyon…
Physical Well-Being in Recovery Building a Strong Foundation
Alison Jones Webb watches a person in recovery take their first morning walk in months, shoulders straightening with each step. This moment captures why physical health matters so much during recovery…
Feel Better with EFT Tapping
Your heart races before a presentation. Your stomach tightens when stress builds. EFT Tapping offers a way to calm both mind and body by gently tapping specific points on your face and hands while spe…
Biohacking for Addiction and Mental Health Recovery
Embark on a transformative journey of recovery through biohacking at The Sanctuary at Sedona. Explore holistic methods to restore balance, rebuild hope, and foster community-supported healing.
Tom Filippini
Discover the inspiring journey behind Pepper Pong—a game of healing and connection. Dive into Tom Filippini’s story of recovery, community, and joy. Play, connect, and find hope with Pepper Pong.
Kennebunk Savings: Shifting Culture, Reducing Stigma
When Brad walks through Kennebunk Savings, he sees employees who've become "lighthouses" for colleagues struggling with substance use. The bank shifted from treating addiction as a performance problem…
Thriving in Recovery: No Matter the Weather
As winter darkens the days and reshapes routines, people in recovery face unique emotional challenges. This piece offers practical tools for staying connected and emotionally balanced through the seas…
How to Survive a Panic Attack When it Strikes
Your heart races. Your chest tightens. You can't catch your breath. A panic attack strikes without warning, leaving you disoriented and scared. But panic attacks are survivable, and there are concrete…
Finding Strength
Jenn Williams survived a stroke, but she's spent years helping others navigate something harder: rebuilding after brain injury while managing substance use disorder. She knows recovery isn't a finish…
The Rewards of Being There for Mainers in Crisis
Marissa Exchange sits with someone in crisis, providing a space where they can speak freely without judgment. As a mobile crisis worker, she connects people to resources and support networks. What kee…
Breaking the Stigma
Mary read two different stories about herself. In one, she struggled alone. In the other, she was managing her condition with support. The difference changed how people saw her, her worth, and whether…
Building Emotional Wellness with Strong EQ
During a twelve step meeting, someone notices a tightness in their chest but can't name the feeling. A friend listens as they talk it through. This moment of recognizing an emotion, then managing it w…
Create a Money Plan in Recovery
Maya spread her bills across the kitchen table, overwhelmed by numbers she'd been avoiding for months. Building financial stability in recovery means facing what you owe and creating a realistic plan.…
EFT Tapping: Right Here, Right Now!
Connor kept apologizing for his thoughts, convinced he wasn't good enough. When a stranger offered to teach him EFT Tapping, a technique using finger taps on body points to release emotional pain, he…
Learn to Cope
A parent sits in a circle of other parents, hearing their stories for the first time. Someone mentions Narcan. Someone else talks about their child's treatment. Learn to Cope connects families facing…
Five Tips to a Better Relationship with Food
When stress hits hard, reaching for food becomes automatic. But nourishing yourself during tough times means stepping back to ask what you can actually manage right now. A registered dietitian shares…
The Role of Social Networks
Marcus sits across from his sponsor, sharing something he couldn't tell anyone during his using years. This conversation wouldn't happen without the relationships he's rebuilt. The article explores ho…
Mr. Drew: Animals and His Sobriety, Too
Discover the heartwarming journey of Mr. Drew and His Animals, Too. From recovery to creating smiles, Andrew’s inspiring story shows the power of second chances and spreading joy. Join the community:…
Hope Through Love & Resilience: A Family’s Recovery Journey
Embark on a transformative journey with Linda and Melissa, guided by resilience, community, and unwavering hope. Discover the real, empowering stories that prove recovery is within reach, one step at…
Understanding Recovery Residences
Twenty people sit around a dinner table in a house on an ordinary street, sharing a meal and their stories. This is a recovery residence, where peers in recovery live together, support each other, and…
Resilience: The Strength to Bounce Back
A person in recovery sits down to write three things they're grateful for. It's a small habit, but it shifts something. This article explores how resilience grows through connection and purpose, offer…
Creating meaningful relationships requires courage
Carolyn didn't respond to emails, and the frustration built. Rather than withdraw, the author chose a harder path: speaking up with kindness. That conversation, and Carolyn's openness to hearing it, b…
Identify Your Super Powers
A man preparing for a job interview after incarceration had to translate skills from his past into language an employer would value. His challenge points to something bigger: most of us struggle to na…
James Rickrode
James Rickrode, a father of five, is seven years into recovery. He is vice president of Fresh Start Sober Living of Maine, which operates 17 recovery residences in the Bangor area.
Nonantum Resort – Building a Recovery-Friendly Culture
At Nonantum Resort, a staffer mentions an upcoming sobriety anniversary at the team meeting, and colleagues applaud. This moment captures what happens when a workplace decides recovery belongs there.…
Bridgton’s Strong Recovery Network
A small Maine town gathers at a community rally to remember Dr. Peter Leighton, a physician in recovery who helped build something remarkable. Bridgton now has emergency doctors, counselors, peer coac…
WCCC Expands Criminal Justice Programs
A corrections officer spots potential in someone newly hired. A counselor recognizes when a person in recovery needs extra support. Washington County Community College is expanding its Criminal Justic…
1000 Lives Campaign for Maine
A Maine emergency doctor worried that offering buprenorphine treatment in his ER would overwhelm the system. Instead, patients started talking honestly about their struggles, and he found a way to hel…
Finding Purpose Through Work
A teacher stays late after dismissal, helping a struggling student finally understand fractions. That moment of connection, of being needed, of mattering to someone else, is what transforms work from…
Sorting Through Brain Clutter
You finish your day exhausted, having started ten things and completed none. Your mind won't quiet at bedtime because unfinished tasks keep circling. This article explores how to sort through mental c…
Understanding Recovery Capital
Someone loses their job and feels their recovery slipping away. Another builds strength through therapy and steady friendships. Recovery capital measures the total resources, relationships, and commun…
Unlocking Your Body’s Natural Calm
When stress tightens your chest and your thoughts race, your body already knows how to find calm. Dr. Steven Porges discovered a special nerve that runs through your face, neck, and chest, waiting to…
Six Tips for Balancing Family, Career, and Anxiety
A parent sits down with their spouse after dinner and finally says what's been building for weeks: I can't do this alone. That conversation, hard as it was, became the turning point. This piece offers…
Building a Career Supporting Individuals in Recovery
Mackenzie Kelley spent years searching for work that mattered. Then she discovered recovery coaching, where her own experience with substance use disorder became her greatest strength. Now she spends…
Workplace Wellness – Fostering a Culture of Openness
A manager admits to her team that she's in therapy. A colleague mentions he's taking mental health days. These small moments shift something in the office culture. When leaders speak openly about thei…
Find Job Success with EFT Tapping
Your hands shake before the interview. Your mind loops through doubts about whether you're qualified enough. EFT Tapping offers a different way forward. By gently tapping specific points on your body…
Easy Meal Prep – Save Time, Eat Healthy
Tuesday night rolls around and the fridge is nearly empty. Instead of ordering takeout again, you pull out yesterday's roast chicken and transform it into tacos. This article shows how simple meal pre…
The Healing Power of Community
Marcus sat in the church basement, listening to others share their stories, and for the first time in years felt like he belonged somewhere. That moment of recognition, of being truly heard, became th…
Building a Recovery-Friendly Community
A person in recovery walks into a community center for the first time. She's nervous about judgment, but finds others like her, a job board, and counselors who know her name. This is what recovery-fri…
Why Not Ask for Help?
A person struggling with substance use disorder sits alone, thinking about asking for help. But shame whispers that they should handle it. Fear of judgment whispers louder. Understanding these barrier…
The Basics – Recovery
Someone returns to use after months sober. A family member finds out and wonders if recovery is even possible. Recovery from substance use disorder is a long-term process with multiple pathways forwar…
The Power of Community in Recovery
Maria sits in a circle of folding chairs, listening to someone describe a struggle she faced last week. She recognizes herself in the story. Later, she shares her own. This is what community recovery…
The Basics – Addiction
When someone's brain becomes wired to crave a substance the way it craves food or water, addiction takes hold. It's not weakness or bad character. It's a medical condition affecting the brain's reward…
The Basics – Treatment
When a family first hears "treatment is available," the options can feel overwhelming. This guide breaks down the landscape: residential programs, outpatient care, therapy types, and medications that…
Danielle Rideout
Danielle Rideout is a counselor in private practice who works with individuals and families facing substance use disorder. She also teaches a recovery-friendly class at a Yarmouth gym.
How EFT Builds Stronger Communities
Karen stands before a room of healthcare workers and teaches them where to tap. Within minutes, shoulders drop. Breathing slows. People discover they can calm their nervous systems anywhere, anytime.…
Cameron Obremski
Cameron Obremski's cat Belle runs and hides whenever he raises his voice. Years into recovery, he realizes he's chasing away the love he's finally learning to accept. This musician's journey reveals h…
Exploring Treatment Options
A person calls a treatment center unsure whether they need detox, a residential program, or weekly outpatient sessions. They don't know where to start. This article breaks down Maine's treatment optio…
Building Community with Food
A grandmother stirs her mother's soup recipe in her kitchen, then teaches her own child the same motions. Food carries memory across generations, but it also builds something immediate: connection. Th…
Reilly Harvey: Worthy – Navigating Recovery and Healing
Reilly Harvey runs a Maine painting business called We Paint. A mother and partner, she makes prayer and meditation part of daily life and finds strength in fellowship and service.
