Mothers in Recovery | Overcoming Stigma & Shame

Written by MARR on February 14, 2020. Posted in MARR Articles, Resources.

By Alisa Sawyer
Right Side Up Recovery Center for Women and Children

Despite the wider acceptance of the disease model, and a growing understanding of the importance of treatment, alcoholism, and addiction still carry heavy cultural stigmas.

When somebody is trying to come to terms with their addiction, messages they have heard their whole lives run through their minds on repeat. Addicts and alcoholics are lazy. They don’t have any morals, willpower, or self-control.

Even though anyone familiar with the facts about addiction and recovery will know these statements to be false, to the person caught in the cycle of addiction, they feel absolutely true.

Now imagine the double stigma that mothers caught in the cycle of addiction face. Not only do they carry the cultural shame that comes with having an addiction, but they also have to carry the even heavier label of being “a bad mother.”

Over and over, they hear some version of the following message playing in their minds: What kind of mother puts their children through this? If I loved my children, I would stop drinking and using drugs. I am a terrible person, and I’m a terrible mother.

As one of the Therapeutic Child Care Coordinators at Right Side Up, these are the clients I work with—mothers in recovery who have internalized unfair and untrue biases about themselves and their illness.

The message we work to send to these women over and over again is this:

“You are not a bad person or a bad mother. You made some bad choices in your addiction, but we are going to work with you on how to implement structure so you can make healthier, safer choices going forward.”

We tell them this in a thousand different ways, through our words and actions, until they can start to believe it. It takes a while to build the trust necessary for them to hear it, but when they do, the recovery they find is something truly powerful to see.

It is a resilience and a power that inspires me every day and has kept me passionately working at Right Side Up for 15 years.

The Necessity of Structure

So how do you communicate this message to women who have been hearing the opposite, shame-based messages their whole lives?

While all of our clients work with their individual counselors, take classes, and attend Twelve Step meetings to address the shame that comes with their addiction, the mothers in our program participate in our Therapeutic Child Care (TCC) program to work on the parenting part of the equation.

Our primary focus in TCC is helping them develop essential parenting skills that many of them missed out on as a result of their addiction. We teach them this through a consistent structure and a routine that we hold them to in a loving, therapeutic way.

Structure, routine, and consistency are always important qualities for people in early recovery, but this is particularly true when children are involved.

From the day that mothers admit to our program, we start working with them on concrete actions that move them toward a consistency that is healthy for them and their families.

As soon as mothers admit to our program, our caseworkers start working with them to get them in to see a pediatrician. They also help to get them set up to receive the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) benefits and healthcare benefits they are eligible for.

As far as daily parenting is concerned, we hold them to a strict routine that they can carry on with them once their six months with us is completed. For example, everyday moms pick up their kids from the bus stop. When they get back to RSU, they process what happened that day at school with their children. Later in the evening, moms sit with their children to work with them on their homework for an hour. After six months of practicing with us, our clients have the parenting patterns well established as part of their daily lives.

We also work with them through parenting classes, where they learn about and practice disciplining children without corporal punishment, using redirection, natural consequences, and overall behavior management techniques. They also learn about different nurturing styles and the various parts of themselves, pleasant and unpleasant, that can come out of all of us when we are dealing with the stress of parenting.

By focusing our clients’ attention on concrete actions that they can take as parents, they begin to shift their focus away from the unhelpful belief that they don’t love their children enough. Instead, they begin to focus their attention on performing loving acts for their children.

As they say in the 12 Step rooms, “If you want to improve your self-esteem, start performing esteemable acts.”

As these women perform the actions of attentive and consistent parents, they begin to have more and more evidence that they love their children and are showing up for them.

They no longer need to wonder whether or not they are good mothers because they can see evidence every day through the actions that they take that they are.

We All Need the Same Things

For those of us who work in this field, cultural biases can come up for us as well. In fact, one of my favorite things about my job is getting to see my own biases and growing past them.

An example of this came to me when I was early on in my career. I was in my early 30s and one of my clients was the same age, but the differences between us were significant. I was starting my professional career, whereas her whole life centered around drug addiction, and she already had 10 children.

This shocked me. I wondered, How does someone’s life end up like this?

It wasn’t that I had never seen families affected by drug abuse. I grew up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Queens. Illegal drugs were definitely around, just not in my family or my immediate community. Our house was a hangout house for the neighborhood and was very structured, nurturing, and loving. The worst thing that we saw our parents doing was smoking cigarettes at the cookouts.

