Honor your anger and grief towards the ways addiction and the barriers to recovery have failed you, those you love, and your communities.

So many of us are carrying so much grief from the harm we have experienced in recovery.

So many of us are disgruntled, angry, and ultimately heartbroken from the ways recovery has systematically and individually left so many of us out, has caused so much harm.

The ways recovery has traumatized and ostracized so many, and left so many to be unwell, to be imprisoned, and to die, especially those of us from marginalized communities, all to maintain the comfort and power of the privileged.

With the Recovery Justice framework coined by Golden Collier at @blackqueertransrecovery and @d.s.press, we can see how disappointing and harmful it is to walk into recovery, especially those of us from marginalized communities, and to see that we are being asked to buy into recovery systems perpetuating oppression and ignoring our needs for healing if we want a chance at wellness.

It also just hurts to see how many of us and our communities have been unable to receive or even be introduced to recovery because there are so many accessibility issues.

So many people have died, so many families are left without healing. So many have internalized traumas, so many have been suppressed, have been left alone, have been denied their right to heal, because:

• Recovery has been traditionally white, cisheteropatriarchal, ableist, fatphobic, and classist and perpetuates systemic oppression.

• It employs shame and fear as primary tactics of encouraging sobriety

• It relies upon Christian-rooted dogma that has been used to brutalize so many people and civilizations for decades

• It puts the burden on the individual for their issues and has no means of engaging with the systemic issues perpetuating the need for recovery

• It doesn’t prioritize accessibility for its meetings, its literature is full of ableism, and people are shamed if they are not capable of “showing up and being of service” all the time 100%

• Traditional recovery maintains so much control and resourcing over how people at large heal and how we understand addiction

• These traditional recovery programs believe their recovery programs are above fundamental changes and put down other systems of recovery or ways of being in recovery, including evidence-based treatment options

That sucks. That just really sucks. I see you and hold that grief, anger, and invalidation in my heart.
This grief manifests for so many of us as a trauma.

It’s so important that we grieve how much it hurts to meet further oppression and trauma in the place you were finally hoping to heal, and the trauma of the lack of willingness to change.

It is a deeply invalidating feeling, and one that those of us from marginalized communities know on a deep level, internalizing as children that we would never be validated and loved and seen and cherished for who we are and that our needs would never be met.


The beautiful thing is, more people are believing that change is possible. More people are recognizing their inherent worth in receiving healing and know that we do not need to lean into perpetuated oppression in order to receive it.

Our healing must be rooted in recovery justice and liberation.


So many of us are grieving the ways recovery has not held us in these ways.

By grieving these experiences and the system at large, we can open ourselves and our hearts up to what recovery can be.

Through this grief, we can see what our hurt is trying to tell us about what we need.

We keep ourselves soft and open to receive and connect. And we do so in a way that is informed by our harmful experiences, as we now know what our needs are and are empowered to move forward to foster recovery that can help meet individual and collective needs.

By grieving the ways we have been harmed by recovery, we open ourselves up to the connection we have always been so longing to receive with ourselves and with community.

We can begin by affirming ourselves, rooting our recovery in self-love that can support affirming others as they also work to embody self-love, that give spaciousness for the ways we need to heal that see us and support us holistically.

When we all do this, when we tend to our broken hearts in recovery, we create community and collective rooted in love and community care.

There is so much pain, and so much hope as we walk towards for the possibility of how we can be in community with each other and move towards #RecoveryJustice and collective liberation. I highly recommend checking out Golden Collier’s post @blackqueertransrecovery and @d.s.press on Recovery Justice for deeper engagement on what recovery needs and will look like in this movement.

Sending everyone so much care as we engage with our grief to further root in empowerment to meet our needs for healing and learn what it means to center marginalized communities and fight systemic oppression for us all to heal.

Sending everyone so much care who is interrogating how to be in and whether to leave recovery systems that have perpetuated harm, especially towards marginalized communities.

If you have learned anything from me and/or just want to pay reparations, I invite you to contribute for this work to be sustainable.