Recovery Is About Thriving, Not Just Surviving

September is National Recovery Month, and at Maria Droste Counseling Center, we believe recovery deserves to be talked about loudly, honestly, and hopefully. Recovery is not a finish line or a perfect upward trajectory. It is certainly not reserved for people who have somehow figured everything out. Recovery can mean waking up and choosing, again, to participate in your own life.

For someone living with depression, it might mean realizing that the darkness is no longer making every decision. For someone healing from trauma, it might mean feeling safer in their own body again. For someone struggling with alcohol or other substance use, it might mean one more day of choosing connection over isolation. Sometimes recovery is dramatic, but more often, it is built quietly through hundreds of small daily choices that make up a life.

Recovery also needs something beyond hope: a solid plan. Colorado has a legal Psychiatric Advance Directive (PAD) form that not only informs loved ones about someone’s medical and psychiatric wishes, but helps people identify what keeps them well, how to recognize warning signs, and outlines what to do when additional support is needed. Block off an afternoon, pour your favorite beverage, light a candle, and spend some time working on your own PAD. Create a Psychiatric Advance Directive

One of the most powerful things about recovery is that it does not require perfection. A difficult day does not erase the progress that was made. A recurrence of symptoms does not mean treatment has failed. A return to substance use does not make someone a failure. Recovery allows room for setbacks, learning, reconnection, and beginning again. Some of the most incredible humans are people who have fallen to the depths of despair and have found their way out again, often lighting the way for others who need to see that recovery is possible. 

If you are somewhere in the messy middle of recovery, you do not need to wait until things get worse to ask for help. You also do not need to be doing well enough to deserve it; you can start exactly where you are.

At Maria Droste Counseling Center, we can support you in this journey. MDCC provides accessible, community-centered mental health care to Coloradans regardless of their ability to pay. Our clinicians support people navigating depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, substance use and co-occurring mental health concerns, along with the complicated realities that often accompany them. We believe that mental health recovery and substance use recovery are deeply connected, and that people deserve care that sees the whole person. 

If you are a person in early or sustained recovery, we salute your courage and celebrate your journey. And, if you are someone who doesn’t quite know how to begin, we are here when you’re ready to help you take the first steps. 

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” -Confucius