Rachel Driggs cares about you. As a person in recovery, a nurse, an incredibly giving and charitable individual, and perhaps most of all as a survivor, Rachel puts other people as a priority. “[In Recovery] we don’t let anybody go. We always offer help.”

Rachel first came to recovery from a medical ailment that impeded her ability to work. “I could not work. I could not support myself anymore. And I moved back home with my Dad. And I started to drink, a lot. I hated not having my life the way it was…I had this anger in me.” She decided that a life with other people was more important than a life bent upon destruction. “It’s taken a lot to let that anger go, to let the drinking go. Now I look forward to going to dialysis, because I know how much it helps. I look forward to my 12 step group. I really look forward to spending time at the Recovery Café because everyone here is absolutely beautiful.”

Rachel first came to Recovery Café Spokane from the event Hands Across the Falls, an event put on every year by the folks at RCS and Community Minded Enterprises where the recovery community comes together for a day of visibility and solidarity. “I was in treatment at a facility, and I made a really good friend there. And she was being discharged just before the Hands Across The Falls event was going on. And she really wanted to go…[There] I met Georgia Butler and Kathy Thamm for the first time…so I became a member right after the Hands Across the Falls.”

Rachel, a stalwart supporter and mainstay of the Recovery Café, finds the people to be the thing that keeps her coming back. She also finds what resonates most with her aside from the beautiful people she has come to know are the guiding principles the Café network is founded upon. “But what really attracted me to the Recovery Café was the guiding principles. I love those principles so much…no matter how someone has lived their life or not lived their life here, it’s not judged, and it’s just a beautiful place to be.”

Since coming to the Café, Rachel has learned key aspects about herself. “It’s okay to have weaknesses. I was raised to be a perfectionist. Here it’s okay to not be perfect and not be judged. I’ve learned it’s okay to relax.”

Rachel is a centerpiece to the Recovery Café of Spokane and has been a member continuously since 2017.