Breaking Cycles, Building Bonds | NACoA

00:00 Introduction and Overview of National Association of Children of Addiction
04:02 Personal Stories and Motivation 
09:24 Celebrating Families Program Origins and Impact 
13:21 Program Structure and Family Integration 
26:24 Addressing Cultural Needs and Expanding Reach 
35:08 Breaking Stigma and Providing Resources 

Whitney | she/her (00:46)
Hello and welcome to Recovery Conversations. I’m your host, Whitney Menarche. And today’s conversation is with the National Association for Children of Addiction to learn about their program, Celebrating Families. I’m excited to introduce Denise Burton -Epp, the executive director, and Marybeth Collins, director of programs. Denise and Marybeth, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I know it’s been a busy week.

denise (01:08)
Thanks Whitney, it’s great to see you. Happy Friday.

Mary Beth Collins (01:11)
Thank you. Good morning.

Whitney | she/her (01:11)
Happy Friday. And for those who don’t know, this week was Children of Addiction Awareness Week. So, Nakoa has been very busy educating communities far and wide about the impact of addiction on children and how to best serve them and their families. And I’m excited for us to get into that because that’s a topic that really, you know, we tend to separate the individual from the child, but your model is different and it looks at how to

serve the whole family system. And before we get too far into celebrating families, I’d love for people to learn a little bit more about Nakoa. Could you tell us about kind of its formation and its mission?

denise (01:53)
Sure, thanks for asking us. So this week, Nakoa is 41 years old. Always the week of Valentine’s Day, we celebrate what was earlier known as Children of Alcoholics Week, and now is Children of Addiction, or Children Impacted by Addiction. So 41 years ago, Nakoa was created by like -minded individuals who recognized there needed to be help and hope for children who were impacted by alcoholism and addiction in their homes. And so they came together to create this amazing mission. And our mission really today,

focuses on eliminating the adverse effects of drugs and alcohol on children and families that are impacted by that within their home setting, their environment, their schools, wherever they are. And we really want to make sure that kids and families know that they’re not alone, that there is the opportunity for hope and healing, that we do provide tools for professionals to be safe people who interface with kids and anybody who’s impacted by alcohol use disorder, substance use disorder.

We want to make sure that they know that there’s help and healing and education that we can give to them for their own recovery despite the fact that their parents or whatever the family construct is may not recover. The individual child certainly can. Anything else Mary Beth you’d want to add to that?

Whitney | she/her (03:02)
Great. Great.

Mary Beth Collins (03:06)
The only thing I would add is in addition to providing that education for professionals, we also equip them with all the tools to have those conversations with parents and with the children themselves. So not only do we give them tools, but we give them the language if that might be an awkward conversation, because by empowering them to be an effective, safe person, they then can do so in a way that is supportive and reassuring that those children and families are not alone.

denise (03:37)
We also have a board of directors that is so loyal to the mission and helps us to expand the communication, expand the messaging, and then a scientific board as well. So lots of people supporting this mission.

Whitney | she/her (03:51)
in such an important mission. What, I’m curious, what drew both of you to Nakoa to working on this very important topic?

denise (04:02)
Wanna go first, Maripa?

Mary Beth Collins (04:04)
I’d be happy too.

To start out with, I am one of those children. My father had admitted that he was an alcoholic when I was 12, so I’ve personally gone through that process of healing. I would say now for almost 35 years, I’ve been involved in some type of healing and maintenance for my own recovery. But professionally, I’ve been supporting children’s issues for most of my professional life, a lot of dealing with learning disabilities, behavior disorders.

in the autism field for quite some time. And what I found consistently in all of those roles that I took on was self -medication. So with all of these challenges that families are experiencing, there is an element. You know, this hits so many families, whether it’s economic diversity, whether it’s racial diversity, regional diversity, and I dealt with a lot of those families. So to really find a place

place where I could come to the core and help elevate the opportunity for children and families to receive the support and services that they need, discover that they need them, and then be comforted that we have exactly what is essential for that recovery and that maintenance. It’s such an important part and it’s been attractive and I’ve been here now almost 10 years and it’s such a rewarding experience to be able to provide that information, those resources, and the support to the professionals and caring adults that are working with children.

every day.

