Book Club Week 4: When You Love Someone in Recovery

Book Club Week 4: Revival, Resources, Purpose, and Community

Welcome to the final week of our walk through When You Love Someone in Recovery. If you've shown up every week, thank you. Showing up is a part of healing, and consistency matters. This week covers chapters 12 through the conclusion.

Four themes from this week's reading:

🔹 Recovery can be a spiritual rebuild. 
🔹 Change is a process, not a one-time event. 
🔹 Purpose changes the shape of recovery.  
🔹 We heal in circles. Affected family members need circles too, and not as an afterthought.

A little something from my heart: The book was originally going to be called Recovery Is for Everyone, and that's what I named the conclusion. Because recovery isn't just for the person who uses substances. The whole family deserves healing.

Your action step: Name one thing you're going to do next. Make it specific and doable. A conversation, a support group, a next step. Don't just take information in. Engage with it.

📖 Grab the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400253977/
📋 Want the Book Club Kit? Email hello@carolinebeidler.com 
📦 Group orders: BulkBooks.com for close to 50% off 
💌 Join me on Substack: Circle of Chairs

The podcast is taking a break for the summer and coming back for Season 3 this fall. Thank you for being a part of this circle. I'm cheering you on.

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

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Welcome to Circle of Chairs Conversations with Caroline Beidler. 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.

