What Happens at Recovery Week? with Sue Cunningham, MA, MS, LPC, and Wendell Moss, LMHC

If you’ve heard us talk about Recovery Weeks, or you’ve been thinking about joining us, you might be wondering: What exactly happens during those six days?

Recovery Week is a focused, immersive experience designed to help survivors explore the ways their stories of past sexual abuse have shaped their lives.

In this episode, Dr. Dan Allender is joined by longtime Recovery Week facilitators Wendell Moss, LMHC, and Sue Cunningham, MA, MS, LPC, to offer you a glimpse into the experience.

They describe what to expect, particularly in the Story Groups. The work invites us to consider the difference between conviction and condemnation, and what it might mean to receive the truth of our stories without contempt. 

They also explore some of the surprises of Recovery Week: the laughter that emerges alongside grief, the friendships and camaraderie that grow, and the relief of discovering that you are not alone. Together, they discuss how compassionate witness can loosen the grip of shame and create space to encounter God as one who sees, grieves, and cares.

Listen in for a glimpse of what to expect, and why this experience can be both more difficult and more joyful than many participants anticipate.

A note for our listeners: This episode is centered around recovery from sexual abuse. It also contains explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Listener Resources:

Listen to last week’s episode, “How to Prepare for Recovery Week” where Dr. Dan Allender is joined by longtime Recovery Week leaders and facilitators Linda Royster, LCMHC, and Scott Gibson, LCSW, MSW.

If you’ve been thinking about attending a Recovery Week for Men or Women, or if you’re just hearing about it for the first time, we invite you to learn more here on our website.

About Our Guests:

Susan Cunningham, MA, MS, LPC, is an Instructor and Facilitator with the Allender Center, and is a therapist, life/soul coach, spiritual director and poet. She specializes  in counseling and training survivors of trauma to address and bring healing to personal stories of harm. Sue holds a BA and MA from the University of Southern California.  Her poetry has been featured on various podcasts, and included in the anthology Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice.  Susan is the granddaughter of four survivors of the Armenian genocide.

Wendell Moss, LMHC, is a therapist, minister, educator, and speaker. Wendell serves as a part of the instructional staff at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology in Seattle, WA where he received his Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology in 2007. Wendell has also been a core member of the Allender Center at The Seattle School’s executive leadership team and Teaching Staff since its creation in 2010. Alongside his work with The Seattle School and The Allender Center, Wendell practices as a therapist in the Seattle area.

Wendell is fiercely committed to engaging the impact of sexual abuse and trauma, including racial trauma. He courageously and compassionately follows Jesus into realms of healing in the most wounded places, especially the places where people are bound by relational heartache, addictions, shame, and contempt. Although he is privileged and delighted to work with both men and women, Wendell loves to create contexts of healing for men, especially African American men.

Wendell started his ministry career with Intervarsity in Chicago where he served college students for almost a decade. He is an unapologetic Bears fan. Wendell lives in Everett, WA with Veronica, his beautiful wife of 25 years.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, click here. If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at cclayton@theallendercenter.org

 

Episode Transcript

Dan: Well, today I have two truly beloved colleagues joining me, who are well known to our audience. Sue Cunningham, brilliant therapist, spiritual director, poet, the authoress of such a remarkable podcast, Living Poetry. So Sue, first just say welcome, welcome, welcome.

Sue: Thank you. So happy to be here.

Dan: And you can join me in welcoming near Dr. Wendell Moss, who is a long-term founder or co-founder. I don’t know. I got to blame you for the Allender Center as much as anybody. And professor at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, therapist, but just fundamentally glorious human being. What else would you add, Sue?

Sue: I was just going to say amazing human. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. We can spend a lot of time just talking about what it means to be an amazing human. So Wendell, just give a sentence or two about what it means for you to be an amazing human.

Wendell: I think what’s come to mind immediately is being a man who’s still growing in courage.

Dan: Well said. I was setting you up for a little bit of humor, but that’s.

Sue: The wisdom of an almost doctor.

Dan: Yeah. And again, we’re not going to spend much time on that, but shall we say soon and very soon. Let me tell you what we’re going to be focusing on. We want you to know more about our Recovery Week. And certainly our first episode was intended to get you into thinking about what the Recovery Week is, but there will be many of you that will either not be willing, not open or not capable of doing so. So we want this to be focused more on the question of what’s the result of going through a Recovery Week or any other process of helping you grow in addressing trauma, particularly the trauma of sexual violations. So really what I want the two of you to ponder is really what’s required and what happens through a Recovery Week , but what happens for a person who continues to grow in engaging really the heartbreak and horror of past abuse and where does it lead? What does it look like? But before we get there, you two have been, at least for me, so central to decades, decades of doing Recovery Weeks. So I’d love for you just to sort of introduce yourself as to how you got into this and why you continue to do it.

