5 Ways to Embrace Recovery at Family Gatherings

Home for the holidays means different things to different people. For many of us, it means resorting back to our younger self when we were living under our parent’s roof. We tend to revert back to our childhood roles, even if these roles were dysfunctional and never served us well. Read More

“Music for Recovery” Comes to Dawn and The Meadows!

Sunday, 1/26/14, Kathy Moser and her merry music makers came to The Meadows. Kathy has been working with recovering communities for the past several years bringing “Music for Recovery” to enhance patients’ treatment experiences by exploring creativity in music. Kathy is an award-winning songwriter, performer, and teaching/artist who has… Read More

Recovering From Early Social Adversity: Valuable Lessons from Adopted Orphans

By: Jon G. Caldwell, D.O. During my first meeting with Rebecca (as I will call her), I asked about her family history of mental and emotional difficulties, which can tell me something about her genetic susceptibilities, and about her early life experience with caregivers. These two elements of the evaluation… Read More

John Bradshaw: On Peter Levine and Bessel van der Kolk

As part of its ongoing video series, The Meadows presents an 11-part interview with John Bradshaw, world-famous educator, counselor, motivational speaker, author, and leading figure in the fields of addiction and recovery. In the ninth video of the… Read More

Letting Go of Resentment

The following is excerpted from a presentation, “Eliminating Resentment… Solidifying Recovery,” given as part of The Meadows’ Michigan Lecture Series on November 10, 2010, by Dan O’Neil, MALLP. What is Resentment? The word “resentment” has two parts: “re,” which means “again,” and “sentiment,” which is “to feel.” So resentment is… Read More

Decisions in Recovery

In “Fabled Truths and Family Lies,” published in the Meadowlark Summer 2010 newsletter, I wrote about a client’s experience with childhood sexual and emotional abuse, her skewed self-doubt, and her perceptions surrounding that abuse in her family of origin. Specifically, I addressed the challenges that arose for Leah as… Read More

Author to Reader: John Bradshaw on his latest book, Reclaiming Virtue

Note: this article was originally published in the Cutting Edge Spring/Summer 2009 Newsletter. John Bradshaw’s latest book, Reclaiming Virtue: How We Can Develop the Moral Intelligence to Do the Right Thing at the Right Time for the Right Reason, released April 28, 2009. Reclaiming Virtue is a very ambitious book. Read More

Child Abuse, Neglect, and Character Defects

By John Bradshaw Note: This article was originally published in the Spring 2004 edition of Cutting Edge, the online newsletter of The Meadows. One of the most insidious effects of child neglect and abuse is their impact on the “character” foundation. Addiction, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and the codependency that fuels it… Read More

Sharing the Disease

By Claudia Black, Ph.D., MSW It has long been known by addiction professionals that, for every person addicted, approximately another four persons, usually immediate family members, are directly affected – husbands, wives, committed partners, mothers, fathers, siblings, and young and adult children. Would the impact of addiction be reduced if… Read More

Denial is Not a River in Egypt

By Robert Fulton, MA, LISAC Note: This article was originally published in the Summer 2004 edition of Cutting Edge, the online newsletter of The Meadows. One of the wittiest adages we hear in 12-Step recovery is, “Denial is not a river in Egypt.” It is so witty, in… Read More