Archways' Threads

Narrator 00:02
Welcome to Archways' Threads, a show focusing on the threads of family and recovery support services that help make up the tapestry of life in recovery. Join us as we share stories from peers and participants in the field and practice of peer recovery support and family support and strengthening. And now your host, Archways' CEO, MichelleLennon.

Michelle Lennon 00:28
Hello, everyone. Michelle Lennon here, host of the Archways' Podcast, and we are continuing our conversation once again with Carina Raya. We hope you enjoy this episode and have seen the earlier two episodes where we started our conversations where we talked abouta lot of things, you know, affecting the recovery community today.

Carina Raya 00:47
Little did I know. So the woman who, like, you know, watched the cafeteria, with like the attendant or whatever, was in recovery. She was in AA, and I would hang out with her all day, and I did not stop using drugs at that time, and I did not, you know, get into recovery for many years. But she never judged me for that, for one and for two, she maintained this, like, non judgmental curiosity, asking about how I was, or, like, what I was interested in, and just having, like, a, you know, genuine conversation with me. And I looked forward to that, so it made me go to school. I graduated, I got my diploma.

Michelle Lennon 01:31
Huge impact on you.

Carina Raya 01:33
Yeah, can you imagine? And I still think back, you know, like, I don't remember exactly the things this woman had said to me. I remember the time that she took to connect with me.

Michelle Lennon 01:45
Yeah.

Carina Raya 01:45
And like that mattered a lot, and it has not ever stopped mattering, although maybe, you know, the results were not immediate, so she never got to see the payoff, which I think it's a tough thing with working with people with substance use disorders. The payoff can often be.

Michelle Lennon 02:01
Yes, down the road that you don't see.

Carina Raya 02:03
Yeah, when I stop to go to the hospital, people assume that I either died, or they probably thought I died, because Idon't know if it's like the stereotypical, like a generally accepted you know, you see somebody in bad shape all the time, and then you don't see them, well, you don't expect that.

Michelle Lennon 02:21
That they actually got better.

Carina Raya 02:23
But, you know, yeah, happens?

Michelle Lennon 02:25
Well, circling back to like, sharing your story, you know, I because, because I do think, when we, we think about how we treat people that are in recovery, right? And, and we, even in the coaching profession, we talked about, we don't want to treat people as objects at all, if we can help it, you know? And, and we would prefer not to treat them as if we're the expert on their life, right, as recipients of our wisdom and our knowledge and all of this stuff, right? But really want to treat people as, as the resource that, "Hey, you're the expert on your life, you know. Let me dig out some information so that we can work together," you know? And when we start getting into the realm of advocacy, sharing the story more becomes more personal. It does put you at risk for being objectified.

Carina Raya 03:14
Yes, it does.

Michelle Lennon 03:15
And it sounds like that was a little bit of your experience with the, with the, happened to be, you know, a yoga yogi and.

Carina Raya 03:24
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 03:25
And being kind of held up as, hey, this is the yogi in recovery. And come to our, you know, our recovery yoga class or whatever.

Carina Raya 03:33
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 03:33
And, and I also think about how another way we objectify people is like separating people in recovery from the rest ofcommunity.

Carina Raya 03:44
Yeah, yeah.

Michelle Lennon 03:45
And, you know, we were just talking about that because, you know, we're trying to figure out, how do we advertise our programs that they're recovery friendly or for people in recovery, but all community is welcome, because we want to be able to integrate people in recovery into society and into community and, and for me, like my background was early childhood, right? Human support. So we have something we call the pyramid model, and at the base of the pyramid model is this well educated workforce, and it goes up to targeted supports for the kid that needs the most support, right? So we try to do everything that's good for everybody, you know, and not single out the person. And I was thinking, like, that's kind of what we want for, like, recovery programming, or, or, or supporting folks in recovery, is, is like, that is good for everybody, and that everybody can be here. And it's not just about the fact that you are in recovery, but you're, you're part of us.

Carina Raya 04:36
That's a really good point. So, you know, when I started doing yoga, I had already, you know, been, been to rehab. Ihad, you know, tried AA and stuff. I had tried all of the people in recovery only group, yeah, and it never occurred to me, you know, those, those did not ever work for me. Butthen when I started going to yoga, it was and I also joined, like a knitting group, which I've been about a lot recently, because I recently picked up knitting after 10 years, but I joined these groups that were, like, mixed. You know, there were some people in recovery, and there was, you know, probably the majority of people who weren't.

Michelle Lennon 05:12
Yeah.

Carina Raya 05:13
But those are the groups that helped where it was just like a whole bunch of random people that were like, "Oh, hey, we're glad you're here. Let's all work on trying to do some cool project together."

