Book Club Week 1: When You Love Someone in Recovery

Book Club Week 1: When the Light Comes Back

All month long, I'm walking through my new book, When You Love Someone in Recovery, with you. This week, we're starting where it all begins: when the light comes back.

I kept hearing the same phrase at recovery meetings: "When someone is in recovery, it's like the light in their eyes comes back." Maybe you've seen it. Maybe you're still waiting for it.

In this episode, I cover three big ideas from the Introduction and Chapters 1 through 3:

🔹 Recovery has a story, and so do you. The way we picture recovery shapes how we show up for the people we love. 

🔹 Understanding the brain softens shame. Chapter 2, "Neuroscience for Normies," breaks down why "just say no" was never a strategy and why neuroplasticity is such a hopeful word. 

🔹 Recovery is not a straight line. It's about more than stopping something. It's about the life someone returns to.

I also share a piece of my own story from my first time in treatment at 17 and what I didn't know then about the brain's ability to heal.

Your action step: Write down what you're hoping recovery could look like for you and your family. Then identify one support you need right now and go ask for it.

📖 Grab the book: HERE 

📦 Ordering for a group? BulkBooks.com for close to 50% off.

Next week: Supporting our loved one without losing ourselves (Chapters 4 through 7).

Caroline Beidler, MSW, is an author, speaker, and Managing Editor of Recovery.com, where she combines expert guidance with research to help people find the best path to healing and treatment. Her book, When You Love Someone in Recovery: A Hopeful Guide for Understanding Addiction, was released Spring 2026 with Nelson Books. Drawing from her own recovery journey through addiction, mental health challenges, and trauma, along with training as a clinical mental health provider and addiction recovery expert, Caroline is passionate about guiding you into seasons of greater healing. Learn more about her books here. 

