Imagine a place in Seattle where people who have experienced homelessness, substance use disorder, mental health challenges and other instances of trauma find the sustained recovery needed to gain and maintain access to housing, social and health services, healthy relationships, education and employment.
Well, at Recovery Café, they can.
Recovery Café is a free, membership-based healing community of radical hospitality. In our beautiful, safe, drug- and alcohol-free space, we are deeply known and loved. People make the choice to join our community for myriad reasons. I’d suggest everyone is in recovery from something and can benefit from being part of a healing community.
One requirement of membership is attending a small, weekly, loving accountability support group we call a “recovery circle.” The circles represent a fundamental component of the Café’s essence. They recognize the truth that we all need to know and be known, love and be loved and feel a sense of belonging. The authentic sharing I have witnessed in recovery circles are some of the times I have felt closest to the Divine. It’s my belief everyone needs a recovery circle, because we all benefit from a safe space where we can share our triumphs and our tragedies — where we can truly “be seen.”
Loneliness has been named an American epidemic (and the holidays put a sharper point on it), and the antidote is community. A recent study from the Cigna Group reported that the majority of Americans (58%) are considered lonely, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported “the physical health consequences of poor or insufficient connection include a 29% increased risk of heart disease, a 32% increased risk of stroke and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults. Additionally, lacking social connection increases risk of premature death by more than 60%.”
And unfortunately, institutions that have connected past generations are increasingly failing. The Atlantic reported that 42 million Americans stopped attending church in the past 25 years. I view decreased church attendance as just one example of declining social connection, and while I’m not advocating for people to return to church, I do know, as humans, we are wired to be in healthy relationships with others.
As the saying goes, people don’t recover in treatment — we recover in community.
COVID is just one of the events in the “trauma lasagna” we have all collectively experienced in the last few years.
Yet, as the need for connection has grown, we seem to be pushed toward more polarization and isolation. De-humanizing or “othering” has become a way for many politicians to score points. The cost is catastrophic for human suffering.
As my mentor and the founder of Recovery Café Killian Noe preaches, “We deny our oneness with the whole human race at our own peril.”
It takes effort to see through the rhetoric — to go deeper than the headlines, tweets or sound bites — to understand the person impacted in each situation. Yet we would all be better off if we could do that.
Seeing beyond the rhetoric to meet a person where they are at is what we do at Recovery Café.
On a regular basis, here in our milieu, there is a gentleman who is living unhoused and has Tourette’s syndrome. His outbursts and sometimes inappropriate language have become a part of our fabric. Are there days where we ask him to leave temporarily? Yes, but most days are good days, and he is a welcome presence. Seeking to understand each other is a commitment we make to each other at Recovery Café.
In a recovery circle recently, I listened as a young trans man shared the challenges of accessing appropriate health care. His pain was palpable, and his authenticity created a sacred space. I don’t believe anyone could have been in that space with him and ever again give any credence to the ridiculous things said about the transgender community.
Recovery Café’s community is diverse and complex. Here, no day is perfect, and at the same time, miracles happen every day. One I appreciate the most is the opportunity to forgive and to be forgiven. Kate DeCamillo wrote, “Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love: a powerful, wonderful thing.” I couldn’t agree more.
Recovery Café is a place to practice forgiveness, to make mistakes and to repair them and to be recognized as fundamentally good and loved with all of our imperfections.
As someone who works at Recovery Café, I’m biased in my belief in our mission and hold it very near and dear to my heart. But I also share about the café as an example of the structures and spaces I believe we need in every community in order to be all we are created to be.
Everyone is in need of healing and of collectively transforming the traumas to a more connected and more caring community. We are at a threshold, and the way forward is together. The encouraging thing to me — something else I learned from Noe — is that when we reach out to others when seeking to help and address suffering, we are not only addressing that immediate need, but we are also connecting with all the efforts to help heal our broken world. To me that is very exciting, and so I invite us all during this time to be intentional about creating a welcoming community.
Reach out to others, volunteer, attend a community gathering, show up, listen with the intent to understand, give and forgive. I promise you will be glad you did.
David Coffey is the executive director of Recovery Café.
Recovery Café is located at 2022 Boren Ave. in Seattle and is hosting a holiday gathering Dec. 22, 1 to 2:30 p.m., that will include caroling, cookies, coffee, cocoa and a reflection shared by Killian Noe, the founder of Recovery Café. All are welcome to join us and be in community.
Read more of the Dec. 20–26, 2023 issue.