Recovery, for everyone.

This weekend, I attended a wedding of two people in recovery. The day was beautiful and celebratory, as weddings should be, but it also resonated so much deeper at the start of September, National Recovery Month.

Recovery Month is about so many things — it’s about advocacy, celebration, lived experience, raising our voices, and pushing for a better future on behalf of those still suffering.

But this weekend, as I looked around, I kept thinking to myself “this is what recovery is all about.”

It’s about recovery making it’s way into the wedding ceremony and wedding speeches.

It’s about family and friends tearing up in pride at the life that can be built at the hands of hope and recovery.

It’s about parents being grateful they got their kids back and could experience life’s greatest moments with them.

It’s about watching a group of men link arms for a picture who met as roommates in early recovery, now as lifelong friends, attending each other’s weddings.

It’s about watching that group of men disband after the photo, returning to their girlfriends and wives, smiling and taking photos and being happy in their new lives.

It’s about people returning home to their children, enjoying every blessing of family and kids and what can be rebuilt and gained in recovery.

Because recovery is most about what happens in the whole of life — joy, community, family, friendship — being healthy and showing up as the best versions of ourselves in mind, body, spirit and soul.

Or, as SAMHSA puts it, recovery is “a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential.”

For me, during recovery month every year, it’s also about being able to walk over to my Dad and being able to give him a hug.

It’s about the day prior, having the ability to be a daughter taking a picture with her mother and father who are divorced, but reconciled and friends, because of the process of recovery that you didn’t think was possible for your family.

But recovery is for everyone, and it has a way of turning those painful seasons of the past into distant memories after reconciliation, forgiveness, and togetherness have taken root and reclaimed all of it.

But maybe most of all, it has a way of giving your life deeper meaning, despite the pain and brokenness. Because on days like these you truly realize,

This is what it’s all about.

This is what it was all for.

Our lives as living proof that recovery truly is for everyone. Every person, every family, every community — for them, for me, for you, for us.