Michelle Lennon 05:24
Yeah.

Carina Raya 05:24
Whether it be, you know, a physical yoga class or whether it be a knitting project, you know.

Michelle Lennon 05:28
Yeah. That's awesome. Because actually, one of the young people that we're working with, she's awesome, and again, not a matter of abstinence, but we, you know, she and I have been talking since she was about 13. She's in her 20snow, and I, I love this kid, you know, but there are folks thatcome in here and they think, as a recovery center, that we're just going to be talking about addiction health, and it's like, no. And like, the whole thing we were talking about was like building a business, you know? Because it's like, what I have seen over the years is like, when people find that purpose, if we can support lighting a fire under that.

Carina Raya 06:02
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 06:02
You know that that's really what, what is the thing, you know? And, yeah, and it just thinking about advocacy. If advocacy is part of your thing, I think that that's great, you know. But, but, as you were saying, we don't always see therole models out there, right? You know, because for some people, they've entered recovery, they may not even identify as in recovery, because for many people, it's just part of their story, and sometimes, like, they're not too proud of, you know, what, maybe their behavior back then, or whatever. So it's just part of the story. And once it's done, it's done for them, you know. So it's like, you know, recovery advocacy again, it's like, we don't, we don't want to force people to say, "Hey, I'm in recovery." But we also need those voices.

Michelle Lennon 06:46
And I think one of the things I love the most about being, like, a big boss, you know, out of recovery and recovery centers, is watching that glass ceiling get smashed, you know, and, you know, and we were just talking about this today, one of the people that I coached in recovery, actually the first person, really, she's celebrating 10 years, you know, she works for a police department.

Carina Raya 06:52
Yeah. And I guess on that sort of topic, I do want to provide, like, a cautionary tale.

Michelle Lennon 06:57
Yeah.

Carina Raya 06:58
Where, like, I'm obviously a huge proponent of, you know, sharing your story, having your voice heard, you know, withyour own autonomy over it and everything. But it's alsolike,whoever decides to, you know, get out there and sharetheir story. Be warned, I guess that, like, I would say 9 out of 10, or even, like 99% at this point of my advocacy work. And, you know, being this sort of person that's trying to further the agenda of people who have or are using drugs, it's all been very positive. You know, there are more positiveexperiences and more helpful and wonderful people out there than there are not. However, I will say thatwhen I was in college, I was an intern at this nonprofit based out of Portland. And I love advocacy across the board, you know. So I was working with this organization, and we weregoing to Bangladesh to provide medical care and medical supplies to sex workers in a brothel in Tangail.And I was really excited about it. Lived overseas. I have a lot of experience learning languages and interacting with people with different cultures. For me, it's like, I love learning aboutthat stuff. So that's why it's like, you know, it's good for me.I'm not trying to make anyone learn about me. I want to learn about them. And from the moment I started this internship, the President and CEO of the organization really started to single me out. And initially it was because she didn't like my hair, which, sure, controversial dreadlocks. It's 2025, people. People's hair is their own business, but she didn't like it. So, you know, started to single me out based based on that. And then we ended up going overseas, which she kind of gave me a hard time about. And I didn't, I didn't see the red flags, you know, I thought she didn't like my hair, and I thought that was sort of the end of it. And I wish that I would have takenthat red flag more seriously. Like, if you think that somebody might be discriminatory, like, don't keep going. They're not going to get any better. So we went overseas, and this person was behaving in ways that I wouldn't consider to be, like, helpful or positive towards these sex workers. It was judgmental. There was like, coercion to, like,take pictures for like, advertisements and stuff. The medications we weregiving out were expired, which I did not know ahead of time, not, which is against the law, and also ethically, you know, morally reprehensible in in my opinion, you know. People who are desperate for health care will do desperatethings, and it's not okay take advantage of that. I. So I had voiced some concerns while Iwas there, which then, of course, caused more retaliation. And because I was there for school, there were certain assignments that I had to do, and one of them was just on site in Portland. I had to take a picture of myself on the job, not for any publication, but just for a school project. And the woman was very upset, saying that I was trying to, like, steal their like something, or steal their like publicity, so I couldn't complete the assignment. I got exempted from it, but then the school wanted to publish me in the school magazine for, you know, the traveling that I had done, and there was a picture of me, and I was taking somebody's, like, blood pressure. I don't know if you can see, and the camera... Now kind of washed out. I have a lot of self harm scars on my arms. I didn't have this tattoo at the time, and this arm, like really bad. They've been there for 20 years, longer than20 years, you know, 22 years. I can't do anything about them. And then she started saying that I couldn't, no pictures of me could exist near her logo because I didn't represent their brand. She said, people who are addicts arenot, you know, that, that isn't part of who they are as an organization.

