Spirit of Recovery

What’s it like to be a student working to maintain quality sobriety within a college campus party culture? Challenging! Special guest Sierra Castedo, director of the Center for Students in Recovery at UT-Austin, shares how CSR provides a safe space and supportive community for students in recovery or seeking recovery from addiction. CSR demonstrates that recovery works and can be part of a genuine...

Positive psychology focuses on principles and practices that keep us grounded in appreciation of the good in ourselves and in our lives. Special guest David Houke, LMSW, LCDC, director of programs at Austin Recovery, shares how this positive approach empowers long-term recovery. With 26 years’ experience as a clinician and as a person in long-term recovery, David brings a wealth of experience in s...

Recovery changes our lives. Before recovery, special guest Jacquelyn Woodroffe had been a successful professional singer, published songwriter, and musician for many years. Her resume included being a recording artist for Capitol Records and a couple of indie labels. In a difficult divorce, she lost all her music—and turned her life around. Coming into recovery and into the spiritual principles of...

Why practice Step 11? Because it grows your relationship with spiritual power—and that’s what recovery is all about. Conscious contact with our higher power gives us direction, guidance, love, and peace. Special guest, author and Unity minister Allen Liles, shares the profound, loving bond he developed with his higher power when life circumstances brought him to a renewed commitment to daily time...

Recovery is not always a straight path. Spiritual growth is a spiral touching into our spiritual core and then reaching out into our human experience, always bringing the two together. Our higher power keeps us growing—we just need to stay willing and open. Special guest Rev. Paul Fitzsimons, a person in long-term recovery, shares how his life quest for spiritual fulfillment led to recovery and a...

Recovery and creativity demand that we have a connection with our inner life. Yes, many people do create even when they are in active addiction or active enabling of a loved one’s addictive behavior. Yet something shifts when we get into recovery. We learn to walk through the darkness rather than camp out in it. We come out on the other side into a new experience of light. Special guest Leonard Bu...

Spiritually, we are all sisters and brothers. Recovery invites us to act like it! When we stop fearing other people and start communicating with them, life gets a lot more fun. Special guest Greg Tamblyn has pondered this invitation through music and laughter for many years. An award-winning speaker-humorist-singer-songwriter for more than 20 years, Greg combines outstanding audience rapport with...

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Trying to navigate that paradox can sometimes feel like we are heading for a big crash! Therapist and author Jill Haire has created a supportive guide to living our spiritual values in our human expression. Her program “Relax on Impact” guides and supports 12-step recovery and relationship communication. “Inner children” and teachable adults will...

A.A. pioneers used Two Way Prayer as a daily practice—in fact, they considered it more essential for recovery than attendance at meetings. By listening each morning and following their guidance, these women and men entered into a new and transforming relationship with their God. Grounded in this practice, they achieved recovery rates far higher than today’s. Throughout the years, Two Way Prayer wa...

Recovery from a substance use disorder is challenging for anyone—but even more so for teens. They face the regular pressures of moving from childhood into adulthood, while also learning how to stay clean and sober. Rev. Anna Shouse is joined by Julie McElrath, LMSW, LCDC, who is the executive director of University High School in Austin, Texas, a school dedicated to supporting teens in recovery fr...

Recovery happens as we know that although we may have the disease of addiction or the family disease of enabling, the disease does not have us. This is what special guest Bill Worth told his doctor 28 years ago when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Spiritual principles of recovery and healing apply, no matter what the concern. Bill shares his personal story in his latest book Outwitting M...

Recovery invites us to discover and sing the song of our heart. Since it has the power to uncover truths that lay deep within our heart, music is an essential part of our recovery tool kit. Special guest Alan Peterson, New Thought singer/songwriter, poet, speaker, activist, and life coach, made a courageous decision many years ago to sing the song of his creative heart. It changed his life. With h...

Making conscious connections with wholeness and well-being is the key to healing and recovery. Self-awareness, self-responsibility, prayer, and meditation are the building blocks of those connections. Twelve-step programs, influenced in part by Unity and other New Thought approaches, make powerful use of these methods. Special guest Mark Hicks, founder of truthunity.net, a place for the study, pra...

