What does being a SHE RECOVERS Foundation volunteer mean to you?

I remember what it felt like to be invited in and held by the SHE RECOVERS community. When I needed it most, a hand was extended, and I was met with love and compassion. I was steeped in shame and self-judgment, struggling to see my worth, acknowledge my humanity, and fully embody my life, and SHE RECOVERS was the beacon in the fog that I needed to find my way and move forward.

Being a SHE RECOVERS volunteer means I get to contribute to our collective healing by extending the hand that was once offered to me. By meeting folks right where they are with reassurance and understanding, I get to honor their healing journeys, hold space for the marvelously messy in between, and witness and celebrate their metamorphoses. And a lot of the time, I get to do that while dancing!

How long have you been volunteering with the organization?

I’ve been volunteering for SHE RECOVERS for about 5 years.

It started with helping Payton, Carly, and Sheena during SHE RECOVERS Dance sessions; I became a much-needed alternate. As DJ Spitfyre, I held occasional “dance parties” until I became certified in the inaugural SHE RECOVERS Dance Facilitator Training in September 2022.

Since then, I’ve been a volunteer Facebook Group Guardian, represented SHE RECOVERS behind the booth at Recovery Day and Soberfest, and continue to have a boogie with folks regularly on Sundays.

What made you want to become a SHE RECOVERS Foundation Volunteer?

I had such a visceral experience at an in-person session of SHE RECOVERS Dance on retreat with its creatrix, Payton Kennedy. It was a catalyst to healing the relationship I have with my fat body. Being able to get out of my head and drop into my body by dancing in community in a judgment-free space where I felt like I belonged was just what I needed to dispel some of the toxicity of diet culture and body hierarchy that had long been affecting my self-worth. I left some of my shame on the dance floor that day as I had a little boogie. Moving with unabashed joy, I was invited to take up as much space as I wanted; that felt like freedom.

I knew I had to volunteer to help support that kind of bodyful recovery. As a Dance Facilitator, I get to remind folks that they will never be too much or not enough, that they belong in this community just as they are, and that there’s always room for whatever they are carrying. I volunteer because I have experienced the genuine love that emanates from this community, and I want to pay that forward.

What three words would your friends or fellow volunteers use to describe you?

Whimsical, curious, compassionate.

How do these aspects of who you are show up in your everyday life?

My personal energy is whimsical. I’m not afraid to use my imagination; I try to bring whimsy to everyday life through my creativity, sense of humor, and embracing the magic, playfulness, and story in all things. I’m convinced that there is more to this wild and precious life than what appears on the surface, if we’re willing to look for it. Because how boring would life be otherwise? Haha…besides, whimsy is a great character foil to my sparkling anxiety.

Curiosity shows up as me wanting to know more, asking questions, digging deeper, uncovering meaning, and staying open to multifarious perspectives and possibilities in life. Curiosity says: “Go down the rabbit hole! It will be worth the trip.” I will ALWAYS look something up. And in these absurd times of change and uncertainty, curiosity keeps me hopeful, reminding me that it was curiosity about the world and our place in it that gave rise to epic poems, heroic sagas, and rich mythologies. Our own stories of what we do and why we do it continue to fascinate me. What an honor it is to witness folks coming to understand themselves and one another in circle. It reaffirms our shared humanity and makes recovery a lot less scary.

I aspire to lead with compassion—making room for others’ unique experiences and helping them feel welcome however they show up. Nurturing a culture of belonging is my modus operandi. To me, compassion means co-creating non-judgmental, supportive spaces where folks are free to explore holistic healing and connect with like-hearted souls along the way. Compassionate action is harm reduction. That’s why I am so passionate about championing food and body neutrality as a way of confronting anti-fat bias and the toxic effects of diet culture within the recovery community. Still working on the self-compassion; that’s the tricky one for me.

What is something of which you are proud?

I’m a proud recovery redefiner, compassion dealer, and hopepunk.

I don’t think there’s anything more badass than being in recovery. So if you’re in recovery, any kind of recovery, I’m proud of you. I’m grateful that I found a patchwork that works for me, and I’m proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with others actively searching for another way of doing things, game to keep at it, and healing on their own terms.

That’s my kind of counterculture! And we’re all rockstars.

Distributing compassion starts with practicing it, and one way I like to do that is by trying to remove judgment from food and bodies and staying as neutral as possible. It’s not an easy path to follow because it means dismantling some pretty ingrained thought patterns, including my own implicit anti-fat bias, but it works. Being one of the co-creators of the SHE RECOVERS Food & Body Neutrality Philosophy and Community Guide alongside beloved friend, wisewoman, and teammate Lisa Wall is definitely one of the highlights of my working life. I’m so proud that this harm-reducing manifesto came together the way it did, and our community’s reaction has been incredibly heartening.

