Soul Recovery Cafe' - Healing Through Community

For those looking for a new path, a way to put addiction and trauma behind them, there is a new option in town.

The Soul Recovery Café (SRC) is an incredible group of individuals working on their own recovery as they build a space for others to do the same. They are not a twelve-step program, but have members who take part in these programs (e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous). SRC brings in traditional medicine and he healing power of movement into their work. But above it all, they recognize that addiction creates isolation and their work is to build community for all who are in their programs. This community becomes the scaffold on which recovery and new paths are built.

Their director, Elise Padilla, said a few things about their work that I felt are worth sharing, principles that all of us can aspire to live by.

1.       “We don’t build programs, we build community. The community will then build our programs.”

      Too often, we focus on how to build amazing programs without thinking much about how to build the community part. SRC takes the approach that if you get people who begin to trust one another, over food, conversation, ceremony, etc. then those people will bring their talents and ideas to do the work of building the programs.

Foundations for SRC’s work: radical hospitality and loving accountability

To be radically hospitable…sign me up. What a great thing to shoot for! To have an open-arms acceptance of those in our midst. Loving accountability thrown into the mix. Loving others in a way that is honest. It is love that is not afraid of hurting feelings, but is instead focused on promoting healing.

Finally, Elise shared that she has two rules for those who work at SRC:

(1)    Keep it fun

(2)    If you aren’t working on yourself, you aren’t working with me

The first part of this, a simple reminder that the most serious of work (e.g. helping someone out of addiction) should have fun elements at its core if it is to be effective. And the second, a reminder that in all of our work and lives, we must commit to our own healing and practice that if we hope to inspire others to do the same.

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I hope the SRC way of doing things brings a smile to your heart this Friday.

And if you want to join us on New Year’s Day, we will be putting on a fun, non-competitive walk/run. The 3^rd Annual New Year’s Prediction Run/Walk is free, but we offer people a chance to donate funds that will go directly to SRC, with a goal of raising $5000. The entire event is centered in celebrating those in recovery, whether they are hours or days or months or years into sobriety. Hope that you will join us!