Episode 11: What Does Recovery Look Like To You?

A heartfelt conversation on how recovery looks different for everyone—addiction, mental health, eating disorders, and physical rehab. Greg shares a powerful family story and a call to seek help; Jay details his journey from early drinking, injury, and heroin to nearly 11 years sober; Rich highlights physical rehabilitation milestones and the importance of a supportive community. Key message: recovery isn’t linear, setbacks are feedback, and asking for help is brave. Resources included: 988, SAMHSA, findahelpline.com.

Greg
00:00 - 00:15
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Support and Kindness Podcast. Today is November the 15th, 2025 and we're on episode 11. Today we're asking what does recovery look like to you? And recovery means many things to different people.

Greg
00:15 - 00:29
It can be abstinence, is it a focus on mental health, is it a second chance at life? We'll hear diverse stories showing that this journey is unique for everyone. And I'm here with my co-host Jay and Rich. Thank you for joining me.

Greg
00:29 - 00:47
I think this is one of our most important conversations. It may seem like a simple question, but the answer is really complex and personal. Whether you're recovering from an eating disorder, substance abuse, mental health, injury, or other life change, your journey is valid and your definition matters. Recovery is not a straight line or a checklist.

Greg
00:47 - 01:13
It's more of a winding river. Sometimes it's smooth and sometimes it's rough, but it's always changing. For an eating disorder, recovery might mean a peaceful relationship with food without counting calories or looking in the mirror with kindness instead of criticism and self-compassion replacing self-judgement. For addiction, recovery might be milestones such as 30 days sober, rebuilding trust, or finding coping strategies that don't involve a substance.

Greg
01:14 - 01:37
It's about creating a life that makes relapse less tempting. In physical rehab, recovery might be the first steps after an injury, gaining strength or adapting to a new normal. Across these experiences, some common elements appear, and their community, whether it's therapists, doctors, support groups, faith, friends, therapists, they all help us heal. And isolation worsens struggle.

Greg
01:37 - 02:00
Connection helps. New coping skills, old harmful ways, give way to mindfulness, creative expression, movement, or honest communication, and setbacks. Instead of seeing relapse as a failure, many view it as valuable feedback about triggers or skills that they still need to build. An identity shift moving from I am my struggle to I'm someone who has struggled but I'm healing.

Greg
02:01 - 02:22
And recovery plans often combine therapy, medication, support groups or physical therapy, practicing joy, boundaries, nourishing food and movement that feels good. and supportive relationships. We've got to address the stigma hiding recovery keeps us from celebrating strength and courage. Recovery is not weakness, it's one of the bravest paths that someone can take.

Greg
02:22 - 02:33
I'll start today with someone who's experienced recovery and that's my good friend Jay. So Jay, you've got a lot of experience recovery, what does recovery look like to you?

Jay
02:33 - 02:56
Well, I was very excited for this topic because, yes, I've been in the recovery community for many, many years. I've kind of got my path to recovery down to a couple minutes, so I think I will start off that I had my first drink at probably about nine years old. It's an early age, but that's when I started. I had trouble up until my 20s.

Jay
02:57 - 03:19
And, you know, there's times in your life, especially when you're a teenager, early 20s, where it's acceptable. So my friends put up with it, you know, my mom put up with it, my family did. But then it got to a point where I was out of control. And I remember I was living with a buddy at the time, and he had to call my mom one night to come get me because of how insane I was acting.

Jay
03:19 - 03:36
And that led me to my first rehab. I've been to rehab probably, I've mentioned this before in the podcast, over 30 times. I've been to 30 day programs, 60 day programs, 90 day programs, and I got a lot of experience in there. I can't totally tell you what set me straight.

Jay
03:36 - 03:52
They say that if you hear enough in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, that one day something clicks. And one day something did click. I had gotten out of treatment and I thought, you know, I'm just going to wait a week before I start drinking. Then I said I was going to wait two weeks before I start drinking.

Jay
03:52 - 04:08
Then I said I was going to wait a month. And then from there it got harder and easier. I will say that it does get much, much easier. I hope everyone out there who's going through it can take that as words that that will happen.

Jay
04:08 - 04:44
it does get easier now i've been in recovery i'm coming up on eleven years on december fifth i just went and got my ten year coin from alcoholics anonymous but i've actually been in the program since i was probably seventeen or eighteen i still remember my first meeting i had a mom and a friend go with me And I couldn't say a word in the meeting because I was just so overwhelmed by everything that was going on, everything I was hearing. But I found a lot of friendship in that room, a lot of support, a lot of wisdom. And I don't think I could have done it without that.