Having hope is a rebellious act in a world that seems hell-bent on bringing us down. It’s refusing to accept that the way things are is the way they have to be. It’s rewriting the entire story, starting a new chapter, or going back in to fix the ending. And sometimes it’s completely letting go, packing up, and moving on. It’s experiencing all the emotions, from difficult to pleasant, and not being consumed by them. And it’s laughing. It’s laughing with kindred spirits who know the reality and ridiculousness of recovery. Sometimes healing is hilarious, and if we can’t laugh at the fact that we’re all just making it up as we go along with a patchwork and a playlist, we’ll cry. And we’ve all done plenty of that already, amiright?

Redefining recovery, dealing compassion, and being a hopepunk — that’s me. Business cards pending.

What do you do outside of your SRF Volunteer role for work and/or play?

My main gig is Marketing & Communications for the SHE RECOVERS Foundation. It’s such an honour to be a storyteller, hypegirl, ally, and advocate for the SHE RECOVERS movement both professionally and voluntarily.

I’m also a fairly new holistic coach (still working on my SHE RECOVERS Coach Designation) who’s particularly fond of touting the benefits of food and body neutrality to dispel the negative impact of anti-fat bias and diet culture on the recovery community. I also volunteer on Fridays alongside SHE RECOVERS Coach Bronwen Thorburn to help facilitate Nourishing Circles Support for Substance Use and Disordered Eating.

Since giving up smoking and drinking, I’ve needed new hobbies, so now I am a writer who doesn’t write enough and an artist who doesn’t art as much as she would like. Still, I’m currently working on a few delicious projects: a Substack called “What if I don’t have a pretty face?” for folks looking to ditch diet culture; a play set in the late 90s about an absurd night in Dublin that started as a real-life predicament and became a window into the lives of two young expats finding their way in The Fair City (with a dramatic rescue by the Gardaí and fire brigade); and I’ve finally set up a creation station in the loft so I can keep up my silversmithing outside the studio. You might say I’m in a newish relationship with a blowtorch and a bench pin, and it’s getting serious; however, I’m still allowed to get arty in other ways.

What does radical self-care look like for you?

1st rule of Self-Care Club is: You have to be kind to yourself.
2nd rule of Self-Care Club is: YOU HAVE TO BE KIND TO YOURSELF.
3rd rule of Self-Care Club is: Ditch the judgment.

For most of my visibly fat life, I normalized disordered eating, exercise as punishment, negative self-talk, and black-and-white thinking in the name of self-care. I viewed my body as a moral failure because, let’s face it, the wellness industrial complex had me convinced my fatness was something I needed to fix. Be a good fatty! Join this weight-management program, take this 90-day lifestyle reset, go to the gym, fix your diet, and pay us all your hard-earned cash along the way. Or else! Then one day I lost all motivation to conform. Shocking, I know. Participating in a system that exploits our insecurities and further marginalizes us as women? No thanks. And don’t get me started on the racist, misogynist, and colonial roots of diet culture and body hierarchy. Whoops, I got myself started. Sorry. Not sorry.

What I’m trying to say is that disrupting diet culture is not only self-preservation but a gateway to self-compassion. And self-compassion? Well, that’s the foundation of radical self-care. Dr. Kristin Neff says that self-compassion is a far more effective and sustainable motivator than self-criticism. Rude. I’m so much better at the latter than the former. But these days, I’ve started tuning into what feels right for me while curbing my tendency to micromanage myself. Sometimes that’s hard, but I keep trying. And rather than fearing repercussions, I’m cultivating connection, getting curious, living more courageously, and only breaking the 3rd rule of Self-Care Club now and then. No judgment. And that’s the point. Nobody’s perfect.

Also, membership is free. Snacks are included.

Tell us a little bit about your recovery journey. What are you recovering from? What tools and resources do you weave into your patchwork of recovery?

I’m in recovery from diet culture and all its effects, anti-fat bias, shame, low self-worth, shame, body grief, shame, disordered eating, shame…also alcohol and cigarettes, which were my very favorite things. Did I mention shame? I’m also in recovery from perfectionism, which makes writing these answers a special kind of adventure.

I picture my recovery as a spiral, like the ones carved into the stones around Brú na Bóinn in Ireland, or the spiraling limestone ceiling at Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum in Malta, or, slightly less sacred, the ones that I had tattooed on my lower back in the late 90s. Recovery asks us to start somewhere and grow from there. I didn’t have a rock bottom (unless you count my lower back tattoo), but I did have a starting point.

My first dabble with holistic healing was a Yoga For Recovery class in 2013 with SHE RECOVERS Co-founder Taryn Strong. I wasn’t ready for sobriety then, but whatever Taryn was offering, I was ready to learn. Recovery felt aspirational, invitational, and less rulesy than I’d expected. If this was recovery, I was in.

So I ran with that crowd for a while, healing in ever-expanding circles, revisiting old places with new tools and more self-compassion each time around. I enrolled in CBT Skills courses, joined the Eating Disorders Program group classes, and started seeing a counselor. Then Dawn Nickel (Recovering Dawn, Mama Dawn, pick your nickname) invited me to my first SHE RECOVERS Retreat. I took a sacred pause on Salt Spring Island with thirty or so recovering women from around the world, and that sweet reprieve from the real world opened my eyes to what recovery could actually look like. I still wasn’t sober, but I was definitely sober curious. Inspired by those brave and true recovery warriors’ stories, I joined them yearly until the world took one great big pause in 2020.

