November 16, 2018

A Mother's Love

November 16, 2018/ Kelly Fitzgerald Junco

A mother’s love. They say there’s nothing like it and they’re right. A mother has a unique role when it comes to having a child with a substance use disorder. For my mother it was something she was used to dealing with, but not with a child. My mother has always been a caretaker. Of her siblings, her husband, her father, then her mom, and of course my sister and I. When I was in high school my mother and I fought a lot. We butted heads about pretty much everything. She didn’t like that I wanted to stay out late, drive my car around past 11:30pm (the curfew for underage drivers in Pennsylvania), fraternize with new groups of boys every other week, and be a generally rebellious teen.

August 29, 2016

Generation Found: The Youth Recovery Revolution

August 29, 2016/ Sober Senorita

At the end of this week I was in Orlando for work and had planned my trip around an event hosted by Advanced Recovery Systems. The event was the screening of a new film by Greg Williams called Generation Found. Just a little background, Greg Williams is the man behind the amazing film The Anonymous People, a film about the addiction epidemic that is currently plaguing the U.S. That film also encouraged everyone in recovery to openly tell their story.

October 23, 2015

Why It's So Hard To Ask For Help With An Addiction

October 23, 2015/ Sober Senorita

The question I am most often asked on here is this: how did you do it? How did you get sober? It seems like such a simple question, but the answer is complex. For some people struggling for years with addiction, I'm sure loved ones and significant others are always asking the question, "why now?" in terms of getting sober. I know that I was in dark place for a few years and asking for help never occurred to me. So how do we get to that point? Why is it so hard to ask for help with an addiction? Here are some reasons why I think it's difficult.

September 18, 2015

What Recovery Month Means To Me

September 18, 2015/ Sober Senorita

This year I've got two years and a few months of sobriety under my belt. I've done more soul-searching, read more books, written more, and became a proud member of a 12 step group. I guess last year I felt a little disconnected from the recovery movement. I only happened to stumble upon Recovery Month 2014 via a Facebook post and reading the Recovery Month website. I was not yet in a 12 step program and I wondered to myself if I could really call myself a person in "recovery." This year I am 100% sure I am a person in long-term recovery and it's not just because I'm a member of a 12 step fellowship. Over the last year I've involved myself more in the recovery community, especially online. I've shared my story on countless websites and have recently written it for a book that will be a collection of recovery stories. I'm even laying the groundwork for writing my own memoir. What!? I know. I've fully embraced recovery and it's taken me to places I never thought possible.

August 28, 2015

Recovery Messaging Training With Young People In Recovery

August 28, 2015/ Sober Senorita

I talk a lot about recovering out loud, breaking the stigma of addiction, and telling your story. But I've never really considered how my rhetoric can affect the public's perception of this disease that I'm dealing with.

Last Saturday I crossed over to the other side of the state and visited Boynton Beach to attend a Young People in Recovery event called Recovery Messaging Training. It sounded like something that was right up my alley and I had been wanting to attend a YPR event for awhile now so this was the perfect one. I met a lot of great people and learned new information about how I can present my recovery to the world.

Blog