Shelly Dimitrijevic’s professional and philanthropic activities have always focused on improving the lives of others. She began her nursing career at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis and went on to become a LifeFlight nurse specializing in neonatal, pediatric, and cardiovascular intensive care.
Shelly has been involved with numerous charities focusing on children and education including the Charlee and the Chocolate Factory gala, The Venus Orbit, Design For A Cure, Jackson Memorial, and Impact Oasis. In 2010 she founded the Lotus program, a program that focused on educating parents on the nutritional needs of children and basic child development. Shelly also served on the Frost Science Museum gala committee for 7 years before Co-Chairing the event in 2015.
After a diagnosis of Celiac disease and subsequently receiving Certification as a Nutritional Consultant, Shelly recognized that topically applied products have an effect on her Celiac Disease and overall health. She turned her focus to developing skincare that was free of toxic and hormone-disrupting ingredients.
Since she lost her only sibling in 2012 Shelly has been determined to find a way to contribute to the recovery community in a way that can make a great impact and ensure that others have the resources necessary when they are struggling.
Shelly's substantial contributions to SHE RECOVERS of both time and resources have been instrumental and deeply appreciated.
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Kirsten Newquist
As a result of being introduced to SHE RECOVERS through retreats and meet-ups, Kirsten will be starting her yoga teacher training in the fall. These retreats also led her to become more deeply involved with SHE RECOVERS in a volunteer capacity. Kirsten was instrumental in setting up some of the Foundation's grassroots groups and currently volunteers her time helping SHE RECOVERS Foundation to design and implement the Volunteer Chapter Network.
Kirsten and her husband recently moved from Southern California to Roswell, Georgia to be closer to Kirsten's sister and two young nieces. When she isn't spending time being an aunt, you can find Kirsten hanging out with their rescue Labrador or exploring their new state.
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Mary Beth O’Connor, BA, JD
BOARD MEMBER AT LARGE she / her
In addition to being a board member, Mary Beth is a founding member of SHE RECOVERS Support for Legal Professionals and is active at the local level with SHE RECOVERS in the Bay Area. Mary Beth has been living a sober life in recovery since 1994. She has a history of trauma and abuse, from which she’s worked hard to recover as well. Six years into her recovery, Mary Beth attended Berkeley Law. She worked at a large firm in Silicon Valley, then litigated class actions for the federal government. In 2014 Mary Beth was appointed an Administrative Law Judge, from which she retired in 2020.
Mary Beth’s award-winning memoir, From Junkie to Judge: One Woman’s Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction, was published in 2023. She also writes opinion pieces, such as I Beat Addiction without God for the Wall Street Journal and I was a federal judge, and I support Safehouse. Here’s why for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Mary Beth advocates about multiple topics related to trauma, substance use disorder, and recovery. She has appeared on television, radio, and podcasts; speaks at conferences and other events; and trains judges, attorneys, and medical professionals.
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Taryn Strong, RYT, CPRC
FOUNDER AND BOARD VICE-CHAIR she / her
Taryn Strong is co-founder of the SHE RECOVERS® Foundation and a Certified Recovery Coach, Somatic Coach, and Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher. Her work is grounded in the belief that healing must include the body.
Through somatic practices, Taryn supports others in reconnecting with their bodies, releasing patterns shaped by trauma and survival, and expanding their capacity to feel embodied, present, and alive. This approach is deeply personal, rooted in her own recovery and reconnection after years of disconnection.
She is also a Certified Aromatherapist, AromaPsychologist, Botanical Perfumer, and Community Herbalist, with a deep respect for the emotional and psychological power of scent.
Teaching yoga since 2007, Taryn has hosted over 60 women’s recovery retreats, presented internationally, and co-taught with leading voices in the field of behavioral health. She currently leads the SHE RECOVERS Trauma-Informed Yoga Instructor Certification, SHE RECOVERS Embodiment Studio, and SHE RECOVERS Podcast.
I am recovering from: Alcohol use disorder, codependency, disordered eating.
The Identity-based group I belong to: Chronic pain & auto-immune disorder, healthcare & allied professionals.
My personal definition of recovery: My personal definition of recovery is the continual process of expanding my awareness to grow spiritually, mentally, and physically enhancing my life-long journey to wholeness.