ROCC Solid Success, Empowering Recovery and Wellness at USM
Dakota Eddy lost her uncle to substance use disorder when she was nine. Years later, watching classmates struggle in her Vermont hometown, she found purpose at the University of Southern Maine's Recov…
Taking Flight: EFT Tapping Could Change Your Life
Maria had avoided airplanes for twenty years, her panic so severe she'd been carried off flights before takeoff. After trying therapy and medication with no lasting relief, she discovered EFT tapping,…
Maine’s Recovery Community Center Offers Hope and Free Services
At a karaoke night in Portland, people in recovery sing off-key and laugh together. This is what Maine's Recovery Community Center offers: a place where healing happens through connection, free coachi…
Strategies for Living with Brain Injury
Marcus couldn't remember his doctor's appointments and kept missing important calls. After his brain injury, he felt lost. But then he discovered something: consistent routines, written reminders, and…
Loving Fully: The Transformative Power of Love and Connection
A person in recovery sits across from someone who truly listens, without judgment. In their new book, Stephen R. Andrew and Wendy Noyes argue that this kind of genuine connection, not willpower alone,…
Incarcerated Peers: Changing Lives Inside and Out
Inside a Maine prison, someone training to be a recovery coach listens to a peer describe their fears about release. This conversation, peer to peer, happens because a program treats incarcerated peop…
Building Strong Futures: Resilience and Positive Childhood Experiences
A scout leader notices a teen withdrawing from group activities. She asks what's wrong, listens without judgment, and helps him problem-solve. This moment, one of many warm interactions, becomes prote…
Overcoming Stigma: Community Roles in Recovery
Andrew from Massachusetts had one word for what held him back: stigma, stigma, stigma. When communities shift how they talk about and treat people in recovery, they remove invisible walls. This piece…
Drumming Up Wellness: Music Therapy’s Rhythmic Approach
Kate Beever sits behind a drum kit in her Maine office, ready to work. A client picks up mallets. Instead of talking directly about the stress that triggered their return to use, they express it throu…
Regaining Control, Overcoming the Bank Account Challenge
Maya sat in the credit union lobby, holding her denial letter. For months, she'd paid bills on time, stayed focused on recovery. But the banking system flagged her past. Many people rebuilding their l…
The Power of Positive Experience, A Source of Hope
A child learns their feelings matter when a parent listens. A neighbor brings over dinner after a hard week. These small moments reshape lives. Research shows positive childhood experiences buffer aga…
Family Matters: Navigating the Challenges of a Loved One’s Addiction
A mother sits across from her therapist, finally naming the guilt she's carried for years. Her son's substance use disorder has reshaped her entire family, but she's learning she didn't cause it and c…
Empowering Recovery: Maine’s Recovery Coach Training Programs
A person in recovery sits across from someone who has walked a similar path, someone trained to listen without judgment and help navigate what comes next. Maine's recovery coach training programs are…
Bridging New Opportunities, McAuley Residence’s Educational Model
Melissa watched women at McAuley Residence choose survival over possibility: entry-level jobs instead of college, poverty instead of the futures their children deserved. She knew reunification meant n…
From Recovery to the Finish Line, Chris Madden’s Story
Chris Madden stands at the summit of his forty-eighth mountain, his father beside him on the New Hampshire peak. Four years sober, Chris has transformed from someone struggling to believe in himself i…
Nutrition 101: Simple Steps to Better Health
Marcus sits at his kitchen table, phone face-down, fork in hand. He's learning to eat slower, to notice when he's actually full instead of when his plate is empty. This piece breaks down nutrition int…
Breaking the Chains of Self-Stigma, Silencing the Inner Critic
Someone in recovery sits alone, hearing a voice that sounds like their own but feels like everyone else's judgment combined. This is self-stigma, the shame people internalize from others' words. It si…
Many Paths to Freedom, Five Free Programs for Your Recovery
Marcus sat in a church basement for the first time, uncertain. Around him, people he'd never met nodded in recognition. Five free programs exist for people in recovery, each built on different beliefs…
A New Generation, Recovery-Friendly College Campuses
On college campuses across the country, students in recovery remain invisible, their struggles hidden behind stigma and assumptions. Yet nearly half a million undergraduates identify as in recovery fr…
Removing Stigma From the Employment Equation
Nearly three thousand working-age people were missing from Washington County's employment figures. Economists wondered who they were and where. That question led to something unexpected: a network con…
Finding Direction Navigating Recovery Through Nature’s Compass
Peter Wohl stands lost on a remote Vermont mountainside, panic rising as he realizes he cannot find his way back. Years later, beginning recovery, he faces that same disorientation: stripped of the re…
Balance Your Physical Well-being with EFT Tapping
M.T. had carried chronic back pain for three years. Painkillers and physical therapy offered only temporary relief until a friend suggested trying EFT Tapping. Within five minutes of gently tapping ac…
8 Big Ways to Nourish And Nurture Your Body Through Food
You're standing in the grocery store, deciding between another rushed meal and something that actually feeds you. Food is more than fuel,it's how you care for yourself, connect with people you love, a…
Mind Matters: Navigating the Maze of Brain Injury Symptoms
Sarah can't remember if she took her medication this morning, and conversations at work feel like she's hearing them through water. She never hit her head, so she didn't think brain injury was possibl…
Navigating Sobriety with Self-Compassion and Courage
Erin Hamlin stood in front of her fitness class, fully present with her three children at home, something she once thought impossible. Now a recovery advocate in Maine, she's learning that sobriety me…
Healthy Sleeping: Your Guide to Restful Nights
Marcus stares at his ceiling at 2 a.m., mind racing with tomorrow's worries. He's tried everything, or so he thinks. But sleep isn't about willpower,it's about understanding what your body needs. This…
LifeRing Secular Recovery
Byron Kerr checked in at his LifeRing meeting, sharing how his week went and what temptations he'd navigated. Around the table, others listened and offered their own stories, no lectures or doctrine r…
Rise to Recovery: Maximizing Your Time in Treatment
You're walking through the doors of a treatment facility for the first time, unsure what comes next. Stan Popovich offers five practical strategies to help you get the most from your time there: follo…
Steps to Well-being: Navigating Recovery with Hope and Support
You're lying awake at three in the morning, your body aching for something it no longer gets. This excerpt explores what comes after you decide to stop, when the real work begins. Learn how attending…
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…
Radiant in Recovery – Danielle Ward
Danielle Ward is a recovery coach and certified yoga instructor with five years of sobriety. Her goal is to become a certified drug and alcohol counselor.
Inhale Goodness, Exhale Wellness
When your shoulders tense and breath catches during a stressful moment, your body is sending a signal. You can answer back. This piece explores how intentional breathing practices, drawn from yoga tra…
Healing Inside Out
Someone in early recovery discovers their body needs attention too: years of neglect have left them with untreated health problems and no idea where to start. Physical wellness turns out to matter dee…
Harnessing Recovery Capital: A Strategic Approach to Well-being
Sarah knows where her next meal comes from and has a doctor's appointment scheduled. These basics once felt impossible. A recovery coach helped her see that stable housing, transportation, and trusted…
Healthy Bonds: The Magic of Connection
When fear keeps you isolated, telling one person your struggle can shift everything. Research shows that people surrounded by supportive relationships heal faster, experience lower stress, and even li…
Get Moving, Feel Better: Exercise in Recovery
Marcus hasn't set foot in a gym in five years. These days, he walks his neighborhood three times a week, sometimes with a friend. What he's discovered: movement matters in recovery. Research shows eve…
Breaking Free: Confronting Processed Food Addiction in Recovery
When you're in recovery, you learn that certain things rewire your brain's reward system. Processed foods loaded with sugar and fat do the same thing. Understanding this connection between what you ea…
Personal Recovery Story: Matt Senecal
Matt Senecal founded Senecal Construction. In early 2024 he was nearing 11 years of sobriety, and he now enjoys skiing, fishing, and boating without drinking.
Embracing Our Wild Mind: Eco-Spirituality and Recovery
A father and child roast potatoes in November coals, and the potato tastes like wood smoke and crisp air, like something lost long ago. For people in recovery, reconnecting with nature's wildness can…
Nurturing Your Intentions: Empowering Change from Within
January arrives with possibility, and you set your intention. By February, it's gone. The article explores why our resolutions fade and how to build the internal fuel that sustains change. Discover ho…
EFT Tapping
Karen taps her fingertips on specific points along her client's shoulders while they voice the feelings weighing them down. Within weeks, decades of self-imposed burden lift. EFT tapping works by stim…
Compassionate Conversations (Issue 29)
Tips for employers on how to recognize and compassionately respond to substance use challenges in the workplace.