Whitney | she/her (05:39)
And what about you, Denise?

denise (05:41)
Thanks, Marybeth. Well, I have been working in this field for just about four decades. My background is nursing and healthcare administration. And I have worked primarily in critical care early on in my career and recognized that individuals suffering with addiction and their families became second -class citizens. They did not have a voice. They were often disregarded and they needed to have advocacy and really great care. And so I made the decision.

Having come from a family with a lot of addiction through cousins, to multiple generations, that this was the work that I really wanted to do. That I really wanted to help people heal. I wanted to love on those individuals who needed treatment until they could love themselves. And to find a place and lead a place that could really provide great care for those individuals. There is access to care still continues to be a really big issue in this country despite the affluence that’s here in the United States.

And so being able to participate in treatment centers that help individuals heal and their families and having family programs and children’s programs to really help them progress through their journey of dealing with a chronic illness like addiction was very, very important to me. So I have had the honor to lead organizations for many years that provided help, hope and healing to individuals that also participate in 12 step programs and any kind of.

support that’s going to help people get sober and find recovery and lived experience and a whole different life when they’re not using substances and putting them in their body that impair their minds and brains and things like that. So it’s been a wonderful career for me. I was part of the board at NACOA and I had an opportunity to step into this leadership role with this legacy organization and I have loved it.

This is a mission that is very important. I get to work with great people like Marybeth and our trainers and Jerry Morris, senior clinical advisor and amazing board members to really spread this mission to help people know that there are significant adverse effects from the disease of addiction on kids and families. And we get to provide that hope. We get to work with organizations like community coalitions, like treatment centers and outpatient settings that really want to help people and may not have the financial resources.

to provide this curriculum and this content and the COA fills that void for them.

Whitney | she/her (08:11)
That’s wonderful. Thank you both for sharing that. It’s clear that this is not just a job for either of you, that it is a passion and a calling, which I imagine just makes your impact even greater. And, you know, Marybeth, I want to go back to you. You reference your own recovery as an individual whose parent had addiction, who is a child of addiction. And I think that’s important to recognize that a lot of times recovery is assigned to the person.

who may engage in the substance use, but it is also recovery for the people who’ve lived alongside it and been impacted it. So I think that’s really important to point out when we talk about recovery, because it takes so many different forms. And Nicole is doing a lot of really great things. And just today, we’re talking about only one, which is kind of a small piece of the pie of all your hard work. But Celebrating Families is a really unique program.

And can you tell us just like a brief overview of it? How did it come to be? What was the problem that the creators were hoping to solve?

Mary Beth Collins (09:24)
It actually was a brainchild of a dependency court judge back in the late 1990s, early 2000s. And there were some wonderful family programs, but what he witnessed on a regular basis was the revolving door. So he would treat one family member and then the next week someone else would come in. And as a judge, I’m sure that has to be excruciating that you’re addressing family issues piecemeal rather than having an opportunity to be able to bring

the entire family together who are all dealing with that adversity from the disease of addiction and give them the quality support and healing that is necessary to help them move past what is keeping them through this revolving door. And there were some wonderful programs that essential elements were able to be brought together. And so in the early 2000s, this program was able to be piloted and has achieved great success.

It was very quickly established as an evidence -based program because research really spotlighted the huge impact, the positive protective factors that were able to be created.

in families that were at risk. And an essential element of the families that are needing to be involved in the treatment court process is the reunification process. And that, needless to say, is such a huge obstacle for families. It’s difficult for them to heal when they’re not even together. And that was a large part of what this particular judge was experiencing. And he knew that he had

to bring families together for them to be able to heal together. So this program assumes that there is involvement with child welfare. There is involvement with foster parents. Families are turning to kinship programs. And so the assumption that we need to bring all of them together in order to be involved in the education process and in the recovery process is a very unique aspect of celebrating families because the power of the program

is not just what happens in the sessions, but are they able to take what we offer in sessions and put them into practice? So if that care provider is not a parent, if that care provider is a foster parent or a kinship, a grandmother, an older sibling, an aunt or uncle, we want to make sure that everyone is getting that education and benefiting from the recovery and helping to coach those children week after week after week while that family is slowly being brought together through the recovery process.

through the reunification process. And one of the wonderful statistics is that through celebrating families, we are able to double the reunification process for children that are involved in child welfare or kinship programs, but able to do it in half the time. So families are brought together at a much faster rate and much more successfully. And through the program, we’re able to nurture not only their individuals,

health but their health as a family unit.

