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As the President of the Board of Recovery International, I am tickled to be able to offer heartfelt congratulations to SHARE! on their 30^th Anniversary! Recovery International is proud to have partnered with SHARE! on multiple ventures over the years.

Recovery International was founded in 1937 by neuropsychiatrist Dr. Abraham Low and his patients who sought to re-enter society after hospitalization, to talk about their conditions, and to eliminate the stigma of mental illness. The RI cognitive-behavioral Method is learned by attending RI self-help support groups, reading Dr. Low’s books and practicing simple tools to replace insecure thoughts with secure thoughts. Today Recovery International has 170 support group meetings in the United States, including online, Chat, by phone and in person. There are also 18 meetings in Canada and Ireland lists 15.  Find a meeting here: https://www.recoveryinternational.org/pre-meeting-page/

Recovery International is deeply intertwined with my life. I began attending in the 1960s after psychiatric hospitalizations left me demoralized and hopeless. Doctors told me I would never get better. Then I heard Dr. Low’s message: “There are no hopeless cases.”

I began using the powerful Method Dr. Low developed. My life changed. I have been able to work, to marry and do so many things I had believed were beyond my reach. In RI we use sayings or Tools to help us cope. One of my favorites is, “People do things that annoy us, not to annoy us.”

In gratitude, I have dedicated myself to furthering the remarkable work of Recovery International and making sure that others can experience similar benefits. My path has been parallel to the journey of SHARE!, in which a small group of self-help support group attendees decided to spread the message of recovery to many more.

My connection with SHARE! is long-standing. Beginning in 1996, I served on SHARE!’s Board of Directors, along with Marilyn Schmidt, one of the daughters of RI Founder Dr. Abraham Low. We saw SHARE! grow from an always innovative self-help center to the multi-program agency it is today.  RI will be forever grateful for the thoughtful ways that SHARE! has supported Recovery International:

• When the pandemic shut everything down in March 2020, SHARE! immediately began hosting RI meetings on Zoom. Recovery International honored SHARE! with the Ada Davis Spirit Award for making this possible. (Ada Davis was a much beloved Area Leader in Los Angeles.)
• SHARE! requires that trainees in their Advanced Peer Specialist program attend RI meetings—and many continue to attend after completing the training. We were invited to develop videos for SHARE! introducing people to the RI method—click here to see one: https://youtu.be/LKx5sfmgo34 One participant said, “I’m so grateful to have found RI. It’s such a useful approach that anyone can use. I can’t believe I had never heard of it.” It has helped him cope with family issues and medical setbacks. His favorite Recovery International tool is, “Don’t take your own dear self too seriously.”
• SHARE! connected Recovery International with Naomi Mizushima, who has developed a Japanese language version of Recovery International that has tremendous potential to improve lives, despite deep stigma associated with mental health issues in Japanese culture.
• Recovery International has been invited to present at numerous SHARE! events, including peer workforce conferences, marathon meetings and Festivals of Recovery. We were invited to present at Peer Action 4 Change’s Western Recovery conference. This outreach have allowed us to reach an audience we never dreamed possible and introduced the Recovery International Method to a continual stream of new members.  Click here for a special message for thanks from Special Projects Director Angela Sullivan.
• When people stay at the SHARE! Recovery Retreat, a two-week residential program, SHARE! introduces them to the Recovery International Method.
• Recovery International members, including myself, Cliff Brown, Robert Dey, Robert Holcomb, Gary Miller, Meta Moder, Marilyn Low Schmitt, Gabrielle Senser, Rosy Tellez, Valerie Garrett and more, have been honored at the annual SHARE! Recovery Awards, recognizing the efforts of our valued volunteers and giving us a chance to highlight the power of the RI method and encourage others to try it.
• In 2006, SHARE! CEO Ruth Hollman pushed RI members to attend a meeting in 2006 where agencies were vying to be part of a grant called Mentally Ill Offenders Crime Reduction (MIOCR) from the Dept. of Justice.  Ruth said we should say we are offering the self-help portion of the program.  And it worked!  Over an 18-month period we led RI meeting three times a week at Twin Towers. As the men learned the Recovery International method, the number of incidents in their pod dropped from several each week to three over an 18-month period. The men learned to lead their own meetings and to help one another.  Once they were released, they joined a re-entry program called SOS where RI members continued to lead groups.  It was such a success that the Deputy Sheriff in charge of the program mentioned it at a law enforcement conference.  Sadly, the Department of Justice did not renew the funding.
• For more than a decade, SHARE! has given RI an annual grant to do outreach for Recovery International. We have a half-dozen dedicated volunteers who go to health fairs, do presentations for other agencies and mental health groups to spread the word about self-help in general and specifically RI and SHARE!  We have been so grateful for this extra assistance.

Recovery International continues to benefit from our relationship and we look forward to our continued partnership.  Congratulations especially to SHARE! CEO and Founder Ruth Hollman and co-founder, Libby Hartigan, and to all the wonderful staff and volunteers we have met and worked with over the years.

Celinda Jungheim

President of Recovery International Board of Directors

www.recoveryinternatiional.org

Note: Recovery International is not to be confused with Recovery Innovations International, an Arizona-based peer services and training organization.