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.
Topic
Wellness
Building a life that holds together.
Wellness is the slow work of recovery. It shows up in a morning walk, a meal with friends, a good night's sleep, and a first steady paycheck in years. None of it is separate from recovery.
165 articles
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Body and Physical Health
Food, sleep, movement, and breath become everyday tools for staying well.
Connection, Work, and Daily Life
Recovery lives in ordinary days: the people around us, the routines that hold, and the family and work that ask a lot of us. These articles cover the everyday practice of staying well.
Inner Life and Meaning
Anxiety, hope, resilience, mindfulness, and faith shape the inner work of recovery, across many traditions.
‘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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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,…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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,…
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…