Whitney | she/her (12:40)
That’s an incredible impact, half the time in doubling the impact. We need to get this everywhere. I mean, that’s amazing. And at least from my awareness, it’s unique in how it is approaching the family system. And typically there’s like the identified patient and they get the focus, but you’re bringing the two kind of parts together.

But if I understand, you also, part of the program is giving each, the children and the parents, time to be with their peers. Is that correct?

denise (13:21)
It is, Mary Beth. You keep going. I’m coming with you.

Mary Beth Collins (13:21)
It takes…

Okay, it takes what we know is true in the addiction community about peer support and applies it to the family model. So the session start where families come together at a family meal, which we know is extremely powerful and healing for families dealing with this level of adversity. But it’s a huge protective factor for all families. It helps all families become stronger. It helps children become stronger as they’re maturing into adults.

It’s just a daily routine that…

sometimes is a new idea for these families. So the session starts with that family meal. And not only are we teaching them the value of coming together for meals, but we’re teaching them nutrition. We’re teaching them individual responsibilities to contribute to that meal and to enjoy the rewards of them coming together. So there’s so much intentionality just with that one essential element. Once the family meal is complete, then the families separate into their peer groups.

So there is one identifiable topic of education and skill development for the session, but they’re learning it with their appropriate age group. So parents are in a group.

the teens are in a group, the younger children are in a group. And so they’re all approaching a really important topic. Sometimes it’s just educational nutrition, like I said. Sometimes it’s understanding the individual roles that children take on when addiction is present in the family. Sometimes it’s teaching something important like healthy boundaries and how we need to maintain their healthy bodies. Sometimes it’s talking about feelings, just something as basic as that, which we have unspoken.

and roles in the family that really teach quite the opposite. So often in these families, they’re living with roles that reiterate, don’t feel, don’t talk, don’t trust other people. And so in these individual…

peer groups were breaking all of those rules in every single session and building the confidence that they in fact can trust with their peers and then thus as well with their families. They can speak about what they’re feeling with other people because they’re doing it in every single session and the more that you’re able to be honorable to how you feel and have the fortune to be able to share those feelings in a safe group with others and have that reinforcement from others.

that this is an okay space, that I do hear you, that I do believe you, and I’m here to support you, they can reiterate that week after week with their own family as well. And then the last part of each session is allowing families then to reconnect and enjoy that time.

give them activities that they can do, give them some fun moments that they can take with them throughout the week. And in that format, not only are they learning in those peer groups that this is okay, but they echo that when they’re with their families. And so those are huge successes each and every week that those families get to own and carry forward to do again and again and again and build into routines week after week.

denise (16:41)
I think everything that Mary Beth said is so, so wonderful. And I think some of the other benefits are particularly for children coming to the Celebrating Families program. There’s the reinforcement that they’re not alone. The disease of addiction in a household can be very isolating. It’s a very different way of growing up than other kids. And you don’t know that other families are experiencing the same thing. So one of the major things that kids learn is they are not alone, that there is help, there is safety as Mary Beth said.

says you can find a safe space to be with people who can help and support you and help you to heal. I think the other piece for families coming together is the ability to know other families, to start to build that trust and to lift that guilt and shame about what’s been going on in their own household. And particularly for the individual who may have been suffering with their own addiction now that they’ve started to get.

some recovery and lived experience under their belt to really start to lift that guilt and shame, to know that their family can get healthy, that they can make amends with this new behavior and start to lift all of that. I think that hope piece is very crucial. We live in a world and society that condemns very easily, that is really willing to write people off and cut them out of lives and recognizing that a family construct is important.

for children and families no matter what that looks like, but the ability to have a healthy one, to have a really good healthy foundation for families is essential. One of the things that we find in this country that is a tremendous thing is the advent of the peer recovery specialists, the peer recovery group and education, and a whole new category of caregivers, which is a really great thing for individuals with lived experience.

And so a lot of those individuals who are finding their own recovery, finding their new journey, often have not done their own family work. Many have done their own family work, which is great. But this is also becoming a facilitator for a curriculum like Celebrating Families reinforces what Healthy Families looks like. It really…

spreads the wealth and knowledge of those peer recovery specialists to go through this training to understand what healthy families can look like so that when they’re helping individuals trying to get into recovery, they can also help families. So we’re really hoping that peer recovery specialists will hear about celebrating families, will want us to actually come to their organizations and help to teach them about this curriculum as well.