Unlocking the Power of Empathy
A friend shares something difficult, and you pause to really hear them, not to respond. In that moment, you're building something that matters. This piece explores how empathy creates stronger connect…
Holistic Recovery: Blending Traditional & New Therapies
You're sitting with a horse, learning to brush its mane, when something shifts inside you. Holistic recovery combines traditional medical treatment with approaches like equine therapy, art, meditation…
A Changed Message: Embracing Stress for Growth
When your heart races before a test or your shoulders tense during a busy week, your body isn't working against you. It's preparing you to meet the challenge ahead. This article explores how reframing…
Alcoholics Anonymous Service Committees
A nurse student leans forward with a question: How do you encourage someone to try A.A.? Behind that curiosity sits a larger truth about recovery visibility. Across Maine, volunteers in Alcoholics Ano…
Eco-Spirituality: Discovering Faith in Nature
Maria sits by the river near her home, watching light dance across the water. She's learned to see this moment as sacred, part of something larger than herself. This excerpt explores how people discov…
Wellbriety
Angela grew up erased from her Sicangu Sioux identity, teased for her heritage in a Maine classroom. Years into recovery, she found something crucial missing until Wellbriety connected her to Native s…
Holiday Blues vs. Seasonal Affective Disorder
Maya dreads November. Every year around the same time, her energy drains and she sleeps twelve hours, craving carbs she normally avoids. She wondered if everyone felt this way in winter until her doct…
Recovery Coaches – Empowering the Recovery Journey with Empathy
A person in early recovery stares at an unfamiliar reflection, wondering if anyone truly understands the weight they carry. Recovery coaches enter that moment of isolation with something powerful: emp…
Understanding Brain Injuries, Mental Health, and Substance Use
Patty King listens as someone describes the fog that won't lift, the anger that erupts without warning, the cravings that pull them back. She recognizes something others missed: a brain injury underne…
Gaining Peace of Mind from My Financial Past
A woman sits down with a financial workbook and finds herself trembling. Write your family history around money, it says. She remembers the sheriff at the door, utilities cut off, her mother working t…
Compassion in Action: Bethany Johnson
Bethany Johnson hands a caller a folder of recovery resources, her voice steady with certainty: "We do recover and we are never alone." Eight years sober in the small Maine town where addiction once c…
From Darkness to Light – Personal Stories of Recovery Coaches
Bill left emergency medical work after an injury searching for a new identity. As a recovery coach, he discovered something unexpected: purpose. Watching people emerge from substance use disorder and…
Recovery Allies – Spiritual Health in Recovery
Sarah finds peace washing dishes, mopping floors, sensing wonder in tasks most people rush through. Alison Webb's Recovery Allies explores how spiritual health shapes recovery differently for each per…
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…
Faith Organizations: Champions Against Stigma
A pastor stands before her congregation on Sunday morning and names addiction aloud, speaking of it not as moral failure but as illness worthy of compassion. Her church becomes one of hundreds nationw…
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…
Coming Home: Eco-Spirituality & Recovery
A man stands on a wooden footbridge watching ice creep across Hubbard Brook, counting the open patches of water. This moment of attention to the natural world becomes his gateway to recovery. When dis…
Recovery Coaches: The Healing Connection
A person wakes up one morning and knows something has to change. They ask for help, but treatment slots are weeks away. A recovery coach answers that call, meeting them where they are right now. These…
Surfing My Feelings
A person adrift in depression learns to distinguish between the body's signals and the mind's stories about them. Instead of fighting overwhelming emotions, they discover how to read their physical se…
SMART Recovery: Life Beyond Addiction is the Highest Goal
Josh Warren attends a SMART Recovery meeting each week and facilitates others. He's been working to build a life beyond the drug use that started when he was twelve. Now he helps people understand tha…
Recovery Coaches: Their Role in Recovery
Someone sits across from a recovery coach, uncertain where to begin. The coach listens, then offers a map. Recovery coaches meet people exactly where they are, removing obstacles, connecting them to c…
Reframing Relationships
A friend struggling with opioid use found steady ground not through romance, but through peers who showed up to cook meals, wipe tears, pick up her son from daycare. This piece explores why those frie…
Recovery Allies: Supporting the Pillar of Health
Sarah sits in her doctor's office for the first time in five years. Her recovery journey is months old, but her body carries the weight of years of substance use. This article explores how health beco…
A Beacon of Knowledge and Support for Mental Health
A parent notices their teenager seems withdrawn. Before assuming the worst, they visit MentalHealthLiteracy.org and discover the difference between mental distress and mental disorder. Understanding t…
Your Brain and Addiction
Scientists can now show what addiction looks like inside the brain: less active decision-making centers, dopamine systems flooded beyond normal. Understanding these physical changes matters because it…
Somerset County New Options Liaison Spotlight
Keith Bellefleur arrived at a call that started as a mental health crisis and turned into an overdose response. The officer revived the person, and Keith connected him to treatment that same day. Now…
Nature’s Healing Touch in Recovery
Peter and Bethany lead groups into forests where people in recovery plant seeds, walk among trees, and sit in silence together. They've built an entire recovery program around a simple belief: healing…
Make EFT Tapping Your Recovery Discovery
A person in recovery sits with guilt and shame that therapy alone couldn't touch. Then they discover EFT tapping, speaking their pain while using fingertip pressure on acupressure points. Something sh…
Rooted in Maine
In rural Maine, Abbie Rohde built something that reaches beyond preventing return to use. Her Opioid Health Home teams people with lived experience alongside counselors, psychiatrists, and peer coache…
Religious and Spiritual Trauma: 5 Ways to Start Recovering
Someone turns to their faith for comfort during crisis, only to experience harm instead. When religion or spirituality becomes a source of pain rather than healing, the damage cuts deeper because your…
Maine EMS SUD Response Program
On a Tuesday morning in September, Maine EMS responded to their 276th suspected opioid overdose. The paramedics arrived, treated the patient, offered resources. Then they went home carrying the weight…
The Growing Power of Connection for Maine’s OPTIONS Liaisons
Ashley Roberts meets a public health nurse on a rainy Bangor morning, heading out to find people living outside. As an OPTIONS Liaison, she builds trust, learns what people need, and connects them to…
Workplaces at the Forefront
Three panelists gathered to discuss how businesses can reshape workplace culture around recovery. One statistic stopped them: three out of four people with substance use disorder hold jobs. Yet most s…
Josh Colwell
Josh Colwell is a husband, father, and Certified Recovery Support Worker at a treatment center in New Hampshire. Sober since October 2018, he works to make recovery easier to reach.
Peer Recovery Coaching Making a Difference
A person in recovery in Maine becomes someone else's guide. Peer recovery coaches, trained to meet people where they are, are reshaping how communities respond to substance use disorder. Since 2018, n…
The Role of a Peer Recovery Coach
Audra hears it often: "I just don't know how to stay sober." Her answer comes from lived experience. As a peer recovery coach, she walks alongside people exploring recovery, building trust from day on…
Maine’s Newly Launched RFW Certification
At Kennebunk Savings Bank, hiring someone in recovery isn't charity. It's strategy. Maine's new Recovery Friendly Workplace program helps employers build cultures where people dealing with substance u…
Recovery’s True Persona
Karen St. Clair pauses when asked what recovery means to her. She thinks of the masks falling away, the relationships built on trust instead of fear, the moments she thought impossible becoming real.…
Compassionate AA Sponsor
Michael watched someone walk into an AA meeting for the first time, desperate and lost. Years later, that same person had rebuilt their family and career. As a sponsor guiding others through the 12 St…
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…
Considering an Employer?
You're sitting across from a hiring manager, resume in hand. But here's what many people overlook: this interview cuts both ways. Before you say yes to any job, especially in the trades, you need to k…
Gamblers Anonymous – “Do You Really Think There’s Any Hope For Me?”
A person sits across from a counselor, shoulders heavy with the weight of lost money, broken relationships, ruined careers. "Do you really think there's any hope for me?" they ask. In Maine, thousands…
Compassionate Conversations
Your employee arrives late again, irritable, thinner than before. You've noticed the pattern but dreaded the conversation. Yet three in four people with substance use disorder work. When employers spe…
Employment: A Cornerstone of Recovery
Marcus walked into his new job on Monday morning, clocking in for the first time in five years. By lunch, he realized something had shifted: he belonged somewhere again. Employment does more than pay…
Fibers in the Threads of Community
In a small Maine town, a person in recovery discovers that the same community that remembers every mistake can also become a lifeline. This piece explores how chosen communities, built on shared value…
Relationships with Humans, Nature, and Animals
Someone sits alone, wondering why connection feels impossible. The answer might be simpler than it seems: before we can truly relate to others, to nature, to the world around us, we must first underst…
Recreating Myself
Niki introduces herself with a name that isn't the one she was born with. That simple introduction marks something harder: shedding the person trauma and active addiction created. In recovery, she dis…
Mutual Benefits of Sponsorship In Alcoholics Anonymous
A woman six months sober asks another woman to sponsor her, and the answer comes back: I would be honored. What follows is a conversation about honesty, willingness, and walking a path out of the wood…
Power of Recovery Coaching
Someone in recovery walks into a room and meets a coach who's been where they are. That person knows the weight of it, the hope of it, the daily work of it. Recovery coaching, once rare in Maine, now…
Friendship House
When a police officer recognized a resident at a community meeting, he stood to thank the man whose overdose he'd reversed with Narcan years before. That moment captures Friendship House's mission: a…
Inspire Recovery Center, Ellsworth
A man walked into Inspire Recovery Center wanting only a warm place to watch television. Weeks later, he cried during a job interview, describing the space as magical. He'd gone from active substance…
OPTIONS Liaison Spotlight: Dave Bilodeau
Dave Bilodeau met a man who hadn't seen his grandchildren in five years. After helping him into recovery for one month, they reunited at Christmas. Two years later, the man passed, but his family stil…
Discovery Recovery with Choices
Karen St. Clair woke one morning and noticed how her mood at dawn differed from dusk. She realized she made thousands of choices daily, each one shaping her emotional landscape. Through discovering EF…
The Addiction Cycle Explained — Part 2
Your brain craves excitement. Your stomach loves repetition. Your blood carries it all through your body. Together, these three systems form what keeps the addiction cycle spinning, turning automatic…
Stories Restoring Hope: Inked and Sober
Chris Bastey's clients book tattoo appointments years in advance for his bold, colorful work at Atlantic Studios in Rockland, Maine. Five years sober, he credits his art and a deliberate spiritual pra…
4 Types of Recovery Communities
Someone scrolling late at night, searching for voices that understand, discovers a recovery account with thousands of followers sharing their stories. That moment of connection reveals something resea…
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…
NAMIWalks Maine
On October 7, hundreds will gather in Augusta to walk together through Capitol Park. They're not just exercising. They're showing up for neighbors struggling with mental illness, reducing shame around…
Sober Social Society
A beer spilled down her back at a Disney matinee. A wine glass at a six-year-old's birthday party. When this writer stopped drinking almost four years ago, she realized alcohol wasn't just part of her…
James Dillon III
James Dillon stands soaked at Portland's Pride Festival, hosting a mocktail bar for the recovery community center while rain streams down the park. Drenched and grinning, he realizes something: both h…
Crystale Vega’s Journey
Crystale Vega has three years of sobriety. She works in peer support for local groups, holds a leadership role at Sophia's House, and serves on the board of Just Love Worldwide.