Michelle Lennon 11:29
Oh, wow.

Carina Raya 11:30
It really spiraled out of control, the type of discrimination that I was facing, and it was really painful, and I was not supported by my university, and I did not know where to turn for help. And had I not been, you know, like balls deep in recovery at that point, 100% like, when your risk of, you know, using again or making poor choices based on how I felt.

Michelle Lennon 11:57
You're so young.

Carina Raya 11:59
You know? It's, and I think, like, that's the cautionary tale. Is when you share your story, you know, knowing that you're sharing it with safe people is really important. And then if you get to a place where you're like me and you're like, super outspoken, and want to tell everyone and really make your point. Make sure you know that you do have a lot of recovery under your belt, and you have a lot of people around you who will support you. Know that you have that support. Because you know, for me, when this was happening, I was part of the LEAP group, so I was I told them about it, and I think if I didn't have them who understood what.

Michelle Lennon 12:41
What is it? What is the LEAP group?

Carina Raya 12:43
The lived experience advisory panel, that advocacy group that I started before I started college with the New Hampshire Foundation for Healthy Communities. If I did not have that group of people to tell them what happened.

Michelle Lennon 12:56
Yeah.

Carina Raya 12:57
I don't know.

Michelle Lennon 12:58
You would have been completely isolated.

Carina Raya 13:00
Yeah, and.

Michelle Lennon 13:01
And maybe convinced that they were right.

Carina Raya 13:03
I mean, they I was right for part of it.

Michelle Lennon 13:07
Yeah.

Carina Raya 13:07
You know, and that's, that's why I needed, like, even with, you know, 10 plus years at that point of recovery, under my belt, it was horrible. I second guessed myself.

Michelle Lennon 13:17
Yeah.

Carina Raya 13:17
Shameful, and because I couldn't make a complaint, you know, and my school wouldn't allow me to move forward with a formal complaint. That also was like, super like, made me feel totally invalidated, and I feel.

Michelle Lennon 13:32
And isolated from your community.

Carina Raya 13:34
Yeah. And then, you know, this woman was saying how what good friends she was with the president of my university, and then when I was applying to medical school at that university, and not, I didn't get in, and there were allthese complications of my application, and I was like, Oh my God, is it because I, you know, told my story?

Michelle Lennon 13:52
Yeah.

Carina Raya 13:53
So it was definitely all solid year, I'm like, "oh my god, did I do the wrong thing?" And that's, you know, kind of what I mean about like somebody making the right choice, regardless of the negative consequences, you know? I thinkI made the right choice, you know, because at the end of the day, I realized that I probably wouldn't want to go to medical school somewhere where, you know, people were discriminatory against people who have experienced mental health struggles, or, you know, experienced chaotic drug use.

Michelle Lennon 14:25
Right.

Carina Raya 14:25
That was the big lesson. It was really hard to learn.

Michelle Lennon 14:28
Yeah.

Carina Raya 14:28
But, you know, I think I made the right choice. But again, yeah, cautionary tale.

Michelle Lennon 14:34
Tough. Tough, tough, yeah. And I think a lot of people don't realize, like, collegiate recovery is not everywhere. And, youknow, we have been very fortunate. We just, we just, the last three episodes, was this young woman, Cara LaPlante, who basically founded the Plymouth Peers program at Plymouth State.

Carina Raya 14:53
Wow.

Michelle Lennon 14:53
And it was the same, same kind of feeling of like she had a lot of support from professors, though.

Carina Raya 15:00
Wow.

Michelle Lennon 15:00
Well, in her experience, she and she shares this and, but just feeling so isolated from the rest of the community.

Carina Raya 15:09
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 15:09
So isolated. Because it's like, if you're not part of party culture, and you've made this, this mistake in your life has happened, and it's like, then what? You know, and how hard it is. And that's one of the things. We just talked to somebody yesterday, I know the young person who stopped drinking, and it's kind of like, okay, what do we do socially now?

Carina Raya 15:33
Here's a double edged sword, honestly, you mentioned, like,the party culture and not being able to participate in that, like, that's hard, you know, because that's a type of college experience. And then on the other side, you know, I was in like, a rigorous, like, free medical program. So these are people that are not always necessarily doing like, that much partying. I would say that probably people were not, didn't have, like, any free time to, like, go to parties.

Michelle Lennon 15:58
Yeah.

Carina Raya 15:58
That's not always the case. Yeah. Is rigorous.