Whitney | she/her (19:14)
That’s such a unique integration there. And I, from my own understanding of celebrating families, there are peer mentors, correct? Are these individuals who have maybe have even gone through celebrating families?

denise (19:31)
Absolutely. Do you want to field that question right about?

Mary Beth Collins (19:33)
And I would say even for some of the family groups, teenagers can be brought on as peer mentors. And when you listen to them talk, they are such a beacon of hope of what is possible. They’ll share what life was like before they got involved in celebrating families. And especially for teens, where maybe programs like this aren’t cool, they’d rather be playing video games or hanging out with their buddies. It allows them to have the courage to be vulnerable when they’re instead trying to be

Whitney | she/her (19:54)
Great.

Mary Beth Collins (20:03)
so in command of everything. And so those teenage peer mentors, I think, are some of the most essential. But I love to see the teenage mentors mature into their 20s and 30s. And they’re continuing to share their experience, strength, and hope for those young parents that are coming into the program. You know, one of the issues we have in our country is such shame and guilt that new mothers are abandoning their babies in the hospital.

And so when we have the luxury with our Zero to Three program to invite pregnant mothers to enter into this kind of exercise, an opportunity to heal, we give them the skills, we give them the confidence and provide them the ability to trust a support system that’s going to be able to be a change agent.

They understand that there is another way that they can do it and that budding confidence allows them to trust this dream that maybe it can be different for me and my child. And to have this incredible support system that can stay through that fear can help them manifest the courage to be able to start anew and start with the understanding that with this education, with the continued support that I’m going to be able to have, that I can actually create a healthy future.

I can be a mother that can be more than what I received and to have fellow mothers that are in similar situations maybe a year or two ahead that beacon of hope to be able to watch them be healthy mothers to their young one -year -olds, two -year -olds, three -year -olds is such an incredible opportunity for them to be able to travel that same path and provide new healthy living. That’s true prevention. We are no longer intervening for those

families. We are actually pushing the default button and saying with help, with education and support, you actually can restore healthy living to your family. And to me that is an incredible gift, an incredible opportunity for me to be in a role to be able to provide that opportunity to those families.

Whitney | she/her (22:13)
And that really speaks to the intergenerational impact of addiction. I imagine many of the parents, caregivers that are involved in celebrating families were themselves children of addiction. And so those healthy boundaries and such weren’t modeled for them. And so they’re truly learning a new skill set. It’s easy to forget that they were once that child too. And so I imagine the parents are healing at a level themselves.

Mary Beth Collins (22:45)
And I would even go a step further that they’re healing. At NACOA, we often refer to children of all ages because sometimes we haven’t had the luxury to mature if we’ve stagnated growth because of that adverse impact of the disease of addiction. And so in the program, at times, parents are experiencing both elements at the same time. They’re looking at what they’re learning and they’re viewing it through the eyes of being five years old or 10 years old and even finding forgiveness for their own

parents for what they too never had the opportunity to receive the support and services that they needed. Then on the other side, looking at it from the…

perspective of a parent and finding the courage to be able to forgive themselves for what they did not know and truly embracing the opportunity to learn what is being provided through the program to be able to then commit to being a better parent, to being a healthier parent and saying that I need to recover myself so that I then have the ability to be a healthier role model for my children. And to watch that transformation is a truly remarkable experience.

Thanks.

denise (23:56)
I think Whitney, when you refer to the intergenerational component, the Addiction Policy Forum has a statistic that says 85 % of people in treatment identify at least two to three generations of addiction prior to them. And so it is really important to address this, as Mary Beth says, and certainly celebrating families does do that and does lift that veil of shame and can actually create that circle of healing. And I think as Mary Beth talked about FASD, the now is neonatal withdrawal.

for opioid women who are experiencing opioid use during their pregnancy, you know, we belong to a group called Heal Connections, which is part of the NIH that is Heal Addiction long -term. And part of Heal Connections actually exposes us to research that helps us at NACOA implement research much quicker.