She Recovers
MaryBeth Murphy was immobilized in a cast when her life shifted. That pause forced a reckoning that led her into recovery from alcohol and codependency. Years later, searching for deeper connection, s…
Peer Recovery Coaches
A person in recovery sits across from someone who has walked the same painful path. The peer coach doesn't have a clinical degree, but they have something more: their own story of struggle and surviva…
Cheers to a New Sober Social Scene
Abby Ehmann watched customers at her New York City sober bar weep with gratitude over their first mocktail in years. Across the country, from football stadiums to concert venues, people in recovery an…
Alcoholics Anonymous (Issue 16)
C. walked into her first AA meeting in 1989 with her sister, both seeking a way out. Thirty-five years later, she describes a life transformed by sobriety and connection. Alcoholics Anonymous has anch…
Maine Treatment and Recovery Runs on Dunkin’
Mike Kleiner arrives at work each morning as a people operations manager for a Dunkin' franchise. This spring, his company began hosting pop-up resource events at 36 Maine locations, offering recovery…
Savida Health: Recovery Health Model
Joe Graffius spent years chasing money and drugs across Alaska before prison stopped him cold. Now he works as a peer recovery coach in Maine, modeling the kind of life he fought to build. SaVida Heal…
We Are Not Alone: Community Connectedness and Resilience
When pandemic lockdowns pulled youth from classrooms and away from each other, isolation deepened. Some turned toward unhealthy coping. A Maine organization recognized the real answer: communities sur…
A Walk in the Woods
Greg steps into the Maine forest with no destination in mind, letting the dense trees and green fields quiet the weight he carries from his work in suicide prevention. What started in childhood as esc…
Recovery Discovery EDT for Procrastination
You're staring at a task that should take an hour, but you've spent three days perfecting details instead. EFT Tapping offers a different path: it helps you uncover the hidden fears driving procrastin…
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…
Westbrook Provides Help for Overdose Prevention
Janet Dosseva watches staff members practice administering naloxone in the Westbrook library. It's a small action, part of a larger shift: her community coalition is stocking life-saving medication in…
4 Considerations for an Employee Support Program
A manager notices an employee's missed deadlines and withdrawn behavior. Before assuming performance problems, she connects him with the company's support program. The conversation changes everything.…
OPTIONS Liaison Spotlight: Lacey Bailey
Lacey Bailey sits at the Sanford Police Department, radio in hand, waiting for the next call. As an OPTIONS Liaison in long-term recovery herself, she answers when people most need someone who underst…
OPTIONS Liaison Spotlight: Dawn Kearns
Dawn Kearns starts her day at 7 am checking overnight reports with Augusta police, then moves through libraries, shelters, and soup kitchens searching for people on her caseload. Years into her own re…
Tucker’s House in Bridgton
Kirsten Wears grew up watching someone she loved struggle with substance use disorder. Years later, laid off during the pandemic, she channeled that experience into founding Tucker's House, a women's…
SaVida Health: Addiction Treatment Program
Kyle spent years seeking help from program after program, carrying labels that made him feel like a burden. At SaVida Health, something shifted. His counselor saw past the addiction to the person unde…
Al-Anon: Mutual Aid for Families of Alcoholics
Finn walked into his first Al-Anon meeting terrified he'd break invisible rules. Instead, he found a room where people handed him their phone numbers and let him listen quietly, no judgment. He came h…
Up-Level Your Professional Life In Recovery
Someone scrolling through Coursera during their lunch break discovers a web design course that sparks something. Work isn't a luxury during recovery, it's a foundation. This piece explores three affor…
The Addiction Cycle Explained
You learned to ride a bike once, and your body remembered forever. That same automatic system in your brain can trap you in patterns with substances, making each use feel more urgent than the last. Un…
Career Centers and Grant Program
Rene Smith watches workshop participants practice answering interview questions with HR professionals from local businesses. These mock interviews are part of something bigger: Maine's CareerCenters n…
Coastal Recovery Community Center
In 2016, neighbors gathered to talk about something no one wanted to ignore: substance use disorder was affecting their community. Three people from that conversation became recovery coaches. Today, t…
Stories Restoring Hope: Malerie Lockhart
Malerie Lockhart sits across from men in Maine's reentry center, helping them imagine life after incarceration. Once, she sold everything for a one-way ticket to Florida with two hundred dollars and a…
The Ahab Inside Me
A playwright learns his brother died from opiate addiction and reaches for what he knows: theater. Instead of seeking revenge against the disease, he stages plays that bring people with lived experien…
Dan Belyea
Dan Belyea is chief workforce development officer for the Maine Community College System. Sober 17 years, he speaks openly about his recovery and pushes for jobs for people in recovery.
Stories Restoring Hope: Jim Mello
Jim Mello's Sunday sermons reach three Methodist churches, his poetry fills handwritten notebooks by the thousands, and his voice once hosted a college radio show. But it's his work as a substance use…
It’s All About Freedom
Joanna Free spent years getting through each day, her attention hijacked and creativity numbed by tobacco. She realized the real problem wasn't nicotine dependence but disconnection from herself and o…
Safe Harbor
Four organizations in Machias decided to build something together: a recovery home where women could stay, with or without their children. Katie Sell manages Safe Harbor, making sure residents get tra…
OPTIONS Liaison Meets People Where They Are
Tom MacElhaney started his job as a resource guide during lockdown, when isolation hit hardest for people struggling with substances. As someone in long-term recovery himself, he saw the urgent need.…
Oliver Bradeen Born to be … a Responder!
Oliver Bradeen rides along with police officers to calls involving substance use, riding in an unmarked car to meet people in crisis. Now he coaches others doing the same work across Maine. He teaches…
Building Better, Building Together
Matthew Jones of Portland has been sober since Thanksgiving 2019. A carpenter, he gives people early in recovery work and support.
Recovery Discovery within Rejection
A toddler's cry goes unheard. A child learns their feelings don't matter. Years later, that person overworks, people-pleases, stays in situations that harm them. This article explores how early reject…
The Weiss Method : How Energy Works In The Body
Maria's hands moved on autopilot, reaching for the same habit each evening without thinking. The Weiss Method locates where repetitive patterns live in your body's energy systems. By understanding wha…
Understanding Moral Suffering and Cultivating Moral Resilience
When you compromise your values to survive a difficult situation, the guilt can linger long after the moment passes. This piece explores moral suffering, the pain that comes from acting against what m…
Three Health Benefits of Medication-Assisted Treatment
A pregnant person in recovery faces withdrawal symptoms, stigma, and fear of harming their baby. Medication-assisted treatment combined with peer support addresses these specific challenges. Research…
Washington County Centers are a Bright Light
Amy Day parks on Main Street in Calais and unlocks the Downeast Recovery Support Center, where someone might be seeking naloxone, another attending a meeting, a third just needing a smile. In rural Wa…
Sobriety is a Gift That Keeps on Giving
The writer of this story has chosen sobriety since June 14, 2001. Today that life includes a healthy marriage, lasting 12-step friendships, and the freedom of making real choices.
What Makes SaVida Health Different?
Brian Garrity missed an appointment and spiraled into shame, convinced he'd lost his chance at recovery. Then messages arrived from his entire care team, checking in. At SaVida Health Maine, this isn'…
Recovered, with April Tomah
April Tomah of Milford is a Passamaquoddy mother of three who calls herself recovered. She chairs the Wabanaki Two Spirit Alliance and works for Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness.
Gordon Smith
Gordon Smith wasn't trained in medicine or law enforcement. He was a lawyer guiding the Maine Medical Association for three decades when Gov. Janet Mills asked him to lead the state's opioid response.…
Supporting Employees Through Addiction and Mental Illness
A manager notices an employee's performance slipping, attendance irregular. Before assuming the worst, she has tools to help. Workplaces are discovering that supporting employees through substance use…
Maine Association of Recovery Residences
Ron Springel once told Betty Ford that recovery homes frightened him, filled with "convicts and drug addicts." She replied, "You'll fit in perfectly." Decades later, as executive director of Maine's r…
Food Addicts Anonymous – Nourishing the Self
Elizabeth turned to food as a child to survive trauma, moving through restriction and purging before losing control entirely. Her story reveals how food addiction progresses differently for each perso…
From ‘Failure’ to Success
Your friend turns the car around halfway up the mountain, panic in his chest, and posts about it anyway. This piece explores why admitting defeat might be the bravest choice in recovery, and how shari…
Journey Toward Recovery Discovery
After sixteen years of chronic sciatic pain, one EFT tapping session released the trapped emotions causing it. The author hasn't felt that pain since. Now she's sharing what changed her life with othe…
The Weiss Method : Using Energy to Help Break Unhealthy Habits
Kevin O'Grady stopped drinking and smoking after years of failed attempts through other methods. He describes the Weiss Method treatment as flipping a switch: the constant inner craving disappeared, r…
Law Enforcement Officers: Allies in Uniforms
Kennebunk Police Chief Bob MacKenzie watched the same people cycle through jail repeatedly until he realized the pattern pointed to one root cause: substance use disorder. That recognition shifted eve…
SaVida Health Favors ‘Compassionate Accountability’
A team member asked how to hold members accountable while showing support. That question, posed in August 2021, sparked SaVida Health's core philosophy: compassionate accountability. At their Maine op…
Wendy Ayres – Night Shift filled with Light
Wendy works nights at a residential treatment facility, staying awake when residents need someone who understands. Nearly eighteen years in recovery, she listens with the wisdom of someone who survive…
A Son, Softened Ed Crockett’s Story
Ed Crockett is the author of The Ghosts of Walter Crockett, a book about his father. After 30 years apart, the two found each other, and Ed says his dad taught him how to forgive.
