What are Recovery Writers?

Recovery Writers are a group of people in 12-step recovery who use creative writing to recover memories, heal their wounds, connect with others in recovery, and practice hearing the voice of a Loving Parent.

I have been practicing 12-step recovery since 2005. I was raised in an alcoholic family. The 12-step program that heals those wounds is called Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA). Many ACAs also become alcoholic, as I did. The underlying feelings are similar.   There are many people who feel alone, fear abandonment, are entangled in unfulfilling relationships and who don’t know who they are.  I have healed many of my childhood wounds and discovered my true self by writing and listening to the writing of others. I did this through Recovery Writing. 

We know today that 1 in 5 Americans was raised in an alcoholic home. My father was an alcoholic from before I was born.  His alternating manic energy, self pity, and rage created a roller coaster of feelings that led me to adopt a series of survival strategies.  I share these strategies with every child raised the way I was.  They include being super-responsible, a people pleaser, controlling, and afraid of authority figures and my own feelings.

My childhood years created a feeling of emptiness and not belonging. I feared my father’s anger and didn’t know how to deal with conflict. When I was ten, my mother converted to a Jehovah’s Witness, and took her three children with her. I dreaded being a proselytizer, knocking on doors with the Watchtower and Awake magazines. I hated being different, forced to give up celebrating my birthday and Christmas. 

Because I was a Witness, I was not allowed to go to college.  My career was to be a minister. So I was not encouraged to find my gifts and talents.  The religion is all-consuming and Witnesses hold themselves apart from the world.  So from the age of 10 until I graduated High School at 17, I was subject to what I saw as a demanding god who would not allow me to be a normal teenager.

Eventually, I became an alcoholic as well, using alcohol to numb my feelings of fear and give me some relief. My journey to sobriety began in 2005.  I had been writing poetry since the year 2000, but it wasn’t until I began to connect my writing with my recovery that I realized it was a part of practicing my programs. 

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Recovery Writers use creative writing to reclaim our childhood stories and practice our recovery program. The process of writing, sharing out loud with others in recovery, and then hearing the voice of a Loving Parent as we each comment about what is beautiful and powerful in each other’s writing is one way of doing Reparenting work. It allows the spirit of creativity and our higher power to breathe recovery into our lives.

All of us begin childhood as creative beings. We explore, make art, sing songs. But many of us lose that sense of wonder as age. Writing our recovery stories allows a higher  power of creativity to power our pens into writing that feels both powerful and healing. Often my poem leads me to a hidden truth, which is the essence of creativity.

Recovery Writers is a Community—the family that many of us longed for as children. We are loved for exactly who we are. We don’t have to pretend. Recovery Writers come from all 12-step programs. We offer a roadmap to uncovering feelings through telling our stories—both of alcoholism but more importantly about the childhood events that led us to become alcoholics, al anons, overeaters, or adult children of alcoholics/dysfunctional families Practicing 12-step recovery is a spiritual exercise. Writing is one key to unlock the spirit within.  

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