Whitney | she/her (24:40)
Mm -hmm.

denise (24:49)
than we have been able to in the past. You know, on average, research takes 17 years for implementation. And for nows, this group that we’re talking about, there was a recent study called Eat Sleep Console. And that was part of our Heal Connections. We were able to instantly integrate that into our Celebrating Families group. So these pregnant women that Marybeth is referring to that come to Celebrating Families get to learn immediately how they can actually heal their child.

Whitney | she/her (25:06)
Wow.

denise (25:17)
help their child be discharged from the hospital earlier to really bond with that baby much quicker and actually have much less medication use as part of the ZEEP’s Eat Sleep Console study. And so those are some of the things that NACOA does with our scientific board and our scientific partners like the Addiction Policy Forum and our colleagues at Heal Connections to bring that latest research into what it is that we do with celebrating families. So it continues to be an evidence -based curriculum.

and on the National Registry, making sure that we’re constantly updating it. And we have several partners around the country, particularly in California, that help us to update this curriculum. And that’s really important to know.

Whitney | she/her (26:00)
Absolutely, and am I correct that not only are you in over 40 states, I believe now, and in Canada, but you’ve also adapted or translated the curriculum to meet the needs of Spanish -speaking families and also a collaboration with White Bison. Could you just touch on how you are meeting the multicultural families in our country?

denise (26:24)
Beth, you want to field that? You want me to?

Mary Beth Collins (26:26)
Well, when you think of the essence of family, it’s extremely intimate. And so culture is an essential part of how you heal families. We can’t heal families if we aren’t restoring culture. And that’s what white bison and the well -briety movement is all about. It’s teaching the world that by restoring health, we have to do it through reintegration of culture. So when you’re focusing on healing through celebrating families, we couldn’t do it if we didn’t incorporate culture.

and speaking in the language of the families that we wish to serve. So we’ve got a variety of levels of management of the English language here in the United States. And so Celebranda Familia is able to speak to that.

and bring in the culture for those sessions. And with our relationship and partnership with White Bison for the Wellbriety overlay, that is an incredible opportunity to take a population that really deserves so much support, is screaming for all of the support and healing that we can provide. And when they wanted to create a program that spoke to education of addiction,

But all of these other elements that we’re talking about speaking about feelings understanding the roles that children are playing when addiction is such a huge part of the family unit understanding how we establish healthy boundaries how we resolve conflict in a healthy communicative way a set established goal setting in the family Identifying how to have healthy friendships outside of the family

We have to do that with the cultural overlay. And so with a partner that’s as wonderful as White Bison, they took a look at everything that was happening in celebrating families and basically said, we don’t want to change a thing. We just want to make sure that we can incorporate our cultural overlay when we provide that to our communities. And it’s one of the partnerships that I’m the most proud of. And being able to work with them is such a rewarding experience.

denise (28:38)
I think the piece, when you look at the culture piece, you have to also look at the intergenerational addiction and trauma. And so having the cultural incorporation of those various modules that we provide to the community is very essential. And the trauma informed piece, we know we have to help heal that as well. And so various cultures, the history is very significant. We have to look at that, we have to recognize that, we have to help to break the cycle.

So that’s all included in the Celebrating Families components.

Whitney | she/her (29:12)
And how, if someone’s interested in your program, what’s the process to get involved in a Celebrating Families group? Should organizations reach out, individuals, families themselves?

denise (29:29)
So this is one of those kinds of curriculum that can be implemented in various places. But it is something that is an investment. It’s a community investment. It’s an organizational investment. We want people to really think about how they’re going to implement it, what their timeline looks like, and really how they’re going to sustain it. We don’t want people to do one session with one group of families and then not sustain it.

If you really want to make a community impact, if you want to really impact a lot of families and have sustainable recovery, we want that ongoing support. So it is something you really need to think about. Having said that, it is not insurmountable. We give you all of the tools and the training. It is offered in person. It is offered on demand. It is multilingual. And so we want to make it as easy as possible for you. So often we have…

community coalitions who reach out to us, people that have block grant funding, opioid settlement dollars, faith -based or clergy organizations who will say, we’ve got a group of people who are interested in trying to help families. We have several states that want to have statewide celebrating families networks in English and in Spanish, recognizing the need is there and great. And so people will reach out to us, they’ll see us presenting at conferences, our website, nicoa .org.

is a great place to look at that. You can contact Marybeth, you can contact me, you can call our number and say we’re interested in celebrating families. And what we’ll do then is set up any kind of a Zoom call, a phone call with you, give you the information about celebrating families, talk to you about what the core competencies are that we’re going to actually help you look at.

and established with the families and what the 16 topics look like and what the breakout is. Marybeth’s created a great logic model for this. We’ve got really good grids and information and statistics that we can give to people to help them discern if this is the right program for their community, for their particular coalition, their faith -based organization, or their state.

