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…
Topic
Connection and Service
Relationships, empathy, listening, and showing up — the everyday work of building community that holds. Why connection is medicine, and how to practice it.
22 stories
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
The Practice of Listening: Cultivating Connection
Someone calls their knee "bad." But when you listen closely, that knee is doing its best to tell you something. This piece explores how deep listening,to our bodies, our past, our pain,becomes the fou…
Are We Listening?
A man stands in a service center, phone in hand, anger sharp in his voice. He's upset about a story that made others laugh. But when someone leans in and listens instead of defending, something shifts…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…