Starting around mid-March, it seemed like just about everyone I’d ever given my email address to was reaching out with an update on how their entity was addressing the growing pandemic. Reading the opening lines in succession almost turns into a poem, which conveys the feeling of those initial days, and the reality that we were all processing this in real-time.
After (quite literally) years of work, Recovery Cafe Jefferson County had our grand opening scheduled for Saturday, May 9th, 2020. It became clear that that wasn’t going to be possible. Construction was halted on our beautiful building and our future was uncertain.
And yet – these times are scary, uncertain, strange, and challenging. Whether or not we’ve had the virus ourselves, we will all be in recovery from this pandemic. Where will we go from here? What is the broader psychic toll this is taking on us, as individuals, families, communities, and as a world? How will we heal? What does healing mean? What does recovery mean?
Recovery Cafes are communities where those questions are lived out and answered every day, pandemic or not: in connection, in vulnerability, in love, in shared joy & shared pain. Over meals and coffee and games of cribbage. At Recovery Cafe Jefferson County, we can be certain of this: we will continue to live out those answers with whatever means we can.