And like I say, there are many states in this country that are very progressive that recognize they want to have healthy families. They want to break the cycle of addiction. You know, we are in a crisis with the opioid overdoses and the opioid addiction in this country. We need to solve this problem and it takes a village. So getting families together to support each other, understanding how to be healthy, how to help those kids know that they’re not alone and to help them grieve in many cases.

for someone who may have overdosed and passed away in their family is really important and essential. Mary Beth, I’m going to let you add to that.

Mary Beth Collins (32:01)
Well, and I would just say it does feel like a heavy lift at times for some organizations. And the first thing that I try to do is basically say you are not alone, that there are many sites that perhaps we’re talking eight months or a year and they contact me once a month and troubleshoot certain things with me. I’ve participated over Zoom with the partnership committees that are trying to sort out the big building blocks in order to be sustainable. From my perspective,

if we haven’t thought it all through and there’s a rush to get the pilot and then it wasn’t strong enough and so it starts to dissolve. That’s a lot of wasted time and energy and hope that unfortunately begins to dissolve for the community. So slower, steadier, stronger, moving forward and making sure that all of the essential building blocks are pulled together to help create something that can be an iconic recovery fixture in the community.

and be a beautiful.

a beautiful filter to nurture a growing recovery community is such an important way, I think, to go about it. And it can start with a simple email or a single phone call. And from that point on, it takes on a life of its own. This is definitely one of those things that passion and commitment can create some incredible rewards. And it may look a little bit different because every partnership, every community, I like to say often,

Whitney | she/her (33:20)
Yeah.

Mary Beth Collins (33:32)
We have a wildflower community, and so one community may look a little bit different than the other, but together we can figure out the unique ways that your resources in your community can create a very successful program.

Whitney | she/her (33:47)
That’s incredible. I mean, you truly are adapting to meet the needs of the people and not just trying to believe everyone is the same. So this same exact cookie cutter will work for all. So that’s incredible. I mean, the cultural component, the looking at the community that’s truly doing everything you can to set families up for success. So just thank you for having that approach. And oh.

Mary Beth Collins (34:14)
And I’ll even add, I will credit our co -developer Rosemary Tisch for that. They recognize the wildflower variety of communities on the onset and created, I mean, it’s almost amazing to say that it’s an evidence -based program that is malleable, but that in fact is exactly what they have created. And I don’t think you could do a program of this sort with the needs and the comprehensiveness that the program provides without having some level of malleability to meet

the specific needs of one community versus another and yet that’s exactly what they’ve been able to do. It’s an amazing curriculum that they’ve been able to create by people who were greatly intentional and very passionate about being successful in what they wanted to provide to the community.

Whitney | she/her (35:08)
Well, as we get to wrapping up, I do have two final questions for you. This conversation and the Reduce the Stigma movement is to reduce stigma. And I’m curious, from your experiences, how does stigma impact the children and then how does it impact the parents or the caregivers?

Mary Beth Collins (35:32)
I think it’s mostly the way it’s spoken. It is something that we even have in our program that we, through the education about what addiction is, it helps people understand that it isn’t a personal flaw. It is a disease. And when we’re able to look at it through that lens, suddenly the whole understanding of it shifts and the way that we talk about it changes. Understanding that these aren’t parents who are selfish and don’t care about their children.

denise (35:33)
a freeze.

Mary Beth Collins (36:02)
These are parents that love their children desperately. They’re doing the best that they can in an extremely challenging, unfortunate situation and doing it with the best devices that they’ve had. Again, it’s that intergenerational piece. We know what we know and education is one of the most powerful tools to start removing the stigma. And I believe the more families that we’re able to heal, the more we’re able to educate our communities to show that truth that it really isn’t

personal flaw. These aren’t, these aren’t

unfeeling members who are selfish and a danger to society. They just deserve care. They deserve respect and most importantly, they deserve healing. And through that transformation of taking families who are at risk and transforming them into families of promise and healing every member of that family, those recovery families will grow into this extremely amazing, bright beacon of hope for the community. And I think the most

more that we’re able to contribute to that beacon of hope, the community continues to learn and that stigma will continue to melt away.

