Sore hands and Assumptions

Well, I’ve seen a skunk – albeit a dead skunk - but a skunk nonetheless; and it still stank!

I also experienced one of the most magical nights of my life so far. About 20 PIRS (People In Recovery) sitting around a bonfire on Spofford Lake beach under a starlit sky and holding a Fellowship meeting on the theme of ‘Spirituality’. The experience will remain with me for as long as I live. It felt as if the Universe had poured its cleansing stream of living water all over us - refreshing us, renewing us.


Incidentally, do you like the term, PIRS (sounds like ‘Peers’)? A group of us in class today (13th) disliked ‘Recoverees’ as a word to describe People in Recovery. So we’ve came up with the acronym, PIRS. What do you think? Will it catch on? Surely it can’t be any worse than that other most impersonal of terms, Service Users!

Tonight, after a long day at the Vermont Recovery Coach Academy, we returned to the same Spofford Beach and met with Lon Jackman who helped us set up a Drum Circle. Before the rhythmic percussion-playing began, however, Lon introduced us to the traditional Yoga’s seven mantras associated with each Chakra.

1. LAM (Laum) – Earth chakra colour Red
2. VAM (Vaum) – Water chakra colour Orange
3. RAM (Raum) – Heart chakra colour Yellow
4. YAM (Yaum) – Heart chakra colour Green/Pink
5. HAM (Haum) – Throat chakra colour Blue
6. AUM (Aum) – Third Eye chakra colour Purple
7. R(Silence) – Crown chakra colour White

It was another night to remember. However, my hands hurt and feel as if they’re raw after all the drumming. Maybe I should have chosen a smaller drum – or at least one I could have beaten with a drum stick instead of the palms of my hands!

How’s the Recovery Coach training going?

Here’s how James Henzel, Programme Director, RISE Programmes, and a tutor on the course, summed things up on day 3.

“In the Recovery Coach Academy we’ve focused on the roles and responsibility of the Recovery Coach - to see how the approaches can be utilised to work with PIRS and to identify with what level they are at in terms of responsibility to themselves. We want to inform them and to be a resource for them.

On the Recovery Coach side we’re also trying to develop the resource network. We’re taking about it amongst ourselves in terms of our regions. We’re separated by 2 states here, Vermont and New Hampshire, so we’re looking at how we can best work together to effect change within the recovery field.

We’ve looked at Motivational Interviewing. How do we engage the recovery? How do we motivate them to communicate with us? How do we effect change with them and help make the decisions theirs? We’ve also looked at Pathways to Recovery and The Stages of Change model developed by Prochaska and DiClemente’.

We’re aiming to see PIRS through their first stage of recovery. Typically, it’s an hour a week through the course of a year – that’s the first stage. And that’ll really ground them and enable Recovery Coaches to build a relationship with them; to be honest with them; to engage them in Wellness planning; to validate their experiences and to negotiate an approach that they’re really a part of.

And I think that’s where we are today, our third day. We’re at that negotiation stage. We’ve bought up a lot of skills sets and different modalities of change that we implant them with the recovery, and we’ll further those discussions tomorrow.

Tomorrow we’re also going to look at Power - those positions of power and non-power and how recoveries fit into one of those.”

What have I learnt so far?

The value of being respectful, I think – and of being authentic; being human. That’s going to be my biggest asset in helping others recover.

And what’s the music tonight? The late, great Eva Cassidy singing, ‘Over the Rainbow’. Sublime!

I’m also reading a book that was gifted to me yesterday: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. In fact, I read an excerpt from the chapter headed ‘Don’t make Assumptions’ during this morning’s meditation. Our whole dream of hell is based on making assumptions, apparently, and taking things personally. So there! Don’t do it! Don’t assume and make an ass of you and me!

Cysgwch yn dawel a nos dawch pawb. Good night everyone.