Connection Works: The Measurable Impact of Community on Mental Health with the Founders of SHE RECOVERS | A #MentalHealthMonday Recovery Education Session with the Founders of SHE RECOVERS: Dawn Nickel & Taryn Strong
Monday, November 24, 2025 @ 11 AM PT
Guided by SHE RECOVERS Founders Dawn Nickel, PhD, and Taryn Strong, this #MentalHealthMonday session will explore how belonging, shared experience, and conscious community strengthen mental health and recovery outcomes. This conversation will reveal the measurable ways connection builds recovery capital and why it remains one of the most essential elements of sustained recovery.
For more than a decade, SHE RECOVERS has created welcoming, supportive, and inclusive spaces for women and non-binary individuals who identify with women’s communities; places to connect, heal, and grow. Drawing on participant data, program outcomes, and collective insights, our founders will discuss how professionally facilitated and peer-centered support transforms lives and continues to redefine recovery on a global scale—broadening it beyond addiction to encompass healing from trauma, mental health issues, grief, burnout, and related life challenges.
During this session, Dawn and Taryn will:
- Present data showing how community connection improves recovery capital and well-being
- Demonstrate how trauma-informed spaces can foster a sense of belonging, purpose, and personal agency
- Discuss how redefining recovery dismantles stigma and expands access to healing
- Illuminate how curiosity, conflict, and compassion for one another all shape a healthy recovery community
Join us LIVE for an interactive Q&A with the founders and discover why connection works.
About Dawn Nickel, PHD – CEO, Co-founder + Board Chair
Dr. Dawn Nickel is a healthcare policy expert, consultant, and leading voice in the North American recovery movement. With more than 30 years of experience in research, policy development, and systems change—spanning mental health, addiction, intimate partner violence, and trauma-informed care—she brings a deep, practical understanding of how to create meaningful and sustainable support systems for people in recovery.
Choosing to practice recovery daily, Dawn currently identifies as being in active recovery from anxiety, grief, workaholism, and the patriarchy. Her first book, She Recovers Every Day: Meditations For Women, is three hundred and sixty-six pages of meditations that acknowledge the specific needs of all women in any type of recovery. Dawn generously donates 20% of the royalties from this book to the SHE RECOVERS Foundation.
When she isn’t writing, working as a healthcare and social policy consultant, or helping to grow the movement she started, Dawn can be found hanging out at home with her partner and family, walking with SHE RECOVERS friends, doing the odd 1000-piece puzzle, or reading. Her life goals include writing more books and a screenplay, completing her travel bucket list, and spending quality time with family, especially her precious grandchildren.
About Taryn Strong, Co-founder + Board Chair
Taryn Strong is the co-founder of SHE RECOVERS Foundation as well as a Certified Professional Recovery Coach, aromatherapist, and herbalist…and the daughter of Mama Dawn.
At the core of her work, Taryn is a Somatic Practitioner and trauma-informed yoga teacher. She believes true healing must include the body – that recovery is not only emotional, mental, or spiritual, but deeply physical. She understands the ways the nervous system holds the imprints of trauma, stress, and survival, and through somatic practices, she supports others in coming home to themselves, releasing outdated protective patterns, and expanding their capacity to feel, be present, and thrive.
Since 2012, Taryn has developed a unique trauma-informed yoga and recovery program and led over fifty women’s recovery retreats. She is also the creator of and instructor for the SHE RECOVERS Trauma-informed Yoga Teacher Training Program.
Taryn’s courageous vulnerability and passion for recovering out loud have made her an influential voice in the global recovery movement. As one of the hosts of the SHE RECOVERS Podcast, Taryn further smashes the stigma often associated with substance use and mental health issues.
Taryn lives, works, and plays with her beloved partner and son within the ancestral and unceded traditional territories of the Hul’qumi’num and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples, colonially known as Salt Spring Island.
Thank you for all you do. When I read that resting, calm and quiet is all part of recovery journey too…you caught my attention! It seems that is what I have been doing 1/2 my time, if not 3/4 these last four months.
Looking forward to Wellness Monday at 11am. ❤️