Michelle Lennon 16:02
Intense, yeah.

Carina Raya 16:03
Yeah. And, and that group also still, because, you know, their whole life, their nose has been stuck in a book or whatever they're not familiar with recovery. So it's like your bounce between, like, people who you can't relate with because they want a party, and then people you can't relate with because.

Michelle Lennon 16:21
They never did.

Carina Raya 16:21
They never did. And you're like, Oh my God, who am I? Where am I? Like, does anyone understand?

Michelle Lennon 16:26
Yeah, yeah.

Carina Raya 16:27
So.

Michelle Lennon 16:28
And and, so it is, like, pioneering, really, I mean, what you'redoing, because, like, you say, like to be loud and proud about your recovery. We have more of that. I think Greg Williams work with anonymous people kind of like, raise the banner a little bit for people to start talking about this. Yes, you know, I mind managing finances and yes, I'm in recovery, or yes, I'm teaching your children, and yes, I'm in recovery. Or.

Carina Raya 16:53
We're just so important. Like.

Michelle Lennon 16:55
Yeah.

Carina Raya 16:55
We see in our daily lives, we see so much advocacy, you know, like, I'm on Instagram, and it's like, I see trans doctorslike, standing up for people's rights, and I see like, Black female doctors with like, these strong advocacy pages. But you know what I don't see? I have never seen somebody who ever you know, engaged in injection drug use with a strong advocacy page.

Michelle Lennon 17:18
Right. Unless they're in Hollywood, like, I feel like that's the life.

Carina Raya 17:22
As a doctor?

Michelle Lennon 17:23
Not as a doctor.

Carina Raya 17:24
Yeah?

Michelle Lennon 17:25
Yeah, not as a doctor, but.

Carina Raya 17:26
Fine, someone find me one. If you know somebody that, like, did heroin and became a doctor and has like, an Instagram page, like, come find me.

Michelle Lennon 17:30
Yeah.

Carina Raya 17:30
I want to see it.

Michelle Lennon 17:34
But you may be that role model for hundreds of people to follow.

Carina Raya 17:38
I hope so. I hope so. Because, you know, I would have, I would have loved to have known even, even before I got into recovery, but like, even when I was a little kid, I would have loved to have known all the options that were out there for the wide variety of the human experience.

Michelle Lennon 17:56
Yeah, interesting. I saw somebody recently posted that, like, the only expectation was go to college, and then, like, if you weren't going to college, like you were nothing, you know? And, and put it, put up a picture of, like, one of the trades, I might even have, like, a plumbing picture or something like that. And in my son actually is an electriciantoday. And, and that was the thing, like my experience, was college, you know. But he hated school, you know. He hated not not his teachers, not his friends, not his basketball, not his soccer, you know. But, but academics was so hard for him, you know. And you know, as an electrician, he's, he's super successful. He's been loved by, you know, the two employees he's had. He's, you know, hoping to go out on his own. And you know, his sister, thankfully, as a BA in business administration. So they've talked about teaming up. And I think about, had I not been open to the idea of the trades. Because, because I think you're right. It's like what you grow up with is what the expectation becomes, and then there's a glass ceiling there. And then, you know what I've seen is for people who,especially who have grown up in a family affected by poverty, you know that if the expectation wasn't college, then it was just like you settled for whatever came your way.

Carina Raya 19:50
Yeah.

Carina Raya 19:53
Oh, yeah.

Michelle Lennon 19:54
You know?

Carina Raya 19:55
Turning that around.

Michelle Lennon 19:56
Yeah. And, you know, somebody else, you. I called my husband today because he's, he was one of the people that was, like, one of our first coaches, too. And just tell him, you know, I had a little bit of a frustrating day at work today and kind of like, blah, you know, like we do, you know, have our safe people we could talk to. And, you know, just being reminded, like the people that we have met that were experiencing homelessness and heroin addiction when we met them. You know, one is finishing, you know, clinical social work degree, a master's degree. And you know, one of them, you know, got married, got her kids back, bought a house, you know, and just doing really well, posting all over Facebook how she loves her job.You know, what she's doing now, working in this field, you know, in a different part of the field, though, and, and just, you know, thinking about our staff here that are going to college now that never, never thought it was even a possibility.

Carina Raya 20:51
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 20:52
You know, and we've been able to connect to the resources. We've been lucky, like the, the individual that was doing, you know, the master's degree, connected with HRSA funds that we were able to find and.

Carina Raya 21:02
Nice, I'm applying for a HRSA scholarship now.