So I asked her about when she started using drugs and why. She told me that it started when she was 15 years old. She told me about how she and her friends were at her home where her mother had left crack cocaine out on the table. So they tried it.

That’s when I had a moment. When my friends and I were 15, rather than sneaking crack, we snuck one of our parents’ cigarettes. That was how we rebelled.

The differences in our home lives don’t completely explain the course our lives took. As they tell parents who attend Al-Anon about their children’s addiction and alcoholism: “You didn’t cause it, you can’t cure it, and you can’t control it.”

Many people who grew up in structured homes like mine end up becoming addicted to drugs and many people in homes characterized by the chaos and risks associated with addiction do not become addicted.

But this woman wasn’t able to grow, fail, learn, try again, and succeed in the same ways that I was as a child because she did not have the structure that I had. To add to that, her psychological development had been hijacked by drug addiction at an early age.

We are all still responsible for our own actions, but our environments play a major role in the courses that our lives can take. I look at what we do at Right Side Up as attempting to provide some of the loving structure that I was fortunate enough to grow up with.

Just as the shame of addiction is bigger than a single person, lasting recovery needs to be grounded in something bigger than a single person as well. Healthy structure and daily routines, supported by a loving community, can help all of us stick with patterns grounded in something larger than our temporary feelings and false beliefs about ourselves that so easily pull us off track.

To borrow another helpful phrase from the Twelve Step Rooms: “We are not bad people trying to become good, we are sick people trying to become well.”

This phrase is one that I think we can all relate to because, at different times in our lives, we can all certainly identify with being sick and acting against our own interests and the interests of those we love, but at the same time wanting to become well.

Who doesn’t want that?

Everybody Wants Power

Written by MARR on December 4, 2019. Posted in MARR Articles, Resources.

By Matt Shedd

Everybody wants power. Everybody. And if they say they don’t, they’re lying.
-Robert Shenkkan

By the time our clients arrive at our door, they have run out of power.

Whereas previously they had been able to force their way through daily life, despite the worsening side effects of chronic addiction, they find that they are no longer able to do so. They now find themselves checking into a residential treatment facility, which is nobody’s first choice. In fact, they have likely tried everything possible to avoid it.

Most of our clients have been slowly losing the fight with their addiction for years, but it isn’t for lack of trying. In advanced addiction, people frequently swear to themselves and others that they will never drink or use again. And they mean it. Yet they continue to use and drink.

These are often smart, successful, capable people—people who seem to have easily been able to handle their problems up until now. Doctors, lawyers, nurses, successful business owners, pilots and other professionals regularly come to our centers as clients.

Yet, when it comes to addiction, these same people’s abilities are not enough. They desperately want power, but they can’t seem to access it.

The same is true for members of our family program struggling with codependency. Like the addict and alcoholic, the family members have exhausted themselves as well. They have tried making threats, taking back threats, lending money, letting their loved one move back home, practicing tough love, and everything in between.

They too have usually sworn to themselves multiple times that they are done participating in their loved one’s disease. Yet, they also find themselves jumping in to rescue their loved one from crisis after crisis, and it doesn’t seem to be getting better for their loved one or themselves.

In both cases, they desperately want to get better, perhaps more than anything, but they simply do not have the power to do so.

The Illusion of Power

We all want power, and in the early stages of addiction, substance use provides it.

When alcoholics or addicts begin to drink or use, they do not initially appear to be controlled by drugs and alcohol, either to themselves or to most outside observers. In fact, in the early stages the opposite seems to be true. Alcohol and drugs seem to be giving them a newfound sense of control over life.

If an alcoholic or addict tells you about this early stage of their addiction, while it’s happening, it feels as if they are having a profound spiritual experience. It is not a coincidence that liquor is referred to as “spirits.” In early addiction, perhaps for the first time in their life, the addict feels deeply connected to themselves, those around them, and even to something larger than themselves, such as “God” or “the Universe.”

But this phase of addiction with limited consequences is temporary. Rather than solely giving the addict or alcoholic a sense of power, the substance begins to betray the person, frequently putting them in positions where they feel powerless. The cost/benefit analysis of the addiction becomes more of a gamble, with the odds tilting increasingly in favor of the illness. Substance use still brings some relief, but also introduces other inconveniences like troubles at home, at work, or with the law.

