When I first landed in recovery, I needed help for many things, including my addiction to drugs and unhealthy relationships, my anxiety, and my codependency. I needed to learn how to live substance-free, but I also needed to understand how being raised in a dysfunctional family and subsequent traumas had shaped my existence.
There just weren't enough days in the week for me to attend all the support meetings that I needed, and even if there had been, as a newly single mother on welfare, I couldn't have afforded the babysitting bill. So I started with a Twelve Step program that promised me relief from my drug addiction.
It helped somewhat, until the other things that I needed to address would pop up, and I would use drugs. I look back and wonder if early recovery would have been easier if I'd found a place where I could have brought all of me to recover.
A place where I could bring my co-occurring disorders, my love addiction, and the trauma that lay under it all. I'm sorry that place didn't exist for me back in the day, but I'm delighted that it exists today.
It's called the She Recovers movement, and I am proud to have been a part of creating it. You don't have to compartmentalize the things you are in recovery from anymore.