Lakes Region Recovery Center
Aaron Smart puts down whatever he's doing the moment someone walks through the door needing support. At Lakes Region Recovery Center's new Bridgton location, that responsiveness defines the work. Cert…
New Hope Alliance
Katahli and Daryl Blums married while building their recovery residence business together. They run two Maine certified homes where residents progress through phases, writing goodbye letters to their…
Small-town Filmmakers Provide a Way to Open Hearts, Change Perceptions
Small-town Filmmakers Provide a Way to Open Hearts, Change Perceptions
A Community Film and Conversation
A seventeen-year-old filmmaker named Tyler Muise watched an audience cry at his fifteen-minute film about a high school boy spiraling through substance use. What moved them most wasn't judgment or sha…
Be Informed and Know Your OPTIONS
Glenn Gordon drives through Oxford County's two thousand square miles, showing up when someone has overdosed or gotten arrested for drug-related charges. As the OPTIONS Initiative liaison, he connects…
Thriving During the Holidays
A person navigates a family dinner in December, watching others raise glasses while holiday music plays. The season brings joy for many, but for those in recovery from substance use disorder, the holi…
Generational Noor
When Amran Osman's brother died from an overdose, she realized her Somali community stayed silent about substance use disorder. Fear kept people from seeking help. Now the 24-year-old is breaking that…
Maine Voices of Recovery – Rachelle Bell
Rachelle Bell sits across from incarcerated people in Maine's reentry centers, telling them the truth: the only difference between them and her is that she never got caught. Ten years sober after a de…
Recovery Discovery for NoMoPhobia
Maria reaches for her phone before her eyes open. When the battery dies during her commute, her chest tightens. She's not alone. Millions experience NoMoPhobia, an anxiety triggered by smartphone sepa…
One Gratitude at a Time
Your alarm goes off. First thought: "Too early. I hurt." But what if you paused there? Your heart beat all night without asking. Your lungs kept working. You can see, hear, feel. This piece explores h…
Dave Smith
A young person in recovery asked Dave Smith if he ever thought about getting high again. Dave looked at his life: a twenty-year marriage, twelve grandchildren, a good job, a home. He realized the thou…
The Maine Mom Program
A woman arrives at her first appointment terrified, ashamed, wondering how she got here. Dr. Alane O'Connor sees many tears at MaineMOM's initial visits. But this program in Maine doesn't judge. It me…
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…
Recovering at El Rancho de la Vida
Jamie Lebish lived in a refrigerator box in Seattle before finding recovery. Now, twenty-four years sober, he runs El Rancho de la Vida, a Maine residence where people in early recovery find safety, d…
Carly and Brinn Flagg
Sisters Carly and Brinn Flagg both live in Maine now. They powerlift together and lean on a strong community. Carly's sobriety date is October 4, 2014, and the family has learned to talk things out.
Know Your Rights: Good Samaritan Law in Maine
Someone witnesses an overdose and wants to call 911, but fear stops them. What if they have an outstanding warrant? What if their friend does? Maine's expanded Good Samaritan Law removes that barrier,…
A Family Affair: Gatehouse Treatment
Brian Kiloski answers the phone at GateHouse Treatment, placing people into recovery programs. Years ago, he was the one needing placement. Now he helps families understand that addiction touches ever…
Larry Labonte Recovery Center
When Lonnie Labonte lost friends to overdose and suicide, he knew exactly what to do with his inherited business space. Working with his mother Kathie, a person in recovery herself, they built the Lar…
Recovery Discovery with EFT Tapping
Sarah sits in a practitioner's office, fingertips tapping steady points on her face and collarbone. Within minutes, the knot in her chest loosens. EFT Tapping, a technique combining mind-body connecti…
Fresh Start Sober Living
Scott Pardy watched the same men cycle through the county jail year after year. Years into his own recovery, he saw the pattern clearly: no stable housing meant a return to use, then arrest, then jail…
Sensational Radar
After years of numbing pain through survival mode, someone realized their body held vital signals they'd learned to ignore. By tuning into physical sensations tied to emotions, they discovered how to…
Maine Voices of Recovery Issue #23
Rochelle Grant Kenney watches her grandson Sander call out "Mimi" across the living room in Hope, Maine. That voice reminds her daily of everything she regained when she got sober in 2009. Now she wor…
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…
Brad Sorte
Brad Sorte kicks a soccer ball with his daughter, lunches with business partners, seems to have it all. But years ago, he was a boy without words for his pain, reaching for alcohol as his only tool. T…
The Power of Prevention-focused Coalitions
A student at South Portland High School used a substance and faced suspension, a punishment that left them adrift. Now, when students struggle with substance use, they meet with a counselor instead. T…
Recovery Community Center Corner
Three women in recovery in Millinocket decided to stop waiting for help and started their own. Four years later, Pir2Peer Recovery Community Center is outgrowing its space. Now moving to Medway, the c…
Maine Voices of Recovery Issue #22
Becky Peasley has been a nurse in Maine for 25 years. She serves on the board of the Coastal Recovery Community Center, speaks in jails, and pushes for faster access to treatment.
Well-Being at Your Fingertips
A person who spent three decades battling panic attacks tried medication, meditation, everything in between. Then they discovered EFT Tapping, a technique using gentle pressure on acupressure points.…
Christine Maider
Christine Maider is a mother of four and a community activist with five years in recovery. She regained custody of her children and now helps other parents work for change in the system.
Freddy Petrone
Freddy Petrone founded I Got Bridged, a nonprofit that serves people in need on the Seacoast. Helping others is the center of his life today. He found his recovery path after losing his sight.
Anthony Brown
Anthony Brown is a registered nurse and licensed psychiatric technician. He has written two books about his recovery.
Recovery Allies
Someone asks you what you can do to help. Maybe you know a person in recovery searching for housing, or you want your neighborhood to embrace recovery-friendly communities. "Safe housing is the founda…
Kindred Spirits Camp
Every August, adults return to a Massachusetts camp to do something they thought they'd lost: play. Kindred Spirits Camp, founded in 1982, combines summer fun with recovery community. Through hiking,…
A Southern Maine Woman's Story
A Southern Maine woman has three decades in recovery. Her closest friends are women in her program, and she has had the same sponsor for 17 years. Her grown daughters know they can count on her.
Finding Purpose in Recovery
A parent works a full shift, then volunteers through the evening. An employee balances job and community service. Purpose isn't about saving the world in one dramatic act. In recovery, it lives in sma…
Eastern Maine Development Corporation (EMDC)
Lee Umphrey walks through Eastern Maine Development Corporation's Bangor office, where one in six employees is in recovery. For Umphrey, hiring people rebuilding their lives isn't a special program. I…
Employers Play a Vital Role
Doug Dunbar sat in jail wondering who would help the young, poor, sick people around him find the resources they desperately needed. Now a recovery specialist himself, he knows the answer: employers w…
The Phoenix
A woman drove past the gym five times before she found the courage to walk in. She had no fitness background, just a feeling she needed something. Today, she's a strong CrossFit athlete in recovery. T…
Joanna Free: Buttkicker
Joanna Free has worked in mental health and addiction recovery for many years. She has been free of tobacco since September 13, 1990, and she proudly calls herself a buttkicker.
Disbelief to Belief
In a hospital gown, certain she had mono, a woman learned instead she was pregnant. Disbelief had ruled her life for years, keeping her trapped in addiction and denial. When facts finally overwhelmed…
Ben Sawyer
Ben Sawyer is a certified recovery advisor, a career he loves. The former Marine and nurse is remarried and still goes to 12-step meetings. He tells newcomers that hope is here.
A Common Co-Existence
Bertha Pappenheim spent years institutionalized after Freud declared her "cured." What actually healed her wasn't therapy but purpose: working in soup kitchens, running an orphanage, fighting sex traf…
Book Review: The 12 and 12
Someone walks into an AA meeting feeling lost, then finds themselves in a room where a stranger's story mirrors their own. The book "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" explains why these meetings wor…
Russ's Story
Russ has not had a drink since January 2017. He has mended his relationships with his ex-wife and daughters, built a successful business, and is healthy again.
Recovery Capital
Brittany moved into a recovery residence with nothing but chaos behind her. Five years later, she owns a house, works at the Maine Association of Recovery Residences, and parents an eight-month-old so…
That’s All I Had to Do?
A woman in recovery calls a friend in tears, furious at someone for no reason she can name. Her friend asks one question: Have you eaten? Twenty minutes after a meal, the anger vanishes. This piece ex…
Seabreeze Property Services
When someone notices a perfectly manicured lawn in Maine, they might be looking at work done by a person in recovery. Seabreeze Property Services, the state's largest landscaping company, has built so…
Sarah Langevin
Sarah closes the bathroom door in her Auburn home, not to hide, but to breathe. Four children play beyond it. Inside, she thanks the frustration and anger visiting her body, then lets them go. This sm…
Taking Care of Your Wellness in Recovery
River Martin sits down with people rebuilding their lives after substance use and asks them a simple question: what does wellness look like to you? Their answer often reveals something unexpected. Rec…
Working In Harmony With Spiritual Principles
A manager sat at her desk, convinced she knew better than everyone around her. She micromanaged relentlessly, controlled every detail, and never asked for help. Years into her recovery journey, she re…
Belonging & Purpose
Jordan answered the phone at the recovery community center's front desk, greeting someone calling for the first time. Later, as a volunteer recovery coach, he'd sit across from people sharing their da…
Narcotics Anonymous: Q&A
Nicole walked into her first Narcotics Anonymous meeting and heard something that changed everything: "The lie that people can't recover is dead." Three members from Maine,Nicole, Brendan, and Jamie,a…
Narcotics Anonymous (NA)
Someone sits in a folding chair in a rented room, listening to people they've never met talk about their lives before recovery. No judgment. No fees. No one cares what they used or how long. Narcotics…
Book Review: Living Sober
Lisa T. picked up a seventy-page booklet at one of her first recovery meetings, unsure what she'd find. Everything in her life needed to change, but she had no idea where to start. This book gave her…
The Handshake That Changed the World
In a doctor's kitchen in 1939, two men shook hands. One said, "Hello, my name is Bill, and I am an alcoholic." That moment sparked something neither could have predicted: a force that would spread acr…
A Cultural Connection Drives Personal Transformation
Steven Knockwood is four years into recovery and manages Opportunity House, an Indigenous men's recovery home in Bangor. Reconnecting with his culture and ceremony helped him find who he is.
