Episode 46
Kathie is a therapist, substance abuse counselor, peer recovery mentor, She Recovers coach and founder of Free Living Recovery. She spent 20 years as a paralegal and eventually found herself pursuing more education in the counseling realm. She now practices in the metro Detroit area of Michigan. She has built a career where she can use all of her considerable talents to help others find freedom in recovery. Her recovery journey was filled with ups and down, but she never stopped pursuing freedom for herself.
Helpful Links
https://freelivingrecovery.com/ Free Living Recovery (Kathie’s site)
https://lifering.org/ LifeRing Secular (non-religious) Recovery
https://womenforsobriety.org/ Women for Sobriety
https://sherecovers.org/ She Recovers (you can access the Facebook group here)
https://www.smartrecovery.org/ SMART Recovery
https://r20.com/ Recovery 2.0
https://betsybyler.com/treatment-tool/ Free Treatment Tool
About Kathie
Kathie is the Founder of Free Living Recovery, LLC, located in Royal Oak, Michigan. She is a master level limited licensed professional counselor, nationally certified counselor, social service technician, certified alcohol and drug counselor, certified peer recovery mentor, and has a SHE RECOVERS Coach Designation. She has been personally involved in recovery since 1989. Although she was able to stop using multiple substances through curiously seeking both traditional, and contemporary pathways to recovery in her first 17 years, she continued to struggle with codependency, disordered eating, and alcohol. In 2005, she awakened and stopped fighting herself, abstaining from all mood and/or mind-altering substances and behaviors, including alcohol.
Her continuous hunger for knowledge and insight about herself and addiction, ultimately led her to free living. She is an expert in research, being a paralegal for over two decades, and drawing from her experiences which span over 30 + years in recovery, committed her research to addiction and recovery. With an undergraduate in Community Services, she began with providing services at a licensed substance use center, working primarily with clients entering into the court system due to their substance use. Within this environment, she found gaps in her own understanding of addiction and recovery.
She began the pursuit of a peer recovery mentoring course and returned to formal education; achieving a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, and a graduate certificate in a Specialty Program for Alcohol and Drug Abuse. In pursuit and perseverance to find answers to her own struggles within addiction and recovery, she shares her experience within her work. She currently provides individual and group counseling services at the licensed substance use center, her private practice, and in her role as a Designated Coach with SHE RECOVERS Foundation, a nonprofit. She also participates as a guest on “Come Back to Love” podcasts. She has a primary focus on RECOVERY from life experiences, with both an educational and experiential understanding of addiction, post traumatic growth, complicated grief, depression, anxiety, family relationships, and life after surviving cancer. Her personal commitment is to walk with others on their journey by living authentically.
Her inspiration to continue to seek, and grow is supported by a photo of her four grown children, with this quote underneath it:
“She could never go back and make some of the details pretty. All she could do was to move forward and make the whole beautiful.” Terri St. Cloud