What led me to SHE RECOVERS: A desire to give back what I have been so graciously given that has led to an amazing life of sustained recovery and spiritual growth. I truly believe that every moment in my life has led me here. One of my favorite stories to share is how I came to find SHE RECOVERS - or rather, how they found me. In short, it involves a spark of curiosity over coffee and a remarkable moment at a SHE RECOVERS Conference that changed the trajectory of my life both professionally and spiritually. You can hear all about it here.
Why I love being a part of this team: It brings me immense joy to work alongside such smart, passionate and committed colleagues and volunteers. I learn so much from them. Not a day goes by where I am not deeply inspired by this team and community.
Those that know me best might describe me as: Tenacious, resourceful, and loving.
How these qualities show up in my everyday life: Love is the foundation for all my thoughts and actions, I am resourceful when confronted with a challenge, and I am tenacious like a "dog with a bone" - I'll never stop chasing the dream.
Something unique you may not already know about me: I have four kidneys and a double bladder. I have vitiligo, an auto-immune disease that destroys or suppresses pigment producing cells on the skin.
Something I am most proud of is… Launching a global nonprofit for women in or seeking recovery from all things.
Radical self-care look for me looks like: Being mindful of ease and learning to pause. And, pampering myself with modalities that foster a healthy body, a clear mind, a pure spirit, and service to others.
What I wanted to be when I grew up: An artist.
Something that is inspiring me right now: Supporting people to find, create, and nurture a relationship with the God / Creator / Higher Power of their understanding.
The SHE RECOVERS Intention & Guiding Principle resonating the most with me right now is… Connection is our sole (soul) purpose. We're stronger together.
My favorite SHE RECOVERS resource is… The SHE RECOVERS Together Online Group where connection, support, and empowerment is available 24 / 7.
I am recovering from: Substance use, trauma including sexual assault, intimate partner violence, codependency, anxiety, and workaholism.
The identity-based group(s) I am a part of: Healthcare & allied professional, cancer survivor, mature woman.
My personal definition of recovery: It changes often, but these days my definition of recovery is simply that recovery is a lifelong journey of healing. I think that not having a solid, static definition is a good thing. It opens the door to empower us all to create individualized and diverse definitions for our own recovery, and it’s a reminder that recovery differs across populations, cultures, and settings.
What led me to SHE RECOVERS: Taryn and I talk about SHE RECOVERS being our 'accidental movement.' So not sure what led me here other than a true desire to create a connective, supportive, and empowering space for women to think / talk about and experience recovery.
Why I love being a part of this team: I want to leave behind a legacy of hope for women in or seeking recovery.
Those that know me best might describe me as: Grateful, curious, and a survivor.
How these qualities show up in my everyday life: I believe that I pass recovery on to express my gratitude, and I call upon my curiosity to figure out what else I can do to support women in recovery. Oh, and I have survived a few near death experiences including surviving cancer.
Something unique you may not already know about me: I really dislike cilantro.
Something I am most proud of: My daughters, more than anything.
Radical self-care look for me looks like: Rest, hanging with other women in recovery, walking in fresh air, reading novels, long hot baths, and sweet, milky tea.
What I wanted to be when I grew up: An actress.
Something that is inspiring me right now: The women working or volunteering to help grow SRF.
The SHE RECOVERS Intention & Guiding Principle resonating the most with me right now is… We are all recovering from something. It all started there!
My favorite SHE RECOVERS resource is… Definitely the SHE RECOVERS Together Online Gatherings - they are such an amazing display of everything that we are about. Volunteerism and support, vulnerability, celebration, and information.
“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” – Desmond Tutu
When my boys still wore diapers and could not eat grapes safely, we moved to a small seaside town in Italy. There was a Mediterranean beach, open piazzas, daily markets and tiny alleyways. There was even a castle.
But it was anything but paradise.
My boys did not sleep. I did not speak Italian. My husband worked long hours. The four of us were exhausted, non-communicative and detached. The days were long. I was alone with the children on that postcard-perfect beach, one boy wanting to swim out into the sea, the other wanting to eat the hot sand, and me wanting to be anywhere but paradise.
After a year, I decided to fly home and stay with my parents for a bit. The boys and I navigated airport security and boarded the plane. I slowly walked the aisle, my backpack bursting with snacks and screens, boarding passes held between my lips, my hands full of babies. The flight would be 11 hours.