Subscribe to her Circle of Chairs Substack community at carolinebeidler.substack.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Circle of Chairs Conversations with Caroline Weidler. Real talk on addiction, mental health, healing, and hope for people in or seeking recovery and our loved ones. So pull up a chair. You are not alone.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Oh my goodness, friends. I'm so for the entire month of May. If you are listening to this in real time, if you aren't listening to this in real time, awesome. I'm so glad you're here. You can listen to these episodes anytime. And they are really meant to stand alone and accompany my new book when you love someone in recovery. So stand alone or accompany my new book. When you love someone in recovery, a hopeful guide to understanding you all is my absolute heart. And it's been such a joy to be able to share this message with you all. It's been such a joy to be able to hear from so many of you how the book is impacting you. And more than that, how you're sharing about this book with others, how you're telling your people. I have gotten messages. Y'all are buying this book for your parents, for your spouses, for your friends, for the people that you work with, recovery homes and treatment centers. Oh my goodness, recovery ministries. It is awesome. You know, the best way that we can get a message out about the hope of recovery, the reality of recovery and how we support our loved ones, actually support our loved ones, how we help them and not harm them is by telling other people about this book. So if you haven't yet, tell someone about this book. Invite them to join you on this four-week journey as we talk about different parts of the book. And hopefully as a companion, if you are having a book club, if you are bringing your people together to read this together. So this first week, week one, when the light comes back, you all, when the light comes back, as I was doing research for this book, it's so interesting. I kept hearing a phrase over and over again. It's so funny how that happens, isn't it? I kept hearing the same phrase at recovery meetings in different advocacy spaces. And it was this when someone is in recovery, it's like the light in their eyes comes back. Can you relate to that? Maybe it's looking in the mirror. Maybe it's your own eyes. Maybe it's the eyes of a loved one. Maybe your loved one is still struggling and you have hope. You have so much hope that that light is going to turn back on in their eyes. I actually kick off my book with a story about someone experiencing that, experiencing kind of this fear around how their loved one's doing. They've been hurt in the past, they've been down this road before. And then seeing their loved one and noticing, recognizing, wow, something has changed. Something is different. If you're coming here today with fear, exhaustion, or maybe hope, maybe a mix of all three, I want to tell you, friends, you are in the right place. This week is about orienting ourselves to the topics in the book. When you love someone in or seeking recovery, let's be honest, it can feel like the ground is shifting under your feet. You might want to celebrate, but you might also feel a little bit guarded. You might be relieved or you might have a hard time trusting what comes next. And I want to encourage you with this. This is normal, okay? What you're experiencing is normal. So today we're going to be holding a couple big ideas at once. First, recovery has a story. Our loved ones have a story. But guess what? So do you. In chapter one of my book and the accompanying, so if you don't have it, I want to link to this, y'all, but there is a book club kit, and I want you to have it. And it walks through different questions that go with each chapter. The kit asks what we picture when we think of someone in recovery and how we can define recovery. And you know what? That matters because the way we picture things, the way we imagine things can often shape our expectations. And expectations shape how we show up for the people in our life, how we treat the people in our life, how we see them. And how we see them, treat them, view them can shape the emotional environment around our loved ones' journey or our own. We know recovery isn't only a private journey for one person. It touches everyone who's been impacted. That's why the question in what ways is recovery a family affair can land so deeply. Even if you didn't choose addiction, maybe it's your loved one's journey. Maybe they didn't choose it, though. We'll learn more about that in a little bit. You can be carrying the weight of it. Another big idea I want us to think about this week is that understanding the brain and the science behind addiction and recovery can soften our feelings of shame and actually grow compassion for our loved ones and our own experiences. In chapter two of the book, Neuroscience for Normies, I love that title, it frames neuroscience in plain language for a reason. Okay. When we understand how addiction impacts the brain, decision making, impulse control, and stress responses, it doesn't excuse harm, but it can help explain why just stopping, the whole like just say no thing, has never been a strategy. One word that matters here immensely is neuroplasticity or the brain's ability to change and heal. That's a hopeful word. It means that healing is possible even when the past has been heavy. Okay. And the third big idea this week: recovery is a journey, not a straight line. We don't go from point A, addiction, to point R, recovery, just like that. And chapter three in the book will bring up different recovery pathways and something called recovery capital, which might be a new term for you. Recovery capital are the supports that make recovery more sustainable over time. I love to say recovery is more than just sobriety. It's about more than just stopping something. It's not just about treatment, although treatment can be and is often in a very important part of our journey. But recovery is about the life someone returns to, the life we can build. It's about relationships, resources, purpose, community, and coping skills. So if you have the book club kit, if you don't, I highly encourage it. It's going to walk through a couple different questions for each section. So, for example, in the introduction, I want you to think about why did you feel prompted to read this book or pick up this book? What do you hope to learn? What's your experience with someone who has suffered from or been challenged by substance use disorder or addiction? What are some of the feelings we might experience when our loved one first gets into recovery? And in what ways might we experience a new world before us when a loved one is in recovery? I'm going to go on and ask a couple more questions in this book club kit. So I want you to feel welcome to connect with your people around these topics. All right. Connect with your people around these topics. Before we close, I want to share a little bit of a story about my own experience. My own experience in understanding the brain and what happens in the body. Now, my first time in addiction treatment, I was young, y'all. I was really young. My parents didn't know what to do. And they were, you know, this was like the late 90s, right? Early 2000s. What do we do? Well, she's got to go to treatment. I went to inpatient treatment. Thankfully, at that time, my parents' insurance covered a 10-day stay. Makes me think about antibiotics. 