Jay
04:44 - 04:56
or the treatment centers. But now I'm proud to say that I got it at a very young age. I'm only 36 and I've had almost 11 years of sobriety. I was alcohol, the majority of my teens and 20s.

Jay
04:56 - 05:10
And then I got into a car accident when I was 21, which was a drunk driving accident. And thank God I never hurt anybody but myself, but I sure did hurt myself. I had to have brain surgery. It's in the hospital for three or four months, and then they release you on pain medicine.

Jay
05:10 - 05:27
And that was a whole other demon. And then pain medicine gets too expensive, and you end up going down the route of heroin. And that just created a whole other evil on top of it. But again, I'm proud to say that I have 11 years from both heroin and alcohol.

Jay
05:27 - 05:32
And the last words I want to leave about that is, is it does get easier.

Greg
05:32 - 05:45
Thanks, Jay. You know, you took great pride in showing us your 10-year anniversary coin. I know that you can't see that because this is a podcast and we're just using the audio, but it's a really nice-looking coin. It's got a black inlay on there with some gold writing.

Greg
05:46 - 05:58
You know, these milestones, whether it be 10 years, 10 weeks, 10 months, 10 minutes, these are celebratory milestones, but it's different for everyone. Rich, what does recovery look like for you?

Rich
05:59 - 07:00
Physical recovery is what I was going to focus on. Coming back from injuries and the long road when you undergo or when you suffer a debilitating physical injury be it a traumatic brain injury or when i was younger i was a pretty competitive athlete and i suffered some pretty bad knee injuries and the physical rehabilitation just getting range of motion back Those are you get milestones with your therapist getting range of motion going for another couple of degrees each week in how far you can flex the knee joint or how much weight you can bear how far you can squat. You know these are milestones in your rehabilitation and recovery process and they're difficult but they're but they're milestones that you reach with your therapist and usually you frequent the same.

Rich
07:00 - 07:20
You have a schedule so you see the same fellow patients and yourself and therapist pretty frequently you start to develop a rapport with them. There's kind of a rehabilitation community that develops. It really helps out in that accountability, like Jay was talking about, in getting you there, keeping you accountable.

Greg
07:20 - 07:34
You can't do it alone, right? I mean, we have to, you know, community is very important. I can tell these things are very meaningful to you. I know, again, you can't see because you're on voice, but your face was lighting up when you were talking about some of those milestones that you were reaching.

Greg
07:34 - 07:48
And I know that you get from your personal journey, but also in your professional journey, when you were a coach, you got to see recovery from injury and stuff like that, which I'm sure that was rewarding as well, seeing that take place before your eyes.

Rich
07:48 - 08:19
Absolutely. It was always neat to see an athlete, a player, work really hard to come back from an injury. It can be very discouraging when you get injured and feel like your career is over. And if you put in the work, if you put in the time, and the effort you can resurrect a career with modern medicine and surgery and physical therapy and sports rehabilitation.

Rich
08:19 - 08:40
You can really do amazing things to repair an ACL, PCL, MCL, whatever the knee joint might be that you blow out or tear an Achilles or something. Those used to be career-ending injuries 25 years ago, and now you can come back eight, nine months and participate Jay, what are you going to say?

Jay
08:41 - 08:56
I just wanted to say that I can relate to the physical injury part. I think it's just as important as recovery because that's your physical health and that comes before anything. I used to be a almost pro skateboarder. I had sponsors.

Jay
08:56 - 09:11
This was all when I was teenage years and it all stopped when I was 21 again when I had the brain injury. And it was, I was lost. I was a floater. I didn't know what to do with my life because my whole life I had planned on being this great skateboarder.

Jay
09:12 - 09:32
And then I had the brain injury and a doctor said to me, are you, do you do any sports? And I said, yeah, I've just become a pro skateboarder. And he said, well, you don't skateboard anymore. That was one of the hardest things I ever heard in my life because, uh, you know, you're, you're going down this one path and this giant fork in the road comes up.

Jay
09:32 - 09:46
and you're on a totally new path of pain and missing out on everything that you had planned for in your life. So I can certainly relate to the injuries, because I still haven't come back from it. I'll never be a pro skateboarder again.