Creating a Mentally Healthy and Happy Workplace
An employee dreads Monday mornings, calls in sick twice a month, and quietly struggles with anxiety that nobody at work knows about. Employers are discovering that mental health support isn't just com…
Making It Work for Employees in Recovery
Maine's tourism industry faces two crises at once: nearly one in five hospitality workers struggle with substance use disorders, while understaffed restaurants and hotels scramble to fill positions. B…
The State of Maine OPTIONS Initiative
When Governor Mills stood before Maine's opioid response leaders last July, she outlined a vision: behavioral health specialists and paramedics arriving together at overdose scenes across all sixteen…
The Pillars of Recovery
Ron Springel knows exactly what makes a recovery residence work: it's the place where someone actually got well. This simple wisdom points to something larger. Four pillars support recovery for everyo…
6 Ways to Fortify Yourself
When stress piles up, your body needs more recovery time, not less. This article explores six practices that fortify you during turbulent periods: rest, recovery, refuge, relationships, resilience bui…
Stepping Up
A therapist friend kept offering unsolicited advice when the writer only wanted her perspective. The old response was silence and resentment. But this time, he spoke up. Not once, but twice, until the…
No Single, but Many, Paths to Recovery
On any given afternoon at a recovery community center, someone might attend an A.A. meeting, then a recovery yoga class, then meet with a peer coach. There's no single path that works for everyone. Th…
Christopher Poulos
Christopher Poulos is an attorney and the executive director of the Washington Statewide Reentry Council. He works on prison reform and reentry, and he is part of a mountain rescue team.
What’s Your (Ally) Language of Love?
A person in recovery celebrates a milestone. A coworker shows up. A neighbor asks the right question. These moments matter because allies shape how recovery is seen and supported. Learn how to express…
Hiring People in Recovery
Dana Lariviere got a phone call two years after firing Sarah, an employee who struggled with attendance. She was calling to apologize, explain her heroin addiction and recovery, and ask for her job ba…
The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
Brené Brown celebrated 25 years of sobriety while becoming a household name, proving her recovery made everything else possible. Her new book offers ten practical guideposts for letting go of perfecti…
Be A Positive Influencer
A teen takes the keys from a friend at a party. Another says no to a drink and means it. These moments matter more than you might think. This piece explores how young people become positive influencer…
The Twelfth Step
Amanda K. spent years sponsoring others through 12-step programs while working full-time and raising a child alone. She burned out. Her new sponsor helped her see the 12th step differently: not as end…
Community Consultants
When someone leaves Knox County Jail, a person in recovery meets them during discharge planning to share what worked: how they rebuilt their life, where to find help, who to trust. Community Consultan…
Joe K.'s Story
Joe K. starts and ends each day with AA's third step. He has a home group where he feels accepted and real friends who care. He says caring for others has given him a new life.
Intentional Peer Supports
Someone shares their story with a peer support specialist in a way they've never shared before. That moment of genuine connection, where trust builds without judgment or commands, is where healing beg…
Healthy Communities A Team Effort
Jess was pregnant, in her early 30s, and seeking a second chance at recovery. When federal rules blocked her from residential treatment, her counselor fought to make an exception. Now, walking out of…
Marshall Mercer
Marshall Mercer is in his third year of college and has worked at the Maine Recovery Advocacy Project. He calls himself a student in recovery and helps others find their own path to recovery.
What Are Puff Bars?
Your colleague mentions Puff Bars casually, and you realize you're hearing about a vaping product designed to slip past the regulations that caught up with JUUL. These disposable devices pack nicotine…
Music for Recovery
Carol stood in the pantry, headphones on, recording her voice for the first time. Thirty minutes later, she emerged and whispered, "I actually don't sound bad." Over six weeks, a guitar and a song bec…
Al-Anon: Personal Experiences
Yaeko walked into her first Al-Anon meeting thirty-five years ago while her husband attended AA. She carried the belief that if she was smart enough, good enough, she could stop his drinking. Al-Anon…
Al-Anon Family Groups
Someone you love drinks too much, and you've spent months trying to control it, fix it, convince them to stop. You're exhausted and ashamed. Al-Anon Family Groups offers a different path: meetings whe…
9 Work-Life Recovery Tools to Empower, Satisfy, Grow, and Delight
After a breakdown in year three of sobriety, this person walked dogs instead of launching companies. It took years of that simple work to rebuild boundaries, reconnect with recovery, and find real suc…
Senior Sober
At sixty-one, Brian Cuban remembers sitting in a recovery room at forty-six, listening to people twenty and thirty years sober and thinking he'd wasted his life. He'd spent years replaying the past, c…
Brave the Unknown With Spirit
Standing before the mirror, she promises herself, "I can do this." After reinventing herself through multiple chapters, some shadowed by struggle, she's learned that breath grounds her. Now she shares…
Millions of Cups of Coffee and Not a Drop to Drink
Helen Thorgalsen stands behind the counter at H.B. Provisions, the general store she built with her partner 20 years ago in Kennebunk. She's been sober for 34 years. This is her story of recovery, of…
Willa Wirth – A Force of Nature
Willa Wirth crafts silver pendants shaped like cresting waves and earrings that shimmer like moonlight. Her jewelry is instantly recognizable as masterwork. It's also the work of a woman in recovery w…
Amanda Kurlanski – Trusting the Process
Amanda Kurlanski is a licensed counselor who helps others through recovery. She is married, expecting her third child, and working toward law school. She calls it "a big, beautiful life."
The McAuley Residence
Nicole walks through the doors of the McAuley Residence as a single mother searching for a way forward. At this Portland transitional housing program, she discovers something she thought impossible: a…
Understanding the Teen Brain
A parent asks their teenager "What were you thinking?" after a risky choice, and the answer is both simple and scientific: their brain isn't finished developing yet. This piece explains why adolescent…
A Woman’s Way Through the Twelve Steps
A woman sits with Step Three, wrestling with what "turning it over" means when she's spent her life managing everyone else's feelings and needs. Dr. Covington's book reframes the twelve steps through…
Making Deposits
For decades, a woman searched for what would make her feel enough: the right partner, the right body, the right achievement. Each desperate attempt to fill an inner emptiness only deepened it. Recover…
Beth's Story
Beth quit drinking on Christmas Day 2018. With her sponsor, she worked the 12 steps and made amends. Today, a practice of acceptance helps her find peace.
Alcoholics Anonymous
Someone sits in a metal folding chair, listening to a stranger describe the exact moment they thought they'd never drink again, then did. They recognize themselves in that story. What follows is how A…
You Don’t Have to Be a Prisoner of Your Past
Colleen Garrick works the 12 steps and sponsors others in recovery. She speaks openly about her past in job interviews, and employers have thanked her for her honesty and vulnerability.
Recovery Friendly Workplaces
Keith Hornberger needed one chance to turn his life around. As a business owner in recovery, he understood that hiring others facing the same struggle meant offering something invaluable: purpose and…
Recovery Community Centers Offer Good Soil for a Place to Grow
Leslie Clark didn't understand why people stayed in recovery meetings for twenty years. Now, more than thirty years into her own recovery, she sings, gardens, and writes poetry. Her story reveals what…
Recovery Works for ME
A peer support specialist at a recovery center watched employers turn away qualified candidates because of past convictions and employment gaps. That observation sparked a workshop teaching business o…
Yoga In Recovery
Jodi's mind raced at 6,200 thoughts per minute during early recovery. On a yoga mat, guided to focus on her breath, that hamster wheel finally slowed. Yoga offers people in recovery something deeper t…
What is Prevention?
A second-grader learns why medication belongs in a locked cabinet. A fourth-grader understands how drugs affect the brain. Prevention education starts early and builds year by year. This column explor…
How Can I Follow My Bliss If I Don’t Know What It Is?
After a year or two in recovery, a question emerges: What do I want to do now that I have a chance? This practical guide walks you through a job inventory exercise, showing how to identify patterns in…
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
One March morning in 2016, when life had become unbearable, she reached for a book gathering dust on her nightstand: The Artist's Way. Three pages of handwritten thoughts, no rules, no judgment. That…
Veronica Ingrao
Veronica Ingrao finished college and grad school and now works as a therapist, a job she loves. Her education and her recovery grew side by side.
Finding Meaningful Work and Helping Others Find Theirs
Zachary Walker turns 30 this summer, settling into a cottage with his girlfriend while helping other Mainers find jobs and stability. Seven years into his recovery, he works as a Peer Connector for Go…
Spirit Illuminated
A person discovers their intuition speaking through warm sand beneath their feet, through forests explored and love felt deeply. This spiritual awakening becomes a path toward understanding how humans…
Stealth Camping with Hundreds of My Closest Friends
Zinnia parks her minivan in an Ohio lot after a sleepless night, shaken and alone. Then she finds a packed AA meeting three minutes away. Over breakfast with people who understand, her shame lifts. Th…
Tania Margate
Tania lives in Harpswell, Maine, and has been back in her nursing career for over a year. Her friendships and family ties are thriving. The last time she used was May 26, 2013.
When in Doubt, Choose Challenge
The water was 38 degrees, and everything in her wanted to stay warm and dry. That's exactly why she jumped in. This piece explores how intentionally choosing difficult moments, whether it's an icy oce…
Coming to Faith
She kicked the drywall in anger during rehab and her feet broke through in the shape of a heart. Years of using drugs to silence shame had nearly killed her. Now, in a converted bar that became a chur…
Bringing Love Into the Room
After a decade in public health meetings, Zoe Brokos realized something crucial: community itself is the healing tool. Not strategies or statistics, but people showing up together, accepting each othe…
We Have Superpowers!
Erica Buswell sits with six community members around a table, planning how to help their friend find work and fix a broken car. What started as a simple idea, that people in recovery have gifts to off…
Melody Rose Paul
Melody Rose Paul is a published author who works full-time and leads a weekly Wellbriety meeting. She surrounds herself with friends who feel like family and keep her accountable.
