Everything Is Starting to Connect

September is Recovery Month, and this year it feels especially personal.

Today I'm celebrating 10 years of officially working with RISE after first showing up as a volunteer the first few years. This week we just brought UNBROKEN to Orlando.

Lucky 13 is around the corner. This month also holds speaking engagements, local community events, RISE Hangouts, UNBROKEN in Milwaukee and Tucson, and more rooms where I get to keep doing work I once never imagined would become my life.

On paper, those things might look completely different.

To me, they’re all connected.

For years, recovery has been the foundation of my work.

It’s where I learned the power of story. The power of a peer. The power of connection. The power of creating a room where someone can finally tell the truth about what they’re carrying.

I’ve been doing that work for a long time.

What’s changing now is where I’m bringing it.

I’m realizing that the things recovery taught me were never only for people in recovery.

We all know what it feels like to hide.

We all carry stories about whether we’re enough.

We all need spaces where we can reflect, connect, and be honest about who we are and who we’re becoming.

That became really clear to me recently while facilitating an Enough Already experience at Coulee Recovery Center.

I didn’t want people to spend the day simply hearing more about my life.

I wanted them to turn toward their own. We reflected. We talked. We connected. We looked at what we’ve carried, what we’ve survived, the people who have shaped us, and what healing can look like when we stop hiding from ourselves.

That’s the kind of work I’ve always cared about. Now I’m expanding where it lives.

Into women’s spaces. Leadership spaces. Conferences. Community experiences. Workshops. Retreats. Partnerships I never would have imagined years ago.

Into rooms that may never call themselves “recovery” spaces at all.

And that feels important to me. Because recovery will always be part of my story, but I don’t think it’s the only place my story belongs anymore.

RISE taught me what community can do. Recovery taught me what becomes possible when someone believes change is possible. Speaking taught me how far one honest story can travel. Writing Enough Already taught me that a story can become a mirror for someone else. UNBROKEN continues to remind me how powerful it can be to simply let people be seen.

And now, more and more, I get to bring those pieces together.

That’s what I see when I look at the months ahead.

RISE's Lucky 13. RISE Hangouts. Community events. Speaking at conferences. UNBROKEN in Milwaukee and Tucson. Unwrap Your Best Self in Cocoa Beach. My first Kendra Scott event. More Enough Already experiences. More opportunities to gather people in spaces where reflection and connection can actually happen.

It’s a lot.

But it doesn’t feel random.

It feels like the work I’ve spent years building is expanding into places I wasn’t sure it belonged before.

And maybe that’s what Recovery Month is reminding me this year.

Recovery didn’t give me one lane to stay in.

It gave me a way of seeing people.

A way of creating connection.

A way of telling the truth.

A way of understanding that sometimes the most powerful thing we can offer another person is the permission to be honest about their own story.

Now I get to carry that into every room I walk into next.

Recovery gave me my life back years ago.

What I’m realizing now is just how many different ways I get to use it. 🤍