Eventually, the illness crosses into a more desperate stage, where negative consequences far outweigh whatever positive benefits remain. The chemical dependency has made the substance necessary simply to maintain any sort of equilibrium, and the addict’s life circumstances become increasingly dire. Unemployment, divorce, and loss of family relationships are common in this phase. But the obsessive fantasy that the substance can provide them with power once again continues to dictate what seems like irrational behavior from the outside.

Herein lies the cruel irony of addiction. The substance that formerly provided the primary source of power for the addict or alcoholic has now become the primary mechanism of bondage. It’s a ruthless cycle, often imperceptible to those who are caught in it. The substance which formerly provided an escape from unwanted emotions eventually becomes the primary cause of the unwanted emotions. This leads to increased chemical dependence to deal with their chronic distress, and the cycle continues.

The same is true for family members of the addict who are caught up in an increasing cycle of codependent behavior. Rescuing, controlling, and enabling provide codependent family members with relief by giving the illusion of power over the addiction. But just like a drug, the codependent actions that formerly provided relief no longer suffice.

Deeper chemical addictions on the part of the addict demand deeper cooperation with the addiction from the codependent family members. Parents who regularly bail out their daughter financially when she overdraws on her account may eventually find themselves bailing her out of jail because of the progression of the addiction. Similarly, a wife who used to keep track of her alcoholic husband’s schedule might now need to call in sick on her husband’s behalf to create that same sense of control over an increasingly out of control home life.

This codependent “rescuing” behavior provides a perfect environment for the addict’s disease to continue to progress and cause more disruption in the home. And for the family, the codependent behaviors that used to provide an illusion of control in an uncontrollable situation no longer provide them with any relief. Deeper codependence is now required to create a sense of safety for the codependent family member. And on, and on it goes.

A Different Kind of Power

Those suffering from chemical addiction and their codependent family members are desperately in need of power. Both parties find themselves forcing their way through an increasingly painful life using tools that no longer work. Even if they know that there is no power left in their substance use or codependent behavior, where else are they to turn? The primary tools they have been using to handle their problems for years no longer work.

Often clients and their families find their way to us when they are at this point. Forcing their way through life with methods that no longer work has required them to coerce, cajole, manipulate, and impose their will on others and the world around them. This is an exhausting process, a constant grind. But recovery asks something different from us. As Dee K., a Men’s Center alumnus puts it, “life doesn’t have to be a grind.”

Everybody wants power. In fact, we all need it. Both chemical addiction and codependency—an addiction in its own right—narrow our vision of what is possible. Addiction deceives us into believing that there is only one place to find power. While caught in the addictive loop, we miss the fact that there are more effective sources of power available to us—an alternative to the coercive, domineering sense of power required by addiction.

Through the process of recovery, our clients and their family members can begin to conceive and access a different kind of power. Working the 12 Steps provides an opportunity for the person in recovery to see how ineffective and self-defeating their coping mechanisms have been. They begin to see things as they actually are. They can start to perceive that the survival skills they have been using are actually destroying their lives and negatively affecting everyone around them.

When these realities begin to take root, rather than continuing to rely on the isolating, coercive, and dominating power that was required to feed their addiction, people in recovery begin to find a more sustainable and enduring form of power. The 12 Steps point the way to a more authentic and reliable form of power that comes through the process of surrendering to how things are, rather than the way we think things should be. This power draws on the strength of community and mutual aid to deal with life as it comes. It is a power that can “match calamity with serenity” as the Big Book states.

When we experience the dependability of this deeper, more authentic power, we can start to perceive the unreliable nature of coercive power associated with addiction and codependency. Coercive power relies on dominating our circumstances and those around us to feed our addiction’s increasing demands. It’s unreliable because nobody can control people and circumstances outside of themselves at all times.

The authentic power that comes through recovery is quieter, but it works in all circumstances. It is available to us regardless of what is going on outside. It’s a power that we gain access to when we remove the false ideas and judgments that have been preventing access to our true selves, meaningful relationships with others, and something greater than ourselves. When we get rid of all of our resentments, judgments, fears, and shame, this authentic power seems to come in from all sides to help us deal with life’s problems as they arise.

This authentic power can get us through even the most trying circumstances. It can give us the courage to face life no matter what happens. At MARR we regularly see this power help our clients, alumni, and their families live meaningful and fulfilling lives in the face of all manner of difficulties, even job loss, imprisonment for past wrongs, or the tragic death of a loved one.