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Hey friends, I am so just excited to be with you all today. So if you've been following along, we've done four weeks. Okay. This is week four. I can't believe it. Of a book club special podcast series for when you love someone in recovery. It's just been awesome. I've heard from so many folks how you are using this book club. So if you were just jumping in, all right, I'm going to give you just a little bit of a prompt here. If you're jumping into week four, I would say back it on up. All right. Go back to week one of the special series for the book club. Grab a copy of When You Love Someone in Recovery, invite your people to join. Great thing to do for the summer. And jump in. And each podcast, each week, will introduce a couple of the chapters of the book. So you can play it before reading or you can play it at your book club. However, you want to use these podcast episodes, do that. And the other thing is, I have an accompanying book club kit that you don't want to miss. So if you want your book club kit, grab one and just email me and you'll get one sent to you at hello at CarolineBibler.com. All right, my first and last name. If you don't know how to spell it, Google me. Hello at CarolineBibler.com. All right, week four, we're going to be talking about revival. Woo! Love that topic. Resources, purpose, and community. Okay. A lot of my favorite things there in that list. Chapters 12, all the way through the conclusion. Oh my goodness. The conclusion. So you've made it. You've made it to week four. And if you've shown up every week, you all, I just want to say congratulations. Good for you. All right. We don't like pause enough to kind of pat ourselves on the back for showing up, right? Showing up is a part of healing and it can be hard. It can be hard to stay consistent with something. All right. I feel this. I know it. I got a newsletter that I write regularly. I'm writing books. I'm a mama. All right. A lot of what we do in life needs consistency for us to show up. I'm a woman in recovery. Can you relate to that? A person in recovery? We have to show up, and consistency is a part of that. So you've shown up every week. Thank you. And thank yourself for doing that because it is a gift that you're giving yourself. So our final week is about moving forward with support, meaning, and community. Okay? Support, meaning, and community, not just information. All right. I'm going to talk through a couple of the main points of this selection, the ending part, the ending chapters of the book. Okay. Point number one. Recovery can be a spiritual rebuild. All right. Recovery can be a spiritual rebuild. So chapter 12 of the book is going to talk about recovery as a kind of revival, new family, new practices, new ways of seeing ourselves and others. It also addresses something very tender. This chapter talks about how faith communities can help or harm. Y'all, you need to pick up this book if you haven't already, okay? Just read chapter 12, all right? If you haven't read anything, read chapter 12. But recovery can be a spiritual rebuild, all right? Because a lot of folks have experienced church hurt, all right? A lot of us have experienced that. But maybe what we haven't experienced is that spiritual side of recovery. I talk a lot about in this chapter the history behind the 12 steps, a spiritual basis and foundation that you might not know about. What does support look like? I talk about this too, when it is grounded and rooted in things like grace and compassion. Super helpful for our families to understand as well. In chapter three, I'm sorry, chapter 13, I talk about resources and how to navigate them. So I don't know about you all, but if you've tried to help someone find treatment, all right, I'm raising my hand. It can be maddening. It can be really hard. But I talk about ways that we can help navigate finding treatment that are a lot easier. And not only that, but y'all in the appendix of the book, I have a resource of different options for treatment. There are a whole bunch of different options. Y'all might not know, maybe you know. If you don't know, now you know. I work for recovery.com, which is a fabulous way to find treatment. If you or a loved one needs addiction or mental health treatment, go to recovery.com and there you're gonna be able to search for what you need, compare different options, all right, and then connect directly with someone. Now, what I love about recovery.com though is there's a new feature, which I just absolutely love. And I'm talking to recovery community organizations about it, but you can create a list, okay? You can save a list. So let's just say you have people reaching out a lot that need treatment but don't have insurance. All right. Anybody look for treatment for folks that don't have insurance? It can be hard. Well, guess what? Recovery.com highlights and has those options. All right. You can look for treatment centers in your area that accept folks who don't have insurance, save those places because we know we need to come back to them, right? And create a specific list. So if someone asks for help for you from you, you have a list ready. And that doesn't have to be someone that you're, you know, working with. It can be someone sitting at your kitchen table. It can be someone in your home. And maybe it's you. Maybe it's you. So recovery.com. All right, I'm done with my schveel there. But we talk about resources in this chapter, okay? And it also highlights another important part of the journey that change is a process. I'm gonna talk a little bit more of each of these. We're gonna go through some questions too that y'all can ask that are some of them are in the book club kit. But yeah, change is a process. And in the book, I talk about the fact that healing takes time. And I think when we talk about resources or we talk about treatment, sometimes we start to feel discouraged because you might be like, well, my loved one went to treatment six times and they still aren't in recovery. And so is this working? What am I doing wrong? Fill in the blank, right? Just because someone has a recurrence of use or needs different types of treatment at different times doesn't mean that it's not working. Okay. It doesn't mean that it's not working. It just means they might need something else in a different season. But every time you access some type of help or treatment, a seed is planted. I firmly believe that. And I know for me, I personally experienced that every time I access treatment, a seed was planted. And I carried that new knowledge and insight and wisdom with me. There are things I remember from my inpatient treatment state as a 17-year-old child that I still remember. And not only that, but I talk about it and I tell other people that I'm working with about it. Seeds can be planted. And lastly, point four. Well, actually, no, I've got two more