Wendell: I remember the first thing on Bainbridge Island when Dan first asked me to work with Men’s Recovery Week. I mean, it felt like an honor, but it also felt like it was like you’re asking me to do what? And it was to help. But what first hit me was one, just the opportunity to watch men step into really the courage of stepping into the story. And so I remember sitting in my first group, listening to the first guy, and I think I just sat there in awe watching them with a sense of fear and trembling, not quite having words for their story yet, but sitting there walking through the process of putting words and articulating their story and struggling and sitting there having the courage to almost be reliving the story, but reliving it and having the opportunity to relive it in a way that’s contained and also allowing them to have a process. I use the word now a lot. It’s the kind of beginning the process of integration. Integrating the stories into themselves and allowing the story to finally become part of them. And I think as I watched that process, I found myself learning a lot from the first time I did Men’s Recovery Week. I was like, whoa, this is what I want more of. And so after my first Recovery Week, I was hooked because I felt like I’d done a lot of my own work, but it wasn’t until Men’s Recovery Week and the detail that I found myself inviting them to and that I witnessed, it was something that I was just in awe of because I’d never seen someone be invited to that kind of particularity, but also have a powerful witness as they enter into that particularity, the containment and to see it be done in the context of much care. So that’s how I was gotten.

Dan: For you, Sue.

Sue: Yeah. Well, I remember the first time or two that I came to be part of Recovery Week, I just kept wondering, do I really belong here? Why am I here? They must not have been able to get anyone else kind of thing. I didn’t know if I belonged. And honestly, over the decades, and you’re right, it has been decades, I realized more and more, oh my gosh, sexual harm is so deep and profound and diverse that every year I like, oh my gosh, I belong more and more and more. I’m aware. But the thing that struck me, same as you in so many ways was just how I just couldn’t get enough of… there’s so much good teaching that was just new, even though I’d read the books, I’d heard Dan for many, many years, but with the specific focus on sexual harm and sexual abuse and recovery, there was just so much, not only information but context because there were other women there. And part of what I think is so rich about a week like that is most of the women that come are like me. They’re not sure they belong. And even if they do think they belong, they don’t want to be there with any other people. They just want to be by themselves. And so part of the thing is you’re interacting with the group and you can’t really just opt out to just stay in your room the whole time alone, but it becomes the most favorite thing. And there’s so much camaraderie and for the first time telling stories and not feeling so isolated and alone and the laughter you would not think, it’s so much fun and you’re like, I’m going to Recovery Week and it’s so fun and people look at you like you’re insane. But that’s the hope of it, that it’s just my favorite week of the year.

Wendell: Yeah. As you’re talking, I mean, one of the funnest moments is when the room roars in laughter and when something said and the men just crack up and it’s just gone. It’s hilarious. It’s a sweet part of the week.

Dan: Well, and I think again, anyone hearing this has to have that sense of either you are bullshitting or you’re crazier than I feared because at one level, the extremity of tears opens up the potential for, in one sense, the freedom to laugh. And the reality of how seldom, because of shame, our stories ever have a chance to be engaged. And one of the issues of, at least for many people as they came, was either my story is so severe nobody can hear it or my story is so little, nobody will even think that there’s a legitimate reason for me to be here. So it’s amazing how people discount their stories at the beginning, no matter what their story is. But I think by the time people end, there is a level of honor for one another’s stories and for their own. Would you concur with that?

Sue: Yeah. It’s like one of the features of it that I’m sure you talked about in the previous episode is that there’s a small group time and in the small group, the participants get to tell their story as much or as little as they want. And even as they dismiss while they’re telling it or apologize for it or in some kind of way of like, oh, this is so vulnerable, but I do want to speak it because I don’t want to be alone with it. Then the other participants, the other women there who’ve never met this person, they don’t know them, but they can hear the story and they can recognize both the legitimacy of the story that’s being told that also very often ways that their own story relates to it in some way. Very different obviously, but there’s usually some part of someone else’s story that you go, yeah, I get that.