Only once we see these transformations take place, can we start to begin to understand what the Big Book means when it says: “Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves.”

Drinking, drug use, and codependent behavior are just the surface issues. They are what bring our clients and their family members to our door, but they are not the real problem. The real problem is that we all need power—authentic, reliable power. Working the 12 Steps is one way that we can start to find it.

A Commitment to Gratitude

Written by MARR on November 5, 2019. Posted in MARR Articles, Resources.

We have frequently spoken to people who talk about the immediate sense of warmth and welcome they felt the first time they walked into a 12 Step meeting. And we’ve heard this even from people who have never struggled with substance abuse issues.

What is it in these rooms that is so immediately attractive? Why would there be anything appealing about people assembled to overcome a fatal, chronic, and progressive disease?

Exuding from a healthy recovery community, there seems to be a sense of joyful acceptance of life as it is. If a visitor or newcomer were able to put it into words it would likely be something along the lines of: You can let down your guard here. You are safe here. You don’t have to compete or impress anyone.

People that walk into these rooms and feel this are picking up on something real. Here are a group of people who see the world in a unique light. They have learned to see into a deeper reality beyond mere survival. They have tapped into the energy of gratitude rather than competition. They know that they already have what they need.

The Neuroscience of Negativity

This energy of gratitude is unique because neuroscience actually shows that human beings are wired to drift in the opposite direction. Extensive studies in neuroscience have demonstrated that we have a biological tendency to see things in a negative light, commonly referred to as the “negativity bias.”

For the purposes of continuing the survival of our species, our brains are naturally wired to hold on tightly to frightening experiences from our past to try to avoid repeating them and to scan the horizon for any future threats. Without any sort of corrective action, we drift naturally toward seeing these negative memories and possibilities, rather than remembering the positive experiences or seeking out possible positive outcomes. Studies have shown that this negativity bias develops even in infancy.

It makes sense that this negativity bias would have benefits for our survival, particularly when you think of our ancestors, who, unaided by the technological advances we take for granted, lived much more exposed to the elements and were more vulnerable to threats by predators.

With this negativity bias wired into us, left on our own, without some sort of active reorientation, we will end up focusing on the hostile and scary possibilities for our lives, while missing key parts of the picture.

The Lens of Gratitude

When discussing the therapeutic benefits of a gratitude practice, psychologists Phil Stutz and Barry Michels articulate it in the following way in their book The Tools:

“What if, on a level we can’t see, the universe is interested in our welfare, supporting us in ways large and small? It’s not that much of a stretch to be able to perceive this. Start with your physical body. It extracts oxygen from the air, it digests complex foods, it allows you the miracle of sight and hearing. All these things work amazingly well without your even understanding how.”

All of these helpful processes—breathing, digestion, sight, and hearing—are taking place whether we notice them or not. Gratitude is what allows us to appreciate this. It is not about generating a false narrative of naive optimism for things that are not there. It is a way of perceiving the world in a more complete light.

Stutz and Michels go on to state that gratitude isn’t just an activity, it is a means of perception. “With practice, you’ll find that gratefulness perceives the spiritual world just as clearly as your eyes and ears perceive the physical world.”

The 12 Steps walk people through the process of being able to see the world through the lens of gratitude. As a result, laughter, joy, and connection become the natural companions of an active and healthy recovery community.

The Steps undo the burdensome myth of individual self-sufficiency and having to fight our way through a world that is out to get us. Rather, the person in active recovery learns to see through the eyes of gratitude. They can begin to see all the small and large ways that they have been taken care of all along. The gifts that they begin to appreciate are often not anything new, but in active recovery people now have the ability to see what was always there.

Gratitude is a key to access the benevolent forces at work around us that we are often unable to see without it.

A Different Universe

When a new person walks into a room full of people who are committed to this vision of the world, the effect can be powerful. It can even be powerful enough to convince him or her to go through the ego-deflating process of the 12 Steps. And in that process, he or she gains the ability to see all the ways that the universe is on their side as well.

There is something about working the 12 Steps that gives people the ability to see the world in this way. It allows people to gain access to a more complete picture that includes the less obvious ways that life is working in our favor, rather than only seeing our problems.