Accessing Recovery Supports
Bruce Noddin sat in a prison ministry meeting when he noticed the same faces returning to the system again and again. That observation sparked a statewide network connecting corrections staff, nonprof…
Recovery in the workplace is an asset for employers
A peer specialist in long-term recovery watches employers struggle to understand why hiring people rebuilding their lives matters. He's spent years seeing how a paycheck transforms someone's ability t…
Are You Surviving Or Thriving?
You've kept yourself alive through countless hard moments. That survival skill runs deep. But somewhere between paying bills and getting through the day, there's another possibility: thriving. It look…
The Search for Serenity
A TV character yells "serenity now" at his blood pressure, hoping words alone will melt away his anger. It doesn't work. But a prayer written nearly a century ago offers something deeper: not a magic…
The Power of Consistency
Someone in recovery sits down to meditate for five minutes. Just five. They do it again tomorrow, and the day after. A year later, they've meditated over 1,800 times. This piece explores how small, re…
Stephen Chabot
Stephen Chabot wakes at 4:34 AM to work out before his three young children stir, before the demands of leading Maine's largest elementary school begin. He's reclaimed mornings as his territory, he sa…
Peer Recovery Coaching
Marcus sat across from his recovery coach, uncertain how to rebuild his life after treatment. His coach didn't tell him what to do. Instead, she asked questions that helped Marcus discover his own ans…
A Life Second To None
When she first stopped drinking, she imagined a gray future: survival, not joy. She assumed life without alcohol meant a small, dull existence. Instead, recovery opened doors she never knew existed. T…
There’s No Place Like Home
A woman realizes her years of searching outward for belonging missed something crucial: home lives inside her, in how she sees herself and her world. This piece explores how your deepest beliefs shape…
This is my Bill W. plant.
Tania took home a plant from the closing women's halfway house where she'd rebuilt her life. She didn't know it was a Bill W. plant, named for recovery's founder, until later. Seven years on, "Billy"…
People in Recovery and Plants
Manfred hands over a ten-inch plant, full and thriving, grown from a tiny cutting he found in his sink. He talked to it regularly, encouraged its growth. This is what the Bill W. plant represents: how…
Sober Living Comes Full Circle
Daryl Blums and his fiancée Katahli Stieg, in recovery for 7 and 3 years, co-own and run two sober houses in Southern Maine. They give others the support they once needed.
Doug Dunbar’s journey
Doug Dunbar helps people in early recovery find services through his role at Eastern Maine Development Corporation. He says mental health care and the recovery community have been his way to heal.
Ashley Reny
Ashley Reny sits in her office fielding calls from people desperate for a shot at recovery. Ten years ago, she was one of them, overdosing and waking in withdrawal at a recovery house in Portland. Now…
Calling All Inner Healers
Nancy Risley nearly died from hepatitis at thirteen. That brush with mortality set her on a different path: learning everything about healing her body and mind. Decades later, her Spa Tech Institute t…
Home is not ‘there,’ it’s ‘here’
For years, she chased a mythical "there": the right job, the perfect body, a love that would finally make her whole. She filled the emptiness with drugs, alcohol, and self-hatred. It wasn't until reha…
Probation Officers
Alicia Smith sits across from a person on probation and asks about their hobbies, their family, what matters to them. She's a probation officer, which most people assume means enforcing rules. But Smi…
Maulian Dana
Maulian Dana is the Penobscot Nation's first Tribal Ambassador. She stopped drinking on June 4, 2018, and calls it the best thing she has ever done for herself.
Recovery Residences
Josh Leonard wore out his welcome at home before finding Portland Sober Living. Two years as a resident transformed his life so completely that he stayed on as house manager. Recovery residences, from…
Aromatherapy
Susan Giarolo's back throbbed after surgery. Pain pills had nearly cost her everything. Then, in a yoga studio bathroom, she spotted an essential oil blend and wondered: could scent become medicine? T…
Amy Alexander
Amy found a sand dollar on a beach outside a hotel where she was staying with her boyfriend and understood it as a sign to leave. That moment, asking for help and calling the police, marked the beginn…
Conversations
Sarah sits across from her mother, bracing for the same argument they've had a hundred times. But this time, she pauses and asks something different. Journey explores how curiosity can transform famil…
Kevin O’Grady
Kevin O'Grady celebrated one year alcohol free at 66. He says he is feeling and sleeping better, he is back in touch with old friends, and he dreams of a fishing trip to Alaska.
Medication Assistance
Sarah Siegel stood at a crossroads, feeling death hover over her shoulder as heroin gripped her life. Then a doctor offered another path: methadone. She chose it, and that choice became her choice to…
The Nature of Family
A counselor remembers her turbulent childhood, the anger that followed, and the slow shift toward seeing her family history as a classroom instead of a wound. She discovered she could define family on…
Parents Dealing with their Kids Addiction and Alcoholism
When Karen and Eddie's daughter showed signs of substance use disorder, they asked themselves: Who do we turn to? Isolation and shame nearly consumed them until they found a family support group. This…
Family Support Groups : help, hope and support for loved ones
Susan sat in a Nar Anon meeting nine years ago, worried sick about her son's addiction and unsure where to turn. She discovered something unexpected: she needed support too. Through the group, she lea…
Eleanor Trask
Eleanor Trask is a Certified Recovery Coach, a mother and a student earning A's. Her daughter gave her a four-year medallion, and she loves who she is today.
The Farm – Maine’s oldest co-ed treatment center
Michael Yerema has watched people arrive at The Farm for 25 years, many from detox units or jail cells. Maine's oldest residential treatment center, nestled minutes from the Canadian border, offers so…
How Service Leads to Self-Esteem
Three months sober, the author sat in a group and cried. She realized she hated herself. Years of hiding behind alcohol, ambition, and designer things had masked a deeper truth: she felt unworthy. Rec…
Growing Recovery Strong Communities in Maine
Leslie Clark drove past a building on her Portland route for months, hearing whispers about something wonderful happening inside. She didn't understand what a recovery community center was until she w…
Letting Go Of Holding On
During the pandemic, someone in recovery confronts a familiar challenge: grief. They've already learned to release what addiction took from them. Now they face new losses,jobs, routines, the life befo…
No Strangers
During a video call, Jody said something that stuck: "We may be living in strange times, but we are not strangers." This article explores how connection becomes our anchor during upheaval. While the w…
Finding Recovery “In The Rooms”
Ken sits in his hospital bed scrolling through a recovery meeting happening live on his screen. Thousands of miles away, someone in a rural town joins from home. In The Rooms connects people in recove…
Meaningful Conversations
Sarah sits across from a friend in recovery, phone face-down on the table. Before responding, she listens, really listens, to what's being shared. This article explores how active listening builds dee…
Becoming a Recovery Ally : No special skills required
Amy walked into the Bangor Area Recovery Network expecting to offer little. She wasn't a counselor or doctor, had never known anyone in recovery until her own family's crisis hit. But sitting in a roo…
Five tips for being a recovery ally
Ron Springel sits across from someone newly in recovery and asks an open question: What is your recovery journey like? That conversation, that listening, is where allyship begins. This guide offers fi…
Mission Driven
Eddie Greyfox Burgess parks his turquoise 1965 Ford Fairlane at festivals and car shows, spreading health pamphlets and conversation. A former social worker and counselor in recovery since 1994, he tr…
Making Service an Everyday Practice
Sharon Roberts, a receptionist at United Way of Greater Portland, noticed a visitor's energy on a Friday afternoon and said so. That small act of recognition stayed with them. What if service isn't ab…
Mike Ouellette
Mike Ouellette is the Food Pantry Coordinator at York County Shelter Programs, the place he once came to for help. He loves his job and gets to pay forward the hope he was given.
Tech Support
Dr. Ted Logan didn't wait for a crisis to bring treatment online. Years before the pandemic, he moved his practice to video visits so rural Mainers could access care without driving hours or sacrifici…
Braided Services
Rhonda Decontie watched her father weave traditional singing and prayer into 12 step meetings, teaching her how culture and recovery belong together. Now, as clerk of the Penobscot Nation Healing to W…
Recovery Allies – Photographers
Joanne Arnold stands at dawn with men gathering around a fire circle at MaineWorks, camera in hand. She photographs people in early recovery, capturing moments of dignity and determination. Later, her…
Bouncing Back
Resilience is an innate capability that some people seem to have that allows them to keep going despite the setbacks – it applies to all stages of recovery regardless of the path.
Sophia’s House Program Director : Tricia Grant
Tricia Grant is program director at Sophia's House. She is following a calling to help others "become survivors and then thrivers," and she says it took time to let go and let God.
Sophia’s House, a safe place to call home
In a restored convent on Lewiston's Blake Street, six women trafficking survivors will move into rooms of their own this year. Sophia's House offers two years rent-free, plus job training and support…
Compassionate Living
Stephen Andrew, who has led support circles in Portland for 32 years, watches people struggle against isolation during social distancing. He knows that emotional distance feeds vulnerability to return…
The Ripple Effect
Heatherly Wing stood before nearly a hundred women in prison, holding pages she'd written but never read. She was nervous about sharing Glenn Simpson's puzzle idea, a project where each person writes…
Service to Self
When the ground beneath you shifts, when everything feels unstable, your survival depends not on what surrounds you but on the strength within. This piece explores why tending to yourself first isn't…
Family Matters
Kaitlin MacKenzie asked her parents for one thing in early recovery: connection instead of judgment. Her father, a police chief, learned to lead with love. Her mother, a teacher, created space for hon…
Daily Self-Care Recovery Practices: Part 2
Someone in early recovery once described themselves as fog waiting to lift. That simple act of writing, of naming where they stood, became part of something larger. This piece explores ten daily pract…
The Center for Grieving Children
Bill Hemmens walked through a door looking for help for his grieving niece and found it missing. That absence became a mission. Thirty-three years later, the Center for Grieving Children serves thousa…
Daily Self-Care Recovery Practices: Part 1
Marcus couldn't remember the last time he slept through the night or ate a meal without thinking about what he was missing. In recovery, he realized substances had been his broken solution to pain and…
Feeding the Fear or Nourishing the Soul?