That was the year that I quit drinking and smoking, 7 years after discovering recovery, and I couldn’t have done it without SHE RECOVERS Together Online Gatherings & Facebook Group.

Here’s what I said 150 days in: “150 freakin’ days of not drinking and not smoking. I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I suspect it’s partly because of the daily love, support, and inspiration you folks supply. Love to you all, thanks for being there for me. xoxo”

I still feel that way, 6 years later. Community is everything, and connection keeps me coming back. Full circle, only not quite, because the spiral keeps growing as does the patchwork.

SHE RECOVERS Dance showed me a way to come home to my body. Adopting food and body neutrality helped me ditch diet culture and, for the first time in a long time, quiet the judgment. Nourishing Circles Support Groups gave me a more intimate space to get honest about disordered eating and, you guessed it, body shame, long before I ever hosted one.

And writing is my oldest patch, sewn long before I ever knew I was going to need an entire quilt to wrap myself in. I wrote my way through my twenties in Irish cafés and Maltese pjazez, scribbling in notebooks over coffee after coffee after coffee, long before I called any of it healing. In my thirties, I poured myself onto the page, and apparently I still do. This questionnaire spiraled off in all directions pretty quickly, didn’t it? (Gen X, remember? Not known for brevity.)

And the spiral continues. Now there are offshoots and changing directions. It’s messy and sometimes chaotic, but it’s also beauteous, steadfastly magical, and old as time.

What or who is inspiring you right now?

Right now, all my fellow weirdos† out there who are forging and following their own unique paths are an inspiration to me.

I’m fired up by those who challenge systems of oppression and question the status quo, whether personally or as part of a collective: fellow travelers who show up with questions, get curious about who stands to benefit, and are willing to learn more (or unlearn, as the case may be) from those with lived experience.

I’m especially moved by the stories of Black, Indigenous, and people of color; queer and trans folks; neurodivergent people; fat folks; disabled people; trauma survivors; and others whose voices have been pushed to the margins. My heart swells for humans who speak their truth, walk their talk, and recover out loud, and for those who come into sharing circles new to this thing we call recovery but stick around and end up healing themselves. They may not be raising their voices yet, but their presence is enough.

I’m lucky to be surrounded by passionate, spirited teammates at SHE RECOVERS on a mission to redefine women’s recovery, connect and support those leading the way, and make room for every woman to heal and thrive. Our team goes to work every day and moves the needle in the name of holistic recovery. Special shout-out to design goddesses Carrie Potter and Kim Timothy, whose genius I get to bask in daily and whose work is a wellspring of inspiration to everyone in the community, myself included.

And I can’t get enough of the creatives, the makers, and the doers whose imagination spills out of them and becomes a treasury of art and artifact, craft and curiosity. Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent many afternoons this past month wandering through markets of handmade items imbued with emotion and the human spirit, but I always leave itching to race home to the bench, brush, pencil, or pad.

As always, I’m in awe of humanity’s collective imagination and its many manifestations.

†Absolute term of endearment — reclaimed from the playground.

What SHE RECOVERS Intention & Guiding Principle resonates with you the most?

This changes all the time for me. Right now, I’m in my “We do our individual work in order to create and hold healing spaces for everyone. All women deserve recovery.” era.

What is your favorite SHE RECOVERS resource?

How it started: SHE RECOVERS Trauma-Informed Yoga; SHE RECOVERS Retreats, especially the ones on Salt Spring Island; and #MentalHealthMonday, which in the olden days was EVERY MONDAY!

How it’s going: See above & SHE RECOVERS Dance, SHE RECOVERS Embodiment Studio, and SHE RECOVERS Together Online Gatherings.

What is one piece of advice you would give to another woman/non-binary individual who is seeking a community like SHE RECOVERS?

Don’t be afraid to show up. You’re not too much, and you’re not not enough. You are simply human, and you deserve to be loved and appreciated just as you are. You don’t need to change yourself to fit in.

Come with an open mind and open heart and let connection happen organically. If you’re in the right place, you will be welcomed with open arms. Inclusive communities don’t come with conditions. If something feels crunchy, let folks know. You may be surprised by how they respond.

You have permission to set down whatever it is you are carrying and be held in community. And you don’t have to do anything until you are ready.

You just have to show up.

Whatever you’re recovering from. However you’re doing it. There’s room for you here at SHE RECOVERS.

“There is a wild woman under our skin who wants nothing more than to dance until her feet are sore, sing her beautiful grief into the rafters…And if you are able to sing from the very wound that you’ve worked so hard to hide, not only will it give meaning to your own story, but it becomes a corroborative voice for others with a similar wounding.” ― Toko-pa Turner