Bill Wilson articulated this perception of a new world in a piece of beautiful writing at the conclusion of Step 11 in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

“Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us. We no longer live in a completely hostile world. We are no longer lost and frightened and purposeless. The moment we catch even a glimpse of God’s will, the moment we begin to see truth, justice, and love as the real and eternal things in life, we are no longer deeply disturbed by all the seeming evidence to the contrary that surrounds us in purely human affairs. We know that God lovingly watches over us. We know that when we turn to Him, all will be well with us, here and hereafter.”

Having worked through the steps, the individual finds a way to access a connection with a Higher Power. Entering into prayer and meditation, he or she is able to see with the eyes of gratitude.

The primary difference between a hostile universe and a benevolent one is whether or not we have access to the power of gratitude.

Sources:

Amrisha Vaish, Tobias Grossmann, and Amanda Woodward, “Not All Emotions Are Created Equal: The Negativity Bias in Social-Emotional Development,” Psychological Bulletin, 134(3) (May 2008): 383-403.

“Step Eleven.” Twelve Steps and Twelve Tradition, 96-105. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Service, 2004.

Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, The Tools. New York: Penguin Random House, 2012.

Emotional Sobriety | The True Goal of Recovery

Written by MARR on August 6, 2019. Posted in MARR Articles, Resources.

By Matt Shedd

Those unfamiliar with the language used in 12 Step communities may have never heard the term “emotional sobriety.” But this, perhaps more than anything else, is the goal we have for our clients at MARR.

The term comes from the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, who refers to emotional sobriety as going beyond mere abstinence from alcohol. In emotional sobriety the person begins to cultivate what he describes as “real maturity and balance…in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.”

Like most processes of spiritual growth, the path to emotional sobriety is one of letting go: letting go of our ideas of who we think we are, what we deserve, who we think others think we are, and anything else that blocks our acceptance of our lives as they are.

The spiritual maturity that Bill described is not typically achieved by the means that we anticipate. It is not usually found through the heroic fantasy we may have envisioned of helping to “save the world” and showing everyone how wonderful we are. It is found through heartbreak, failure, and loss–a shattering of the false ideas of who we think we are. The good news is that if we trust the path, the losses and failures that we thought would destroy us become the firm foundation of a new identity that is not subject to constant change.

The path to emotional sobriety can seem like quite the opposite for the person who is on it. It can feel like a path to emotional chaos. It usually starts with the feeling that the whole world is falling apart. All the firm grips and footholds we used to have on our lives are no longer there. That is why the mentorship and guidance of a sponsor and others further along in the 12 Step process is so essential. This support provides the connection outside of one’s own feelings that can sustain us through these emotional rough patches.

External Crisis

An external crisis often precipitates the process of getting into recovery. With our clients coming into MARR, they are often facing the consequences of years of substance abuse. These consequences can take many forms: ultimatums from family members, legal consequences from the court, the threat of losing a job or professional license, or the possibility of losing custody of a child, to name just a few possibilities.

These consequences are often dramatic, urgent, and loud. They are circumstances that demand immediate attention. The consequences are so disruptive to “business as usual” that they can summon an uncommon willingness from our clients to take the dramatic step of checking into long-term treatment.

Although painful and shocking, this external crisis is usually only the preface to a more significant internal crisis where lasting recovery can actually begin.

Internal Crisis

The external consequences are often necessary to get people to the place where they have a genuine spiritual crisis forcing them to question their identity.

Once they are in treatment, MARR clients are no longer able to rely on things outside of themselves to give them a sense of their identity. Separated from their jobs, houses, families, and daily routines, they no longer have easily ready answers for who they are. Although not as dramatic as the chaotic circumstances that usually cause people to check into treatment, this crisis can sometimes be even more painful.

The person at this stage of their recovery can begin to see the discontentedness that has been underneath the alcoholism or addiction.

In the treatment environment at MARR, the client no longer has the constant activity of drinking, using, and cleaning up of consequences. The causes underneath the continued substance use can now be exposed.

Normal life is now the problem, and the client gets the opportunity to see this up close. The person in early recovery can now see what Bill Wilson calls the “false dependencies,” which get in the way of emotional sobriety, specifically “a demand for the possession and control of the people and the conditions surrounding me.”

When these dependencies on being able to control people and conditions were threatened previously, drugs or alcohol served as an effective balm to cover over the pain of not having these expectations met. Now, without the temporary distraction of substances, clients can see how frequently these attempts to control people and circumstances undermine peaceful, contented living.