Sam stays late at work again, avoiding the fights waiting at home. Jess works late too, building something that makes her feel alive. Same choice, opposite reasons. This piece explores how to tell the…
Massage: Nourishing Your Mind/Body Connection
Jay Phelps traces his fingers along his forearm during a massage session, feeling tension melt away. After twenty years in recovery, he's learned something crucial: massage isn't luxury. It's medicine…
Brant Dadaleares
Brant Dadaleares sits across from job candidates without asking about their past with alcohol and drugs. Instead, he tells them straight: "Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes because I've done it…
Yoga Instructors
Elise Boyson came to yoga and felt something unexpected: she was coming home to herself. Now, as Executive Director of Sea Change Yoga in Portland, she brings trauma-informed classes to people in jail…
Brotherly Love
Ten men sit in a circle on Middle Street in Portland, shoes off, voices steady as they speak about hurt and hope. For twenty-three years, Stephen Andrew's Courageous Men Circles have offered something…
Sara Kraus
Sara Kraus walks out of her bank shift and pauses before speaking. She's nervous sharing her story, but she will, hoping it reaches someone trapped in the darkness she escaped. Her path to recovery wa…
Boots2Roots
Col. Dave Hickey returned home to Maine after military service and quickly noticed veterans struggling to find their footing in civilian life. That observation led to Boots2Roots, an organization prep…
Is it selfish to love yourself? No way – it’s healthy!
In a women's group, Kimble was asked a simple question: how do you celebrate yourself? She froze, embarrassed to admit she'd learned to love who she was. That discomfort reveals something many people…
Recovery’s elder stateswoman celebrates four sober decades
At 90, Joan Giles has been part of Maine's recovery community for 41 years, sober since 1978. Over those years she ran a 12-step bookstore and helped run meetings in a prison.
Give the gift of truly seeing others
Amy Wood pauses after a meeting to email someone back, not with quick praise, but with specific details about what she noticed and why it mattered. This gift of truly seeing others,acknowledging what…
MaineWorks works
On a dark Portland morning, Margo Walsh stands by a fire pit asking her workers if they have a place to sleep tonight. MaineWorks isn't just a construction company. It's a community built on the belie…
The Clergy
Rev. Allen Ewing Merrill stands before his congregation and speaks plainly: every person has sacred worth, no exceptions. At HopeGateWay in Portland, faith communities are moving beyond hosting meetin…
Recovery Allies (Issue 8)
At a brewery in Kennebunk, Police Chief Bob MacKenzie describes something radical: officers treating people in recovery with dignity. He's not alone. Across Maine, law enforcement are becoming recover…
Foster creativity. Become a more valuable employee. Grow your career.
A manager sits silent after a team member shares an idea. Another colleague jumps in immediately with something unrelated. The idea dies. This article shows how listening, curiosity, and genuine respe…
Louis Grassi
Louis Grassi, 32, loves his work as a peer recovery coach. He has not looked back in five years, and he fills his days with work, writing, music, family and friends.
Paradigm Windows
A young man approached the Paradigm Windows job fair table and whispered a question to Lark Pitts: would his incarceration history disqualify him? She leaned in and told him there was no need to whisp…
Recovery off the mainland’s a little different
Keith Ivers watches the sun rise from his boat, headed toward mainland meetings, then watches city lights fade as he returns to Peaks Island. On Maine's smallest islands, people in recovery navigate i…
Sarah Siegel
Sarah Siegel helps her three children out the door on a school morning, then heads to her job as a recovery coach. Twelve years ago, she was homeless, moving between treatment programs and survival. H…
Niki Curtis
Niki Curtis loves to make people laugh and give them hope. In recovery she took up running and painting, and on hard days she turns to helping someone else.
Lisa Silverman
Lisa Silverman sits in a coffee shop, radiant and grounded, a far cry from 1989 when she drank to blackout and felt trapped. After treatment and holistic training in meditation, nutrition, and breathw…
All together now
On a Saturday night in downtown Brewer, 125 people crowd into a converted furniture store for peer support meetings and dancing. The BARN, a recovery center, has become a lifeline for people seeking c…
H.O.P.E.: Finding meaning, value and purpose
A young Maine surgeon noticed something powerful: when he stopped talking and listened to his patients' stories, they healed better. Decades later, Dr. Ken Hamilton developed H.O.P.E. Groups around th…
Community acupuncture works because wellness starts with ‘we’
An older woman with arthritis reclines beside a young man battling anxiety, a cancer patient managing nausea, and a person newly in recovery from substance use disorder. They're strangers in a warm, q…
Rotarians can make a big impact on addiction crisis
Lisa Hallee sat in a Portland Rotary Club meeting when she heard about the opioid epidemic ravaging Maine. The words landed hard: her nephew had died from an overdose months earlier. That moment spark…
Our Oneness makes us unique – and part of a whole
A person with one leg moves across plains by embracing another person with one leg, then another, moving faster as their love tightens the embrace. This ancient story teaches how community forms when…
Veterans find military experience helps their recovery efforts
Dan Blake adjusts his uniform, remembers the acronyms. The military taught him to follow orders, to trust a mission larger than himself. Years later, sitting in his first recovery meeting, he realizes…
Transformed: Painter Eric Sorensen
Eric Sorensen pulls socks from his backpack to hand to people sleeping on Portland streets. Eleven years ago, he was one of them, pulling cardboard from dumpsters to survive. Today, he's a painter and…
Making Connections
A woman held up a sock monkey she'd stitched and said, "This is the first thing I've made in my life." In recovery programs across Maine, creative activities like painting, pottery, and fabric work ar…
Creative Expressions
Someone finds peace with hands in garden soil. Another unwinds rebuilding an engine. A third discovers calm while baking. Creative expression takes endless forms, and it's far more than art. It's how…
The Family Restored
In 2011, families sitting in Portland church basements shared the same heartbreak: they had money for rent, for food, but not for treatment. From those conversations grew The Family Restored, an organ…
The Holy Donut
When Jen Horton walked into The Holy Donut for her job interview, she heard laughter and singing from behind the counter. The CEO smiled and said, "That's our culture. I love knowing people are happy…
Wellness – EFT
Karen St. Clair spent sixteen years chasing relief from debilitating pain through doctors and chiropractors. Then she discovered tapping. By tracing her physical suffering to trapped emotions through…
The Wellbriety Movement
Don Coyhis spent a decade in recovery, then felt called to do more. In 1988, he founded White Bison to address alcoholism in Native American youth. That vision grew into the Wellbriety Movement, which…
Kayla Kalel
Kayla wakes early, drinks coffee, practices yoga, then heads to the beach with her nine-month-old daughter Trinity. A perfect day, she says, includes one essential thing: staying abstinent. In recover…
SMART Recovery: Self-Management and Recovery Training
Michael Mihailos spent years visiting different recovery groups until he found one that fit. The problem wasn't the programs themselves, but their spiritual requirements. When he discovered SMART Reco…
Elaine Lilley
Elaine Lilley has gone more than four years without alcohol. She says her spiritual practice, including Shamanism, helps her stay on her path of sobriety each day.
The Beginning
Standing in front of her refrigerator with five minutes to spare, she noticed something. The moldy containers buried in the crisper drawer, the expired condiments taking up space, they weren't really…
Melissa Rivera
Melissa Rivera, 41, is a full-time health coach and the first resident health coach at World Gym. At a women's meeting this past winter, she felt for the first time that she fit in.
Amanda Lapointe
Amanda Lapointe thought vulnerability was weakness. In recovery, she learned it was the opposite. Now a sober single mom reunited with her daughter and family, she speaks at jails and treatment center…
The Link Between Spirituality and Health
A person stuck in patterns of substance use or emotional struggle isn't broken. They're out of alignment with their true nature. This article explores how reconnecting with your inner wisdom, breath,…
Recovery Allies: Business Owners
A yoga teacher in Portland opens her studio doors free to people in recovery. A credit union helps someone rebuild their credit score. A gym owner reserves one night weekly for members seeking wellnes…
Portland Recovery Community Center
Leslie Clark hears piano music drifting through the Portland Recovery Community Center as people gather in the lounge, laughter echoing from meeting rooms. Over 125 people walk through these doors dai…
Making the Most of Get Well Job
Mike Elovitz owned a consulting business in New York City. Then he moved to Portland to start over in recovery, smoking fish at a restaurant and working a convenience store register. His Get Well Jobs…
How to Start Meditating
You sit in a chair, spine upright but shoulders relaxed, noticing where air enters your nostrils. Your mind wanders instantly. Instead of fighting back, you simply notice and return. This article brea…
Quieting the Mind
Sarah Siegel sat alone in her room over fifteen hundred miles from her son, needle in arm, and understood she would die. She got on her knees and asked for help. What followed was meditation, a practi…
Fit For Recovery
Keagan Delaney takes a walk through Portland's nature trails most mornings, but his real fitness goes deeper. Two years into recovery, he's learned that getting physically strong builds the endurance…
Jennie Joan Ferrare
Jennie Joan Ferrare, 29, runs Arcana, a healing studio in Portland's Old Port, and its yoga school. She is coming up on five years sober and is a new mom to baby Leo.
Employers Open The Doors for Those in Recovery
Charlie Bickford runs Maine Paint's four locations and regularly hires people newly sober. When someone from a recovery meeting asks about work, he considers giving them a chance. His reasoning is sim…
Employers Can Be Champions For Recovery
A manager notices an employment gap on a resume and sees potential instead of judgment. This is recovery allyship at work. Employers shape whether people in recovery can rebuild their lives through me…
Heather Huntley
Heather's granddaughter loves her nanny. Her sixteen-year-old has her back. She gave her kids their first real Christmas in years. These moments arrived because Heather stopped making bad choices and…