Recovery means a whole new way of learning to love yourself. Addiction or enabling someone’s addiction makes us fearful and selfish. And that’s very different from being self-loving! Special guest Chris Shea, M.A., CRAT, CAC-AD, addiction counselor, campus minister, life coach, nationally recognized speaker, and author, shares what loving yourself means and why it is a powerful spiritual action. C...

Entering recovery from alcoholism started a powerful transformation for special guest Scott Shepherd. By taking a long, honest look at himself ,he began to move from racist to active nonracist. As a very misguided, unhappy young person trying to escape the pain of family alcoholism, Scott chose a life of racism. Even though he didn’t really feel the racist things he preached, Scott wanted to belon...

Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect—but spiritual practices make whole! Loosening our grip on how we think things “ought” to be frees us to surrender into love and wisdom. Taking action through service to others is the joyful “rent” we pay for expanding recovery. Special guest Margaret Flick, a person in long-term recovery and a Unity minister, believes that prayer, gratitude, compassion, an...

Every person is God’s light in human form. Recovery is about discovering it, uncovering it, and letting it shine! Special guest Joanna Gabriel is a survivor of classism, sexism, and racism. She has overcome cancer, mental health issues, and two rocky marriages. Rev. Joanna is a retired Unity minister, a hospital and hospice chaplain, a powerful singer, and an inspiring songwriter. Happier and emot...

There’s more to recovery than staying sober and clean or free of obsession with another person. The 12 steps of recovery are a wisdom path to spiritual living. Special guest Rev. Dr. Jane Galloway is a person in long-term recovery, an ordained minister, and a highly successful stage and screen actor. Her book The Gateways: The Wisdom of 12-Step Spirituality presents the 12 steps squarely in the co...

Even in long-term recovery, life can throw us curveballs. How can we use our spiritual recovery tools to face life with faith in joy? Special guest Ray Nelson, Unity minister and person in long-term recovery, was diagnosed in 2014 with end-stage kidney disease. While living with a chronic disease can be difficult, he has found that a full, happy, and joy-filled life is all about making choices.  R...

One out of every five people struggles with mental illness. Too often, it can feel like a dark secret that isolates those suffering from it. Ignoring it is not an option. As friends and family members, we want to help but don’t know how. If we ourselves are experiencing mental illness, we want to find the way to healing. Special guest Felicia Johnson is the author of the best-selling novel Her, a...

Recovery gets us out of self-centeredness and into living. We are freed and strengthened to participate fully in our communities. Special guest Sandy McKinney, Unity minister celebrating more than 42 years of recovery, has a passion for social justice and interfaith community. She shares how recovery supports and motivates her active engagement in leadership to create a healthier, just, inclusive...

A lot of what we learned about love relationships we learned in our family or circumstances of origin. Recovery makes it possible to learn new ways of relating. With awareness and commitment, we can recover our sense of self and our ability to develop truly loving, fulfilling relationships. Special guest John Herald Lee is an international best-selling author and speaker and one of the founding me...

What does it mean to grow spiritually—and by the way, how do you do it? Recovery pioneers, the early members of Alcoholics Anonymous, wondered the same thing. Burned by traditional religion, they sought new ways to understand spirituality. One of their guides was Emmet Fox’s Sermon on the Mount. Special guest Roxanne Graves, a person in long-term recovery of 31 years and a Unity minister, shares h...

Recovery makes it possible for us to focus our minds and hearts on constructive living—and that means losing our fear of economic insecurity. There’s no magic formula for “getting rich,” yet there are spiritual attitudes that open us to financial partnership with our higher power. Security and fulfillment of our divine purpose are the results. Special guest Greg Barrette shares spiritual approache...

Recovery opens the door for us to grow into who we truly are—to express our innate talents and potential. To fulfill that potential, we are called to face up to and release old limiting beliefs about ourselves. Special guest Greg Franklin, a leader in business and a spiritual teacher, shares how incorporating spiritual principles into his daily life has led him to business success surpassing his e...