Reclaiming Our True Identity: A Call from Killian Noe
Recovery Café and Recovery Café Network were founded on two universal truths:
- Everyone is Love at their core—no exceptions.
- Everyone needs a place to belong and become—no exceptions.
I’d like to unpack these two statements briefly and highlight how they are connected.
By the time we’ve lived long enough, most of us have been wounded by those who were not able to love us the way we needed to be loved. Behaviors emerge from those wounded places—anger, shame, blame, self-loathing, and fear. We begin to take our identity from those behaviors instead of from our truest, deepest identity—Love. For example, we say, “I am angry,” instead of, “I am feeling angry right now.”
Which brings me to the second statement. We all need authentic communities—places of belonging and becoming—where we can recognize the impact of behaviors emerging from our wounds and reclaim our true identity. Recognizing limiting and hurtful behaviors while simultaneously reclaiming our true identity (Love) is what our first guiding principle is all about: “Connect with divine Love in ourselves and others.”
We have embraced Cafés that have substituted the words “divine love” with words that have deeper meaning for their communities. For example, one community resonated more with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “love-force” to describe the love at our core that is greater than ourselves. However we describe it, our first guiding principle highlights two sides of the same coin and is foundational to the work of the Recovery Café Network.
As we practice this principle day in and day out in our own Cafés, we become part of a movement of Recovery Cafés practicing this principle. Together, we become a light that shines brightly in the darkness of our time. Together, we show the larger culture what it looks like to hold every life as sacred and to value all.
With profound gratitude for each of you and the light you bring to the whole,
Killian Noe