December 24, 2020 Dear Recovery Café communities, As some of you know, my daughter, Phoebe, had a baby in November and my daughter, Kietrie, is expecting a baby in February. So this Christmas season I have found myself thinking, more than usual, about Mother Mary’s experience of giving birth to Jesus. What can we learn […]
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Recently, my father emailed me a photo of my great grandfather Edgar Hawley from the mid-1940s. On my great grandfather’s lap are my two aunts (my father was not yet born). In my dad’s email, he remembered that Edgar would often take him on adventures in his Jeep around Yuma, Arizona. As I’ve reflected on […]
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Mike was one of the first members to join Recovery Café Lowell after opening our doors in January of this year. He is also the very first member raised into a Peer leadership role. I have to genuinely focus to recall his demeanor back when he first joined RCL because today he seems like a […]
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One of the things I love to do is watch great movies. So, I was delighted to see that Fareed Zakaria, in his most recent book, refers to the movie, “Lawrence of Arabia.” As some of you may recall, Lawrence of Arabia won Best Picture and six other Academy awards in 1962. The movie tells […]
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From Church Soup Kitchen to Healing Community How Recovery Café San Jose Came to Be by Dana Bainbridge Pastor of Urban Sanctuary (formerly First Christian Church San Jose) and Co-Founder Recovery Café San Jose On this particular Sunday, it is already hot at ten in the morning in downtown San Jose. So, the Adult […]
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Many of us unravel the moment we finally feel safe enough to. For most of my life, I have struggled with depression, dismissing my self-worth, denying myself the space to come completely undone. Being educated about mental illness does not exempt me from struggling with my own. I have done a really good job […]
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“For it is in giving that we receive” – St. Francis of Assisi One of our Guiding Principles at Recovery Café and across the Network is to Give Back. This principle, as principles often do, may take on a range of interpretations relating to an individual’s expression of and connection to the principle. […]
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I write this from Tallahassee, Florida where I am staying with family. Recently, they asked me what the Recovery Café Network looks for when a group expresses interest in bringing a Recovery Café to their community. While I hope that means that perhaps one may be coming to Tallahassee, I thought I would share my […]
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I would like to offer three tips to help us live from love instead of fear—even in the midst of overwhelming realities. The three tips are: turn inward, turn toward, and turn outward. Tip number one for living from love, instead of fear: Turn Inward. If our responses are to flow from love […]
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June 1, 2020 Dear Community, We are living in painful and unprecedented times. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery— on top of all the brutal murders of African Americans throughout our nation’s history— have further laid bare the enduring, systemic racism that is alive and well in the US. Meanwhile, […]
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