10 days, right? We we got a lot of antibiotics stuff in our house. We got young kiddos. It feels like everybody's sick all the time. My parents thought I would go to this 10-day inpatient treatment stay. And if I was a good girl, if I did it right, that I would be cured and I would come home and I would be back to how I was, right? Good grades, good at sports, all this stuff. They were really surprised when I came back and that didn't happen. And I had so much shame about that. I wanted that too. I wanted to be well. What I didn't know is it would take time for my brain to heal, to develop new patterns, pathways. It would take more than 10 days, certainly. What I also didn't know, and I remember starting to realize then, and our the research has just been incredible since the past couple decades, is that my brain could heal. That over time, being in recovery, beginning with sobriety, but then building recovery rhythms into my life, my brain could heal over time. Now, I'm I don't pretend to be a neuroscientist. You know, I let it I know a lot of people on social media like to talk about neuroplasticity and what happens to our brain, and they don't have the education or really qualifications to do that. All right, all right. I'm talking a little shade on socials here. But this chapter in the book, Neuroscience for Normies, a dear friend of mine, Dr. Lee Warren, reviewed, vetted, also provided some really great feedback and led me to change parts of the book. So it was created with the help of a neurosurgeon, someone who is really familiar with the brain and did a lot of research and leaned on other experts and what the current research says to develop that chapter. I wish my parents could read chapter two, neuroscience for normies, back in the late 90s, early 2000s. Oh, I wish I had that information too. But it's so hopeful because I think I remember feeling like even as a teen, I had used so many hard drugs. I had hurt my body so much that it was gonna be irreparable, right? Like I, it was just over for me. I remember thinking I wouldn't live to see 30. Well, I'm in my mid-40s now. But I just remember my life, like I just destroyed it, right? It was over. I was only 17. I had no hope for my life that it was gonna heal, no hope at all. But we now know today, and what part of my passion about sharing this message is that recovery heals the brain. What we do in recovery heals the brain over time. I was just actually, I have this educational series on recovery.com. You can go to YouTube and check that out, recovery.com's YouTube page. But I talk about recently like a little bit of the science of gratitude. And that's it's just amazing, y'all. What happens in our brains when we practice gratitude? Like it literally changes our brains, how we think at like the cellular level. How amazing is that? It leads us to be more resilient, hopeful people. So the gratitude rhythm, one of the many rhythms of recovery, leads to changes in the brain that help us become more resilient over time. Wow, like that just blows my mind. It blows my mind. So my hope is that this beginning of the book that really talks about what is recovery, like what is it? And it breaks it down into talking about stories, the neuroscience and different recovery pathways. Also, this concept of recovery capital to hopefully kick off by defining using evidence, defining what recovery is all about. Because sobriety, you all, is just the beginning. It can be just the beginning. Stopping something is not where it ends. So I encourage you to, again, if you haven't pick up a copy of When You Love Someone in Recovery, get your people together. Now, I love to say this: if you are a leader in a small group, recovery home, treatment center, recovery ministry, if you lead people, if you got a group, you can get books in bulk. Say that 12 times fast. Books in bulk from bulkbooks.com for a like insanely reduced rate. It's almost 50% off, okay? Bulkbooks.com. You can get some incredible deals when you buy more than one book. So check that out. Grab your people, connect. And I'm just so excited for you all to be on this journey together. I want you to also, before we close, just real quickly, commit to something this week. Along with bringing your people together and equipping them by getting a bunch of books, write down what you're hoping recovery could look like for you and your family. I want you to think about what you're learning as you're reading. Write it down. The act of writing itself kind of helps us retain information. And then I want you to think about as a family, think about your family, your loved one, yourself. Identify one support you need. Maybe that's a group. Maybe that's a circle of chairs where you can connect and lean in and share vulnerably about what's going on. Maybe that's therapy. Maybe that's treatment. Identify something you need right now and then go get it, y'all. Go ask for it. Extend that hand. Reach out. And I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're here. Next week, we're going to be talking about supporting our loved one without losing ourselves. Ooh, that sounds good, doesn't it? Anyone interested in that? We're going to be talking through the next section of the book, chapters four through seven. So again, if you haven't gotten it, get your book club kit. Come on back next week. And I cannot wait to hear how this book moves and impacts you in your journey and your loved ones. I'm rooting for you. Thanks, friends. See you next time.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Thanks for listening. For more resources, visit CarolineVidler.com.