Unrealistic expectations make it impossible for one to stay emotionally balanced and weather the ups and downs of daily living. For this reason, much of the treatment at MARR focuses on the daily emotions our clients encounter in the small things: grocery shopping, negotiating car rides, making weekend plans as a community, to name a few.

Our clients practice negotiating these situations in a protected environment where the stakes are lower, so when they leave they are better prepared to handle weightier matters.

Outgoing Love

Bill Wilson describes the basis to longstanding emotional sobriety in the following way,

“This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of God’s creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us.”

This may sound more “religious” than some of our clients might feel comfortable with, but what this looks like in practice does not have to be “religious” at all. The general sentiment of emotional sobriety happening through “outgoing love” begins to show up in the relationships they have with the therapeutic community they are living with here at MARR.

The power of community provides the possibility of basing one’s identity on something bigger and more stable than one’s own constantly changing feelings.

Life is no longer about having to figure things out on one’s own, which is an emotionally volatile situation to be in. They are now able to rely on the protection of the community.

With the shift in focus to thinking of the wellbeing of others, the individual starts to experience a sense of their own wellbeing on a deeper experiential level. They are no longer simply doing damage control around the consequences of their own actions, but are actually looking out for the welfare of others, who are in turn looking out for them.

It is in the practice of daily life with the therapeutic community at MARR that our clients experience what Bill was talking about when he stated, “My stability came out of trying to give, not out of demanding that I receive.”

Source:

Bill Wilson, “Emotional Sobriety: The Last Frontier.” The Grapevine, January 1958. Accessible at http://silkworth.net/pages/aahistory/general/emotionalsobriety.php

You’re Not the First Professional in Recovery

Written by MARR on July 8, 2019. Posted in MARR Articles, Resources.

Interview with Talitha Klingberg, LCSW

Can you tell us a little bit about how clients come to the professionals program at MARR?

If someone has come to the attention of a professional board somewhere because of their substance use, or maybe they’re just self-reporting that they have an issue, once they get to MARR they’re going to need advocacy with that board. So I am a liaison between them and the board. I help with the documentation that they’ll need for their treatment. And sometimes they have ongoing paperwork that they might need to file with that board. That paperwork can last up to five years after treatment for the physicians and the nurses. So I handle that for our professionals, and I help to demystify some of that.

And some professionals might not have a licensure board making them come to MARR, but they might still need support from the professionals program. Some employers send their staff here for treatment even when there is no license involved. Or sometimes entrepreneurs might need help, like “How do I stay in recovery when I work without a lot of accountability as a business owner and when I have a lot of cash that comes through my hands?” So the professionals program provides a place where you can talk about the specific pressures of your profession.

What themes have you noticed with professionals in treatment at MARR?

A lot of the professionals come in and they have worked really hard for their careers. Their careers might be the last thing that they let go of during their addiction. They might have lost their family to their addiction, but they’re trying their best to hang on to that licensure or their job because they’ve kind of lost touch with who they are outside of it.

Sometimes they cannot separate who they are from what their job is. Part of the treatment is helping them re-engage with who they are as an individual and redevelop their identity. We help them to see they are not the same person they were when they started grad school. Their addiction has changed them. Their addiction actually traumatizes them in some ways. We help them find out who this new person is.

Also, as a professional you learn to keep a lot of things private, to not tell your feelings, and to state things factually. A lot of times when people come into treatment, they’re so used to dealing with facts, they’ve lost touch with their heart. And so to say “I’m afraid” is a huge leap. You don’t say that on your job as a professional. You’re still sort of acting like you’re not afraid and that you have everything in control so that your clients will trust you.

A lot of the professionals have had such incredible stress on their jobs, dealing with the stress of their actual work and also maintaining the unmanageability of addiction at that same time, that they haven’t been sleeping. They might have started drinking to sleep because they work seven days a week. Now with texting and email, an employer may contact them on Sunday afternoons or whatever their off time is. And so sometimes people really don’t have time off in their professional lives. By the time people get to MARR, they’re psychologically, spiritually, and physically exhausted.

What is something you would want to communicate to potential professional clients coming into MARR?

A lot of times professionals can feel like it is just “my problem” or “my secret.” And then they’re amazed when they come to the ARP (Atlanta Recovering Professionals) group that we have on Tuesday nights.

