I still mother them….

What If We Celebrated Recovery as Loudly as We Mourn Overdose?

I have been thinking a lot about this during Recovery Month.

What if we celebrated recovery as loudly as we mourn overdose?

We know how to mourn. We light candles. We lower flags. We hold vigils. We wear shirts with their faces. We share pictures and tell stories. We say their names over and over because we are terrified that somehow the world will forget that they were here.

I know that kind of grief. I live it every single day.

I will say Vincent’s name for the rest of my life. I will say Gabriella’s name for the rest of my life. I will tell their stories because they lived, they mattered, they were loved beyond words, and their lives were so much bigger than the way they died.

But because of them, I also get a front-row seat to something incredibly beautiful.

Recovery.

I get to watch people come back to life.

And maybe we need to get a whole lot louder about that too.

We should be making noise about 24 hours. Thirty days. Six months. One year. Ten years.

We should celebrate the mom who gets her children back. The person who gets their first apartment and holds those keys like they are made of gold. The person who goes back to school. Gets a job. Repairs a relationship. Walks into a meeting when every part of them wants to turn around and leave.

We should celebrate the person who answered the phone instead of using.

And sometimes, we simply need to celebrate the person who woke up this morning and decided to try one more time.

Because recovery isn’t always a big beautiful before-and-after picture.

Sometimes recovery is getting an ID.

Sometimes it’s a bed in a recovery house.

Sometimes it’s finally getting your teeth fixed so you can smile again.

Sometimes it’s a ride to treatment, a pair of work boots, furniture for an empty room, somebody remembering your name, or somebody answering the phone at 2:00 in the morning.

Sometimes recovery is simply someone saying, “I believe you can do this,” until you are able to believe it yourself.

That deserves some damn noise.

Recovery Month isn’t about pretending the losses didn’t happen. It isn’t about choosing celebration over grief.

There is room for both.

We can mourn the people we couldn’t save while celebrating the hell out of the people who are still here.

In fact, I think we have to.

Because every person living in recovery is somebody else’s hope.

Someone who is struggling today needs to see the person celebrating ten years. They need to meet the person who once thought there was absolutely no way out and now has a life they never imagined possible.

They need proof.

And recovery is proof.

So this month, I am going to keep saying the names of the people we lost.

But I am also going to say the names of the people who made it.

I’m going to celebrate their dates. Their milestones. Their ordinary Tuesdays. Their first apartments, new jobs, repaired relationships and second, third and twentieth chances.

I’m going to celebrate the people reaching behind them and pulling the next person forward.

I’m going to celebrate the people who are still fighting.

Because we have mourned enough people in silence and in public.

Maybe it’s time we made recovery impossible to ignore.

So if you are in recovery, whether today is day one or year twenty, I hope you know this:

We see you. We are proud of you. And we are going to celebrate the hell out of you.

Happy Recovery Month. 💜