MOAR Recovery Coaches Walk the Walk
“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.” – Shannon L. Alder
By Luke Schmaltz, VOICES Editor
The world of substance use disorder (SUD) is a lonely place, and the isolation can become even more pronounced once an individual chooses to seek recovery. When you make this choice, the patterns of using drugs and the network of people within that community are gone and suddenly, you are alone.
This first step on the path to recovery can be precarious, as the urge to revert back to old patterns can easily become stronger than the desire to forge new ones. Fortunately, people who arrive on this road can quickly discover there are others who are waiting to help them, and they do not have to “fly solo,” as the saying goes.
Amid the vast network of organizations dedicated to helping people, there are individuals with first-hand experience of the recovery process. These people are known as recovery coaches, and they play a unique, frontline role in the lives of those struggling with SUD.
The Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery employs a team of recovery coaches who, day-in and day-out, engage with people who are seeking recovery. These coaches are special because their expertise in the subject of overcoming SUD does not come from a classroom, but instead from having been through it themselves. Historically, people in recovery have proven to make excellent coaches – offering a time-tested, personally proven mindset for freeing oneself from addiction.
Direct service providers on the MOAR team are incredibly resilient while being profoundly understanding as they approach their work with a rare blend of resolve, expertise and empathy not encountered in traditional clinical settings.
Sustainable Recovery
Kim Krawczyk is in long-term recovery. She began her journey, in part, by starting Faces of Lost Lives – a group dedicated to shining a light on drug overdose casualties. “We wanted to put a face to the number of deaths in Massachusetts,” she explains. “I lost my brother to a fatal overdose and that’s how I came up with that idea.”
Krawczyk’s journey of recovery also began when she met Maryanne Frangules, Executive Director of MOAR in 2012. “I was trying to get into recovery on my own – my brother was a huge motivator,” Krawczyk begins, “and I started hanging out at a recovery center called the Recovery Connection in Marlboro, Massachusetts. This place did things for me that I did not experience in other recovery places. I began engaging with the recovery community and the Director of the Recovery Center sponsored me into the Recovery Coach program and that’s how I got the job at MOAR,” she says.
Krawczyk’s role as the Recovery Coach Supervisor at MOAR means that she supervises a team of several coaches who work directly with the public. “We meet weekly, and we go over their caseloads,” she begins. “While there is no hierarchy, per se, you have to be very strong in your recovery to work as a coach or a supervisor. It’s not like a clinical setting, you don’t have those clear boundaries,” she says.
While working as a recovery coach certainly has its merits, Krawczyk explains that her vocation also comes with its own challenges – especially when it comes to processing the grief inherent in helping others who are in the midst of profound challenges. “Secondary trauma is definitely a real thing,” she says, “But MOAR is really great on self-care – we really promote it, we actually enforce it. I see a counselor myself because things are triggered all the time dealing with violence issues, suicide – all those things,” she explains.
Krawczyk cites the circumstances of one of her coaches, Julie Pike, (see below) who has to be especially mindful of secondary trauma. [She] suffered from domestic violence in a serious way,” Krawczyk begins, “so when a recoverer is talking about their issues, whether they are in a safe shelter or wherever, it can absolutely translate as secondary trauma. But we have such a relationship where she calls me about a lot of things. That’s why it’s non-clinical because of that gray area,” she explains.
Krawczyk meets with her staff weekly and goes over each person in a coach’s caseload. “We talk about whether the person is ambivalent, where they are in the stages of change and how we can use MI (Motivational Interviewing) to motivate change,” she says. “My position as a supervisor is to support and mostly educate on how my staff can help a person become sustainable in their recovery [and] notice stages of change as well.”
Krawczyk ends by introducing another level of community support provided by MOAR called AREAS (Addiction Recovery Education Access Services). “These are groups run by facilitators or people who are in recovery. They are formulated for people that are early in recovery,” she explains.
The AREAS curriculum provides education on topics such as housing issues, relapse prevention and coping with a criminal record – to name a few. “They are weekly hybrid [video call and in-person] meetings. Basically, every time I attend one myself, I learn something new because we have all the information inside of us, it’s just a matter of getting to it,” Krawczyk says.
No Wrong Way
Julie Pike has a special term for the folks she encounters on a daily basis. “As I work with my recoverees,” she begins, “It’s [a matter of] meeting them where they are at that moment. Like this morning, I was speaking with a woman who is early into recovery. She has a child in daycare, and I asked her what she was going to do with her free time, and she said she wasn’t sure. Then I asked her ‘who are you?’ and she said, ‘I have no idea who I am.’ That’s common. Sometimes you don’t know who you are without the substance,” Pike explains.
Pike describes how she helps recoverees to rediscover themselves by offering them a challenge. For example, with the above-mentioned client, Pike suggested that she, “Write down five different things you’ve never done, then pick three to try this week. This opens up the door of empowerment and gives them the freedom to choose,” she explains.
The calling to be a Recovery Coach, while immensely rewarding, can sometimes be very tough. “I have another individual I recently lost – one of my recoverees – to an overdose,” Pike begins. “Then, the next week I had another recoveree who was on a suicide mission, but he didn’t want to talk on the phone, he only wanted to text message. So, it was meeting him where he was; to text and not talk on the phone.” This strategy allows Pike to approach her work with a mindset of flexibility and adaptability. “Just because we had a wonderful conversation last week and the sky was the limit, doesn’t mean they’re not going to be in the pits this week. I have to be open to where they are coming from, even when I’m having a crappy day. I have to leave whatever I’m going through in my coffee cup, if you will.”
Thankfully, the suicidal person finally came around and decided not to take their own life because of religious beliefs. Regardless, a week filled with such intense circumstances can take its toll, and Pike has to be mindful to take care of her own emotional needs. “I have a superb supervisor, Kim (see above) and the MOAR team is very supportive. We rally around each other when times are low. We get it, we walk the walk.”
Pike first encountered MOAR after serving a lengthy prison sentence. “I did 20-years and after I came home, I went to ATR (Access to Recovery) and they offered me a recovery coach and guess who it was – Kim Krawczyk who is now my supervisor.”
Pike describes her reentry into society after being “inside” as a daunting set of challenges. “I didn’t know how to ride on the train system in Boston, no clue. It took me a week-and-a-half just to learn how to cross the street again after coming home. I almost wanted to go back because that’s what I knew and that’s where I was safe. So, Kim helped me out, she walked with me to go get my physical license, helped me make phone calls because I didn’t know how to do it and I needed a hand to hold onto. But she met me where I was. She met me with my fear. So, I pass that on along with what I learned in Recovery Coach Academy.”
“I do go to therapy – I’m a therapy girl,” Pike continues, “and fortunately my therapist is also an individual in recovery so [they] are not just a textbook-smart person. For me, working in this field, if I’m going to vent, I need somebody to have that lived experience because they get where I’m coming from, they understand what I’m going through, they understand what it’s like to live the addiction life and go through that process.”
Through her first-hand knowledge of the lived recovery experience, Pike offers some powerful pieces of wisdom. “There are as many pathways as there are people in recovery,” she begins. “Not one way is better than the other, it’s just what works for you. As I like to share with my recoverees, there’s no wrong way to do it right,” she says.