Michelle Lennon 21:05
Yeah? Well, because we need doctors, we need medical professionals, right? Yeah, it's important. And you know, if people can't afford to do it, and like, like you said, you're a smart person. We miss out on that social benefit of the best minds in our country, like we're not finding pathways for them to reach that education.

Carina Raya 21:24
About that, one of my like pet peeves, so the number of disadvantaged students that are getting accepted into medical school has been declining every year. That's not okay, like it's so not okay. The people who are in in charge of helping you plan your health, if they don't have experience of your life, like, how the heck is that gonna work out at the end? You know what I mean? And like, part of that disenfranchisement is it's financial, you know.

Michelle Lennon 21:59
I just, I just have to say, I'm reminded of the fact that the the rehabilitation center that my husband's pain doctor wanted him to go to after one of his surgeries, she sent us home with all of the information. And I call the place, it's $40,000 self-pay only a month. And I have to tell her, I work as a part time professor and home visitor, like, and hewasn't on disability or anything like, my income was the only income. I'm like, where does she think...? I was just like, stunned. And, you know, we call 211 look at all the resources. And at the time, there's, there are two centers now in New Hampshire that I know of that are handicap accessible. At that time, it was only one, and it didn't take our insurance, you know.

Carina Raya 22:50
That's crazy!

Carina Raya 22:51
The not having handicap accessible thing drives me nuts.

Michelle Lennon 22:51
So he's like, oh, yeah.

Michelle Lennon 22:52
Yeah. But so, so I think the assumption for many people you know is that when you pick up the phone and call a number, you're automatically going to get what you need. And again, it's like another piece of advocacy that sometimes sharing that story becomes so important, because if that's the expectation, then people don't know that the needs exist. You know, because unless you're goingto access it, you just assume, like you go to the hospital, you get what you need, if you need to get well and not thatway at all. Yeah, yeah. So if there was one thing you could change in the recovery oriented system of care today, whatwould it be?

Carina Raya 23:34
That's a really hard question.

Michelle Lennon 23:36
Yeah.

Carina Raya 23:36
If there was one thing I could change in the recovery oriented community today, what would it be? I mean, so the recovery oriented community.

Michelle Lennon 23:52
Or system, system of care, like.

Carina Raya 23:53
Well, yeah, my point is, like, when you say like recovery oriented community, it makes it sound like there's a bunch of like minded people who are all working together.

Michelle Lennon 24:04
I think the recovery community is far from like minded.

Carina Raya 24:07
That's my point. That's my point is, like, there, there are divisions where there doesn't need to be.

Michelle Lennon 24:15
Yeah.

Carina Raya 24:15
Like, for example, the biggest division is between, like, a, you know, sobriety or abstinence based approach compared to a harm reduction approach. And if I could change anything, I would change that. Because harm reduction approach doesn't mean that some people can't be abstinent, or that abstinence isn't the best option for some people, or that somebody might not eventually reach abstinence, but teaching abstinence only is only one.

Michelle Lennon 24:47
One option now.

Carina Raya 24:49
And harm reduction is going to cast a wider net. Don't we want more people to enter recovery? More people, more different types of people, more ages of people, like, more people on different incomes. Everything. We want more people in recovery. And the only way to get more people in recovery is to cast a wider net. If we say sobriety only, that's only one small subset of all the people that need to enter recovery. So if I could change one thing, it would be like getting rid of this division and having people be unified,to understand that if we all were to work together, more people would end up being here.

Michelle Lennon 25:31
Yeah.

Carina Raya 25:32
And that's what matters.

Michelle Lennon 25:33
Yeah, I've always said that dead people can't find recovery. So if we don't reduce harm while people are actively using what are we really saying?

Carina Raya 25:40
Right.

Michelle Lennon 25:41
That they don't want to.

Carina Raya 25:42
Right. Exactly. You're devaluing people who use drugs and, like, somebody who's, you know, abstinence, did use drugs at some point, and they could be, I don't know, king of the world, but, like, how, how do they have value suddenly, when they're abstinent, but they didn't have value before? It doesn't make sense.

Michelle Lennon 26:01
That, that is, that is a conversation I often have with people that, you know. You say you're not the same person, you are the same person. You are the same person. This. This is your life experience. It may have been a chapter in your history. It may be, it may be, you know that you don't behave the same way. You don't go after the same things. You have different goals. You have purpose today. Maybe you didn't best, but you're still you.

Narrator 26:36
Thank you for listening to Archways' Threads. If there is a topic you'd like to see us cover, email us at podcast@archwaysnh.org or call us at 603-960-2128. Visit our website at archwaysnh.org to learn more about the Archways family of recovery and family resource centers.