denise (37:15)
Thanks very much. For me, I think the biggest issue is that there is this myth that if parents get into recovery and are stopping in their addiction cycle, that children are going to be okay. That that’s the instant, we have this instant gratification society. And so if parents can find recovery, then children are okay. That isn’t the truth. These children have been traumatized. They have been impacted.

by the disease and the active use within their household by persons who are impaired and at sometimes maybe not able to take care of them, neglecting them. We need to help those children heal. So the stigma that affects children is that they’re going to be okay if the parents get into recovery. And that isn’t the case. We need to help them heal. And our Children’s Program Kit, our Celebrating Families really helps children know they didn’t cause this disease, they can’t cure it, but they can actually help themselves.

by helping themselves be healthy. And the education that we give them is really important to help them build their self -esteem. The other piece that I would suggest to you is that, you know, addiction is one of the only chronic illnesses in this country where there is no funding or support for families. And there is a paucity of funding for programs like Celebrating Families and our Children’s Program Kit. Because we are not a direct provider of MOUD and MAT, things like that, children are often lost.

Whitney | she/her (38:32)
Hmm.

denise (38:44)
There is not a voice and a lot of advocacy for these children. And the other piece of it is fundraising. If you’re looking for donors, this is a really hard thing to raise money for. Children are not out there saying, I need help. My parents are impaired. I need help. It’s just not there. People often don’t think about them. So that stigma for kids that they’re going to be OK as long as their parents are in recovery needs to be broken.

And we need to find ways to fund these programs for kids and continue missions like this so that children know they’re not alone. They can grow up healthy. It is much easier to help heal children than to have an adult grow up with all of this trauma.

and oppressed feelings and inability to help themselves and then start to try and figure this out as an adult who’s been really injured and wounded. So really helping kids when they’re young to break these cycles and to grow up in a healthy way is incredibly important.

Whitney | she/her (39:34)
Right.

And just to ensure everyone knows if they want to engage in a Celebrating Families program or maybe they want to support your efforts and donate, what is, again, the best place to connect with Nikola?

denise (40:01)
So we have our website, nicoa .org, and all of our resources are there. Our phone number is there. You can send us an email at nicoa .nicoa if you want to send us something specific. Our phone number is there for sure, 888 -554 -COAs. We also have monthly webinars for adult COAs that will start in March. And so if you’re an adult child of addiction,

Whitney | she/her (40:24)
Wonderful.

denise (40:28)
and you want to start to get some education, and you may not have ever started any of that, those webinars will start this week when we were celebrating COA Awareness Week. We had webinars every single day. We’ve got one today at 11 o ‘clock Eastern Standard Time. But look at our website. We’ll have those kinds of things posted routinely for education. And you can always call our phone number. We’ll help you with resources. We’ll help you get to treatment. We’ll help you figure out if these programs are for you. We’re very much a concierge group.

We want to make sure you’re going to be successful. We’re not in this to sell you things. We really want you to have programs that help your community heal, your family to be better. We have things like tools for kids that are on our website and we’re constantly developing information and partnerships to help bigger and broader reach in communities. Anything you want to add there, Mary Beth?

Mary Beth Collins (41:20)
I would simply add that we are also very active in social media. So we are where people are as well. We have a page on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, and on Instagram. And it’s a nice mixture of messaging. So some of it is just for that maintenance. Affirmations for the day, important messages to keep in mind for those that are in their recovery journey. But we announce webinars, like what Denise was mentioning. We provide new tools when they become available.

So it’s a nice combination of wonderful resources and support that can live and breathe on the social media channels where you frequent every day.

Whitney | she/her (42:00)
Well, Mary Beth and Denise, thank you for taking the time sharing so much about the work you’re doing. It’s clearly impactful. The evidence shows it, but just even hearing the way you talk about it, I imagine the messages that you relay are in and of themselves healing. So thank you so much for being with me today.

denise (42:23)
Thank you, Whitney, this was wonderful and thank you for the work that you were doing to help and heal the community.

Whitney | she/her (42:29)
Thank you. And if you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to share it with all those in your network so that we can continue fighting stigma and raising up the voices of those with lived and living experiences, as well as the people in organizations supporting