I stopped at seat 17D and looked at the woman whose unlucky fate had her sitting in 17E.
“Yes,” I said to her. “Your nightmare has arrived. Can you please let us in?”
What Every Single Mom Wears: The Cloak of Invisibility
Single mothers are everyone’s nightmare. No one knows what to do with us. Everyone has an opinion about us. We are greeted with dreaded anticipation – we are to be endured, begrudgingly supported. We are a hot mess, a financial disaster and just one leaky faucet away from losing our shit entirely. We push our strollers and race car shopping carts through airports, subways and grocery stores; shushing our children, shushing ourselves. We live under a cloak of invisibility and no one sees us until the snacks are long gone, along with our patience and our children’s minds.
It was in Italy, where I was a single mother with a husband, that I began to drink alcoholically. The geographic and cultural conditions meant I lived in isolation with my children. Like single mothers everywhere, I knew the burden of my children’s safety and happiness was entirely on me. This was problematic, of course, as I felt neither safe nor happy. In the beginning, I fought the isolated conditions. I found preschools and parks. I flew home over and over again. I raged at my husband. But after a while, I stopped fighting the isolation and began to crave it, carefully recreating it for myself every night.
I have rarely met a mother who was not a single mother. We married moms can talk with our partners about shifting housework percentages and sharing emotional labor, but even the most enlightened partner struggles to make up the deficit.
But true single mothers – for those living without an additional paycheck or shared health benefits, for those shouldering complete responsibility for medical conditions and daycare costs, for those walking a parental tightrope without a net – these women make magic happen every day while the world remains unimpressed and forever worshipping at the altar of “rugged individualism,” an altar that inherently excludes mothers who are always a plus-one package.
I used to think Doesn’t the world see that we mothers are raising the future? Don’t we want to support and nurture the future? Now I understand that yes, the world does see us. The world does indeed see us as the future and then the world does its best to shut us down early and quickly. This is true for us today and it was true for our mothers and it was true our grandmothers.
“We have made a choice in the United States to allow single mothers and their children to languish in poverty,” writes author Jill Filipovic in her book The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. “Politically, we have decided not only that married motherhood is better, but that we will create economically disastrous conditions for women who have children outside of marriage – or, given that many single mothers were at one time married, we have chosen to craft disastrous conditions for mothers who have the bad luck to be widowed, separated, or divorced.”
In other words, women – married and unmarried, with children and without – are living out the realities of our cultural insufficiencies and until we commit to finding true ways to change that culture we will just be pulling people from the river. Never venturing upstream to see why we are falling in.
Our Most Powerful Addiction: Shrinking Ourselves
In the end, I found I could quit drinking much easier than I could quit isolating. More than alcohol, I am addicted to shrinking myself to fit into the world. As I write this sentence I am struggling with this addiction. What if these thoughts are too much for you? Too much for my husband? What if I am too much for the world? Perhaps it is better to stay small and silent, isolated but safe.
This thought is pushed away by the sounds of my boys laughing, fighting, being themselves. It is for my children that I finally stopped my shrinking act. I was not going to encourage them to fit into a world that tells them to go it alone, a world that pushed us into the river. This is not the world I want to perpetuate.
But I have found that the only way to truly keep the “small and silent” thought away is through sustained friendships with other women in recovery (from addiction, trauma, divorce, workaholism). These women are no longer willing to go it alone either.
“Friendships make us happy, and they can also make us more radical,” Filipovic writes. She goes on to describe the importance of friendship during the second wave of feminism in the 1960s. “Across the country, women would gather and talk about the many things they thought of as individual, personal problems. The process wasn’t just psychologically cathartic; it was radicalizing. Suddenly, these problems weren’t so individual at all – they were systemic, endemic to being a woman.”
Twelve months ago I quit drinking for the very last time. For five years I tried to do this alone. I stayed within the four walls of my home, worshipping at the altar of rugged individualism. Thankfully, this never worked. I was turned back every time, until I finally realized I could no longer be single, no longer be small, no longer be silent, no longer be content to just pull people from the river. And I began walking upstream.
Erin Wickersham is the managing editor and lead writer for the She Recovers blog. She lives in Virginia where she has been working on and blogging about recovery since 2013. After years of trying to do recovery alone, she discovered the beauty of connection and friendship through She Recovers in 2017.