points. All right, two more points. I'm getting ahead of myself. Point three, purpose changes the shape of recovery. You all, chapter 14, and there's a reason why I'm just kind of like, you know, ending the book in some of these places, because I want this book to build towards something. Okay. We're building towards something together, but purpose changes the shape of recovery. And chapter 14 focuses on the fact that we don't need to just stop hurting, stop using substances. We need a reason to keep going, don't we? Keep building. A purpose doesn't have to be some big calling. Purpose can sometimes just start as like, I want to be present. I want to be honest. I want to be someone my kids can trust. Oh, I love this. Purpose is a compass. Purpose is a compass. And now, lastly, all right, lastly, point four, we heal in circles. We heal in circles. Chapter 15 brings us to the title of my substack letter, Circle of Chairs, where I talk about the importance of honesty, vulnerability, service, and community. But not just for those of us in or seeking addiction recovery. Affected family members, loved ones, need circles too. And not just as an afterthought, right? Our circles, affected family members, support is just as important. Just as important. Now, the end of the book, just quickly before we move on to some of the questions, the conclusion, all right? So I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. All right. I haven't told anyone this. I probably won't tell anyone aside from this podcast. At least, you know, I mean, my husband knows, but the title of my book was gonna be different. It was gonna be different. It wasn't gonna be when you love someone in recovery. Did you know that? You didn't know that because I don't think I've told anyone outside of some close friends and and trusted advisors. But my book used to be called, or was going to be called, Recovery is for everyone. Recovery is for everyone. Now I still love that. And I I decided to name and title my conclusion: Recovery is for everyone. It's not just for the person who uses substances, it's not just for the person who struggles with addiction. It's not just for the person who wants to be sober. Y'all, the whole family deserves healing. We all deserve that newness and transformation. It's so sweet, y'all. Today, oh my kiddos, like today is in like recently, not today, today. But my kids recently asked me if they could be in recovery. I'm gonna get emotional. It was so sweet. Because for them, recovery is not something that makes life like smaller. Recovery is an amazing thing. They see me talk about it, they see the joy that it brings. They see the people that we're helping in our community. They see how gratitude is a part of it and purpose and giving back and thankfulness and all of these beautiful things. They want to be in recovery themselves. And I said, honeys, if you want to be in recovery, absolutely you can be in recovery too. I hope that people end reading my book truly feeling connected to recovery in a new way. And family members and affected loved ones, I hope, I hope that they feel like recovery is for them too. Because it's for all of us. It's for all of us. See you all, week four of the book club, all right. Week four of the book club. I'm gonna go through a couple questions. So when we do, when you're reading chapter 12, all right, again, if you need the book club kit, email me. Hello at CarolineBeidler.com. But for chapter 12, recovery revival, in what ways does recovery bring you into a new family? A new family. Is it difficult for you to imagine a spiritual experience that leads to recovery? Why or why not? I think the most important part of this chapter, you all, I want it to be an invitation, an invitation to think about, reflect on, meditate on that spiritual side of recovery in a new way. Learn something new. Chapter 13, navigating resources and promoting change, you all. Why do you think it can be confusing and difficult to find treatment and resources? When is a time you were discouraged because you couldn't find those resources and you felt like your loved one didn't believe in you? Maybe you were discouraged because of your loved one's actions. In what ways is it helpful to view change as being a process rather than all of a sudden this instant thing? And maybe what kind of resources do you need? Chapter 14, purpose driven. In what ways might having a sense of purpose help us through recovery? What do you think your purpose is all about? How might you help your loved one in recovery discover their purpose? Chapter 15, Circle of Chairs. What is a circle of chairs and why is it important? How might honesty and vulnerability promote healing? And in what ways is recovery about being of service? Why is it important that affected family members join a support community? Y'all, I hope you end these four weeks being inspired by this book, learning new information, but not just that, empathy. Because we know that when education is paired with empathy, we have better recovery support for all of us. As we close this series, here's what I hope stays with you. You were never meant to do this alone. Recovery support is practical and can be spiritual. Purpose makes pain survivable and healing sustainable. And finally, community can turn our survival into growth. Living not just survival mode, but really flourishing. Flourishing. This is a little call to action, all right? Name one thing you're gonna do next. Okay. Make it specific and doable. Maybe that is picking up your loved one, asking them open-ended questions. Maybe that is learning more about different recovery pathways. Maybe that's looking for social support for yourself, a new type of support group. Maybe that's signing up for my newsletter, Circle of Chairs on Substack, to be more connected and learn more about the recovery journey. Take a next step. Don't just take information in, but engage with it and learn something new. Learn something new. I'm so honored to be on this journey with you all. I would love, absolutely love to hear from you about how this podcast series moved you and how you are taking it into your community, inviting your friends and reading through this book together. Together. I also wanted to share briefly. So if you're listening to this in real time, the Circle of Chairs podcast is gonna be taking a little bit of a break. All right, we're gonna be gearing up for season three in the fall, but for now, we're gonna be taking a break. I'm gonna be reposting occasionally some past episodes so you can catch up. But we're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back refreshed and ready to have some more incredible conversations. So thank you so much for being a part of this circle, and I'm so grateful for you. I am cheering you on, and I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks so much, friends.

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