For the last nine years I have been providing recovery solutions here at Coach for Recovery. Before that, I worked for eighteen years with other recovery organizations here in Santa Cruz, working with adults and juveniles in different settings. Winding the clock back even further brings me back to my own journey through recovery twenty four years ago. That is when I began my journey as an addiction recovery professional.

From that point until today I have been involved in helping people face the challenges that I had to face at one time in my life. As a career, I see recovery coaching as a natural culmination of my experience and desire to help people successfully beat their addictions.

Recovery coaching is all about helping people make the initial transition to a sober lifestyle. For many people, the initial stage in recovery can be a daunting and lonely experience. Often, this means letting go of not just the drugs and alcohol, but letting go of a lifestyle that centered on using. This means letting go of friends who are addicts, the familiar pubs or clubs that you were used to going to. These ties that bound you to an addictive lifestyle are the most difficult to overcome.

The initial stages of the recovery are the most important. Although not always the case, recovery coaching picks up where the rehab center leaves off. Many clients come to me right out of rehab. I pick them up at the end of their stay and begin the process of helping them adjust to new life. The main focus of recovery coaching is on how to create a new life based on being drug free and sober.

In recovery coaching we deal with the whole person. There is no formula. This is part of what makes recovery coaching such a challenging career. Each time someone comes to me with the desire to become clean and sober, it is a fresh and new experience for both me and the client. What makes it so rewarding is that I know when a person makes the transition into a new life it is truly a miracle and the beginning of endless possibilities. I know that it sounds cliche, but its true.

What addiction takes away, Coach for Recovery makes possible again.

Monique