Rich
09:46 - 10:03
Right. Jay, that brings up a wonderful point, and that's the mental health side of recovery, the mental health side of addiction and injury. You were talking about your recovery from substance abuse. I was talking about my recovery from injury.

Rich
10:04 - 10:25
There's a mental health side of recovery to injury or to addiction that can't be ignored. And I encourage people to seek professional help while seeking their physical help or their 12-step program. It's important to take the mental side of it seriously as well.

Greg
10:25 - 10:49
And taking that first step. is very important we'll have some good notes in the make sure we've got some resources in the show notes for you but you know for me recovery looks like a lot of things it looks like going from a child Seeing a strange woman waking up out of bed and a strange woman in the house who thinks that she's exercising the demon from family members. She was drunk, manic-depressive, unmedicated.

Greg
10:49 - 10:59
That was my stepmother and I hated her at one point. I really did hate her. I would love to have seen her dead. Some of the things that happened to me as a child were absolutely despicable.

Greg
10:59 - 11:10
But recovery means seeing her go from that. In the end, she was the sweetest lady that you could ever wish to meet. And I really loved that lady dearly, you know. She got help in the end.

Greg
11:11 - 11:15
She got sober. She got on medication. She got the help she needed. And she was a wonderful person.

Greg
11:16 - 11:30
You know, recovery can do that for somebody. It could be abstinence. It could be, you know, watching things that you don't want to be watching a little bit less often. Having, you know, instead of drinking right away, coming out from rehab, waiting a couple of weeks, like Jay had said.

Greg
11:30 - 11:45
It could be any number of things. It could be the physical, the mental health aspect, the pain, the anguish. It could be having good days where you don't hate yourself and you don't want to die. It could be going into the psych ward a little bit less often, a little bit less frequently.

Greg
11:45 - 11:59
Not having to, you know, feel like you were a burden to society and yourself. You know, we talked about that river, right? And, you know, sometimes smooth, sometimes it's rapid, but it's moving all the time. Gentlemen any thoughts on this anything else

Jay
12:00 - 12:25
yeah i just want that made me think of a good point of forgiveness i think forgiveness is important in recovery not only forgiving people that have done wrong to you but forgiveness of yourself for having these injuries that you couldn't avoid or having these addiction you couldn't avoid eventually you have to forgive yourself that's a hard thing to do but it's a necessary step of recovery in any fashion.

Greg
12:25 - 13:11
yeah and you're doing the best you can and i need you to listen up i'm gonna say something right and i need everyone to hear this because you might not have heard it for a long time you might not have heard it at all but i'm in all seriousness when i say this i care people care i love you you are worth it you are worth the effort you are worth the help seek help reach out to us you can contact us at kindnessrx.org send us a message if you need some resources i'll try and point you in the right direction find someone local to you that you can help i'm going to put there's a 988 it's a national suicide number it's a crisis number you can call that if you're in the united states and we've got some other resources but reaching out is very important gentlemen before we wrap up any other thoughts on this

Jay
13:11 - 13:27
I just want to say that, yeah, reaching out to help is an important step. I think the meeting, both Greg and Rich and Liam when he's here, this has been one of the most progressing and helpful things I've ever been a part of. So yes, reach out to us on kindnessrx.org.

Greg
13:28 - 13:45
Absolutely. So as we wrap the conversation up, I hope that you've taken away one crucial message. Recovery is not a rigid path. It's a spectrum defined by your self-direction, your goals, and your commitment to a life lived fully.

Greg
13:45 - 14:27
Whether your recovery looks like a daily meeting, a therapy session, or a moment of deep compassion, or simply making it through a day sober, know that your effort is valid and your journey is powerful. again asking for help is brave and it can bring healing and support when times are tough remember you're not alone and there's free resources ready to help you help lines give you a quick emotional support from trained professionals who know what you're feeling and these services provide easy access providing safe spaces for you to talk about your feelings so don't wait reach out taking that first help can really help If you or a loved one struggling, immediate help is available. You can call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.

Greg
14:28 - 14:43
There's 988 Suicide Crisis Lifeline. Any time of the day or night, simply dial 988. And for global support, you can visit findahelpline.com and that address is findahelpline.com. This is going to be in the show notes.

Greg
14:44 - 14:59
And it connects you with over 1,300 helplines. in over 130 countries offering free, confidential, and emotional support worldwide. Thanks for listening to the Support & Kindness podcast. Join us next time for another inspiring conversation.

Greg
15:00 - 15:05
Until then, take care and thank you for helping build a kinder world, one podcast at a time.