I had a wonderful conversation with @sylvielegere on the Trust Your Voice podcast exploring recovery and healing from substance use disorder through @riserecoverlive & @newform_community 🙏🏻🐦🔥I’ve had the opportunity to be on many podcasts but I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed what a wonderful interviewer Sylvie is! She is one of the best! We discussed the joy, hope, and tragedy of addiction with some actionable tools for anyone who’s touched by SUD. #riserecoverthrive
Coachella! If you want a sober space or a mental health reset, swing by the @join1millionstrong booth to the left of the Quasar stage. Come visit @riserecoverlive family! #cochella #1millonstrong @coachella
29 years of sobriety! The top-line advice I would share with you is let gratitude be the foundation of your sobriety, and have that be the place that you live from; not the kind of gratitude that is punitive; “you should be grateful!” but the kind of joy you find in the quiet moments with people you love, the moments of awe one finds in the beauty of nature or by witnessing others overcome challenges or persevering, or just the simple peace of being at home in your own body and mind.
I won’t promise you that sobriety will solve all your problems, but I will promise it will solve a bunch of them!
So honored and blessed to share this path with so many of you and thank you for being there for me along the way, 🙏🏻❤️and I hope I have been able to be there for you in turn.
With a grateful heart! #riserecoverthrive
Quick visit to The Phoenix Philadelphia, where I am excited to announce that we have launched a capital campaign supporting the future Pheonix Community Center we purchased, located at 1112 Roy Street in North Philly. The building is certainly a Phoenix rising from the ashes, but it was important to us to bring Phoenix to the heart of the community here, rather than changing the landscape of the community. We wanted to restore what was already there. We still need to raise the funds for phase 2 of our capital campaign, so if you know any philanthropists who’d like to help us raise the remaining $1.2M dollars, please share this post with them. I would be happy to talk with any philanthropist interested in learning more about our long-term vision for The Phoenix Center of Hope in the heart of Philly, and about our current programs in the greater Philadelphia area, which have already served over 10,000 people with free recovery support. If you would like to donate to support this effort, please follow the link in my bio. I also wanted to share a special thanks to all the Phoenix Philadelphia volunteers who have made Phoenix Philly so special already. Please like and share this post as well as commenting “Go birds” below if you’re an Eagles fan like myself! 🦅 #riserecoverthrive
Part 3 of 3 on personalization, #thewoundthatlistens .
The goal isn’t to never personalize again. That’s not realistic — and honestly, it’s not even the point.
The point is to shorten the gap between the trigger and the truth so as to not let them rule your life.
Growth looks like this: it used to take you three days to realize you were spiraling over something that had nothing to do with you. Then it takes three hours. Then thirty minutes. Eventually — sometimes in the moment — you catch it.
Oh. That’s the old story. That’s not what’s actually happening here.
That space — that tiny gap between stimulus and response — is where your whole life changes.
Because when you stop outsourcing your emotional state to old emotional material, something remarkable happens. You get your power back. You stop needing the world to behave a certain way for you to feel okay. And it’s available to every single one of us — not because life gets easier, but because we find our agency.
Do the work. Close the gap. Come home to yourself.
By the way, I can’t believe how many times I said personalization in that video! If you caught the number, please drop it in the comments! 😉
Part 2 #TheWoundThatListens
Your partner’s tone shifts slightly.
They seem distant. A little cold.
And suddenly — your chest tightens. Your thoughts spiral. You’re replaying everything you said. Wondering what you did wrong.
They were just tired.
But your nervous system didn’t know that.
Here’s what’s actually happening at the clinical level:
Your brain built emotional blueprints in childhood — psychologists call them schemas. Templates for how safe the world is. How reliable love is. Whether you are enough.
When those early years included criticism, inconsistency, or emotional unpredictability — your brain adapted. It learned to scan for threat. To read ambiguity as rejection. To make neutral information about you.
Fast forward to adulthood. Your partner doesn’t text back. Someone shuts down a little bit and you feel a distance, a look crosses their face, perhaps their just in their own personalization, but your prefrontal cortex — the rational brain — goes partially offline. Your amygdala fires. Cortisol spikes. You’re not in 2026 anymore. You’re six years old wondering if you’re loved.
That’s not weakness. That’s not you. That’s wiring.
Three things that interrupt it:
Name it — “My nervous system just ran an old file.”
Buy time — Don’t respond from the trigger.
Reality-test it — Is there actual evidence this is about me?
Awareness doesn’t erase the pattern overnight.
But it creates a gap. And in that gap — you get to choose.
👇 #TheWoundThatListens Series — follow for Part 3
Part 1, Personalization. I call it, #TheWoundThatListens
I used to walk into a room and feel it immediately — that low hum of dread, like someone was already disappointed in me before I opened my mouth.
Nobody said anything. Nothing had even happened yet.
But my nervous system didn’t know that. It was running an old program — one written in childhood, in moments imprinted on me through pain, trauma, shame, things that impacted myself worth and taught me something false, that I wasn’t enough, when love felt conditional, of course none of that was my fault. I was just a child.
That’s personalization. It’s when something neutral in the world — a look, a pause, a tone in an email — lands on an old wound and becomes about you. About your worth. Your safety. Your belonging.
For years in my own recovery, I thought the problem was out there. The people. The situations. The world.
It wasn’t. The raw nerve was inside me.
And the hardest, most courageous thing I ever did was stop blaming the stimulus and start getting curious about how to heal the wounds. If you’ve worked on your own personalizations or you are a clinician or therapist, please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.
The Phoenix, @riserecoverlive , shows how empowering people from the bottom-up can solve a huge problem like addiction. They’ve grown 100x since we met them — from one gym to 1 million people affected, peer-led recovery is redefining what's possible. Their incredible story is featured in the new Believe in People, America’s 250th Anniversary Edition. Pre-order now the 🔗 in bio.
If you’ve known for some time about @riserecoverlive and my work to help those who have been impacted by substance use rise from the ashes of addiction or even if you’re new to The Phoenix, if you haven’t been to an event yet, this is your invitation to come to one sometime. We’d love to have you. It’s a great way to build a new community substance, free and support others in their healing journey. You can also become a volunteer to lead Phoenix events. Just follow the link in my bio. So check us out on the @newform_community app, a Newform of digital community because together we #riserecoverthrive
Find the crew that can help you on the days you need them and then you can be there for them when they need you! Together #riserecoverthrive @newform_community
4:30am.Coffee. Backpack. Airport.
This is the side of building a hope movement combating addiction and mental health struggles for hundreds of thousands of people across the country that most don’t see.
Early flights to meet The Phoenix community (@riserecoverlive ) across the country or grow the reach of the @newform_community app Conversations with partners and supporters who believe connection and the intrinsic strength in people can transform society’s most challenging problems
It’s long days and short nights — and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Because every day I meet people working and volunteering to make our country more connected, more empowered, and more hopeful.
When we unite in a shared purpose, believing in the dignity and strength in all people, we all rise together! We the people need to @bethepeople #riserecoverthrive