Thank you for sharing your struggles and successes! I’d actually been thinking about how I would shrink myself to fit into this world and how that’s just not going to work for me anymore. Your statement, “It is for my children that I finally stopped my shrinking act. I was not going to encourage them to fit into a world that tells them to go it alone, a world that pushed us into the river. This is not the world I want to perpetuate” is exactly what I needed to hear. Thanks, Erin!!
What an amazing piece of writing, thank you! The phrase ‘the altar of rugged individualism’ is amazing. Those words can be used so many different ways, with altered connotations. It will stick with me.
Thanks Donna! My desire for – and love of – community has shown me how ill advised that alter of rugged individualism truly is. But it’s hard to pull away from the cultural messages that tell us to go it alone.
This is a beautiful message of hope to a newly single mom on her journey of recovery from an abusive toxic horrible relationship. I thank God every day that we got out alive. I am so grateful that I read this today, it gives me hope at such an overwhelming scary time ❤️
I just heard you on The Bubble Hour and couldn’t wait to start reading the Sherecovers blog to read your work! IT IS AWESOME!!! Thank you for putting yourself out there so that we can all feel a little bit less alone!!!
I am a single drunk mom, working towards sobriety and can totally relate to this post….why as a society are we so hard on Women and mothers, even the kids are assholes once they turn into teenagers. Becoming a mother is wonderful, how we view mothers and treat them is not. I am deeply hurt, this is what I know, and from this place I will heal.
Wow, this is the first article I have read that resonates somehow. It sounds easy to connect via the net and support and be supported by others like ourselves but for some strange reason I couldn’t feel the connection. Your style of writing is heartwarming and honest. Thank you
Great article and so well put. I’ve been a single mom of 3 children since I got sober almost 20 years ago. My now “was-band” filed for divorce when I was 30 days sober. I would have NEVER stayed sober and somewhat sane without other single moms in recovery.
Congratulation on one year of continuous sobriety!
We are all just walking along the same path. We might as well help one another.
Stillness and peace,
Anne
Congratulations! Thank you for your beautiful words.
Beautiful post. I see myself in these words. Congratulations on one year!
Thank you for sharing. I can relate so much to your story, it’s almost like you are writing about me.
Congratulations on one year ??
Thank you for sharing your struggles and successes!
I’d actually been thinking about how I would shrink myself to fit into this world and how that’s just not going to work for me anymore.
Your statement, “It is for my children that I finally stopped my shrinking act. I was not going to encourage them to fit into a world that tells them to go it alone, a world that pushed us into the river. This is not the world I want to perpetuate” is exactly what I needed to hear. Thanks, Erin!!
What an amazing piece of writing, thank you! The phrase ‘the altar of rugged individualism’ is amazing. Those words can be used so many different ways, with altered connotations. It will stick with me.
Thanks Donna! My desire for – and love of – community has shown me how ill advised that alter of rugged individualism truly is. But it’s hard to pull away from the cultural messages that tell us to go it alone.
This is a beautiful message of hope to a newly single mom on her journey of recovery from an abusive toxic horrible relationship. I thank God every day that we got out alive. I am so grateful that I read this today, it gives me hope at such an overwhelming scary time ❤️
Jenna, you are so brave and strong. You are exactly the mom you need to be. Love to you and your family.
I just heard you on The Bubble Hour and couldn’t wait to start reading the Sherecovers blog to read your work! IT IS AWESOME!!! Thank you for putting yourself out there so that we can all feel a little bit less alone!!!
Thanks Jamie!
I am a single drunk mom, working towards sobriety and can totally relate to this post….why as a society are we so hard on Women and mothers, even the kids are assholes once they turn into teenagers. Becoming a mother is wonderful, how we view mothers and treat them is not. I am deeply hurt, this is what I know, and from this place I will heal.
So glad you’re here. Keep working. Keep healing. Much love to you.
Wow, this is the first article I have read that resonates somehow. It sounds easy to connect via the net and support and be supported by others like ourselves but for some strange reason I couldn’t feel the connection. Your style of writing is heartwarming and honest. Thank you
Great article and so well put. I’ve been a single mom of 3 children since I got sober almost 20 years ago. My now “was-band” filed for divorce when I was 30 days sober. I would have NEVER stayed sober and somewhat sane without other single moms in recovery.