They go to that group, and they find out “I’m not the first doctor in recovery.” Or they find out, “this person has gone on to find new employment.” So it helps them realize that there’s a path forward. They get to see other professionals that are not just surviving in recovery but actually thriving. They will hear other professionals say things like, “I am a much better person than I ever was before treatment.” So it can give a sense of hope that there’s an actual path forward.

What are some things that clients will receive at MARR that they might not receive elsewhere?

People here are not just creating relationships with the staff like some other places that use the medical model. Our clients are also creating relationships with their community. You might have a professional come in who’s just used to dealing with people in their particular profession. Like say you’re in the medical field, you only deal with people in the medical field. So then you end up becoming all medical. And so then they come in here, and they’re dealing with a housewife or a young adult that has never really worked. This helps them re-engage with who they used to be before their career. It also helps them to recognize that the medical field isn’t the whole universe.

The therapeutic community model we use at MARR is very important for professionals. If you have to negotiate grocery shopping and whether you can get your yogurt or not get your yogurt, it changes the dynamics of your communication. If you’re a professional, you are used to saying something like “take this three times a day,” or whatever it may be. It’s different when you are part of the therapeutic community and you have to go to your community and say “Can I get my yogurt?” It teaches humility and different communication skills that you might not have used for a long time.

Legacy: Anna Webb Stone

Written by MARR on June 10, 2019. Posted in MARR Articles, Resources. 2 Comments on Legacy: Anna Webb Stone

Our legacies outlive us. Our stories will continue to touch people and places long after we are gone. Our struggles and strength will inspire others when our journeys have come to an end. This is the power and beauty of true community.

Anna Webb Stone came to MARR’s Women’s Recovery Center after several years of struggling with addiction. She became addicted to prescription pain pills in her early twenties when they were prescribed to her after a dental surgery. Her mother, Sandra Webb, went to church with MARR’s founder Donnie Brown and his wife, Sue. The Browns encouraged Sandra through the process of getting her daughter into treatment.

At the age of 6, Anna developed juvenile Type 1 diabetes, and her family was told that she was expected to live for 30 years after the onset of the disease. Although this proved to be a struggle for Anna and her family for her entire life, she was always resilient.

Anna came to MARR in 2009. She finished phase one of treatment and learned a lot about her addiction and about herself. She had a true desire to overcome her addiction and be a better mother to her son. She moved to three-quarters and got a part-time job while still at MARR.

Meanwhile, Sandra participated in MARR’s family workshops to learn how to best support her daughter. She attended a family support group that is still led by Doug Brush every Wednesday night. She says that she truly believes that addiction is a family disease, and family members and their addicted loved ones must each work their own recovery.

Anna eventually made the decision to leave MARR and return home. Her disease continued to progress and she continued to fight. Anna Webb Stone passed away on August 8, 2015 due to complications from a heart attack that she had a few months prior. She was celebrated as a beloved mother, daughter, and friend.

In 2018, Anna’s mother, Sandra Webb, made a generous donation to MARR’s Women’s Recovery Center in her honor. This donation allowed us to expand the main group room and update the kitchen at the WRC.

On May 16, 2019, we dedicated the Anna Webb Stone Room. This space creates an environment for healing and community. Environment is so crucial in treatment. It demonstrates to our clients that they are worth it. This space is for them. Pictured are Cailey Binkley, Director of MARR’s Women’s Recovery Center, and Sandra Webb outside of the new Anna Webb Stone Room.

As part of the ceremony, Jim Seckman read some passages from the Big Book chapter entitled, “Women Suffer Too.”

I went trembling into a house…filled with strangers and I found that I had come home at last.

There is another meaning for the Hebrew word that in the Bible is translated “salvation.” It is: “to come home.” I had found my salvation. I wasn’t alone anymore.

That was the beginning of a new life, a fuller life, a happier life than I had ever known or believed possible.

I had found friends, understanding friends who often knew what I was thinking and feeling better than I knew myself, and didn’t allow me to retreat into my prison of loneliness and fear…

Suddenly, I could accept myself, faults and all, as I was–for weren’t we all like that?

As MARR staff, volunteers, and clients gathered to honor Anna and dedicate the room, there was a sense of purpose in the air. In the midst of despair, there was hope.

For many years to come, women will walk through the door of the Anna Webb Stone Room and discover a place of acceptance, community, and healing. Her legacy will continue to touch lives and inspire others in their journeys of recovery.