Wendell: And I think connected to that, Sue, when I think about the small group time and sometimes to see the men able to experience the other men’s responses to their story, I mean to actually have to see the men, they would think because of the culture that men would maybe dismiss their story, but to have their story on it and to see these men empathize and empathize with them in places that they never even had empathy for their own story. And so to see the men take the story in and to stand in agreement with them and to grieve with them is often a new experience for a lot of the men when they go through. And so that in itself is often so much part of the transformation because again, that empathetic witness, these men get to experience one another in a way that often men don’t come to expect that that’s actually going to happen.

Dan: Oh, it’s a brilliant point in that we hold our shame through the containment of contempt. And when that container is seen to be what it is, foul, in other words, it’s as significant as the original harm that I’ve held my body, my arousal, my feeling foolish that it happened once or more, all that, when that begins to dissolve to some degree, especially in being able to fight for and come to grieve with somebody else and you begin to note that, damn it, I would hold your story with so much more kindness than I’m now holding mine. And the ability then to be able to say, wow, I wouldn’t hold you with contempt, but I hold myself with contempt for something. Again, it may not be identical, but has enough overlap that I’m now struck, struck by in some sense, not merely the inconsistency and incongruity, but by the cruelty that I don’t hold you with the same level of contempt I still hold myself. I find that to be one of the outcomes that translates into a whole new sense of freedom. So when you begin to think about the people that you’ve worked with, and again, we’ll never ever tell a single story of any human being who’s gone through a Recovery Week, but we can create sort of an amalgamation of, shall we say, many bits that actually is a true story, but not a individual story. So what have you seen to be some of the effects for those who have gone through a Recovery Week? Or another way of putting it, have gone through any process to see freedom from shame?

Sue: I was thinking as you were both talking of one of the things that’s really unique is the diversity of ages. So you could have really young, in most of my groups, there have been some young ones and some older ones, and then of course some in the middle. And just looking at it, you’d think like, oh, I don’t know how this is going to go. Let’s say you have a woman who’s upper 60s or low 70s, and then you have a younger woman who’s 23 in the same group, which I have had multiple years. And you think like, oh my gosh. But the thing is, there’s so much that happens even… because oftentimes some participants have a daughter and then all the participants have mothers, but they don’t have perhaps a good, kind, empathetic mother. And so when they can talk and they’re not trained therapists usually, sometimes they are, but usually they’re not. And so they’re just humanly saying… I remember, I’ll never forget this and it’s so simple, but one of the participants said to another participant after she had told her story in parts, one of the participants said, “You never had a chance.” Just those brief words, “You never had a chance.” It was like all the things that clicked in for her, and that kind of was repeated throughout the week of how they could hold each other’s stories and see the binds or see the setups or see there wasn’t anything you could have done. Literally, I’ve seen women’s faces change. The visage just changes after a couple of days of that.

Wendell: And as you’re talking, and you bring up the age range, and what that remind me of several times over the years that I’ve done Men’s Recovery Week is to have that moment where you have a 60 something year old man in the group literally directly respond to a 25-year-old. And to have that 25-year-old have a story that involves never hearing an affirming voice of a father or a grandfather, just to have that older male in that group say something to him and just to watch him smile and weep because now that older male, unintentionally, they don’t know each other, but yet that older man became an affirming witness to his story. And I remember it shifted how he engaged the rest of the week. And that’s just an example of what I’ve seen over the years. But again, just to see each one of the men become objects, possibly become really good objects as they hear. And there are times where they become objects where it opens the door to deal with conflict as well. Because I’ve seen it where that older man became all of a sudden the grandfather that he didn’t want, if you will. But however, I’ve seen it able to be engaged and that began to be moments of transformation because I finally was able to say some tough things to a man who wasn’t my grandfather and he held it well.

Dan: Well that freedom, again, to know it makes perfect sense for both of you as you’ve named it. The other side to me of the coin is where you see a 65, and we’ve had men and women in their mid to later 70s, which of course I view as a moderately young age. The reality of, but there are still 20-year-olds there, meaning in that 75-year-old body is still a young boy or a young girl. And seeing a 25-year-old take on, in some ways, the wisdom that exists, but also is a calling to speak to the younger parts of that older man or woman, it’s an amazing process to realize we hold all our ages in our body, in our brain, and they all need to be engaged. And of course, in a week long process, they’re not going to be fully and completely engaged. But just by opening doors, and I think of it as a house, we get to walk into rooms where there has been walled off, shut down, maybe even the door disappear. But behind there is, again, this heartbreaking presence of judgment, of shame. And you begin to open the door and it’s foul. And in that presence of foulness, there’s conflict, there’s resistance. But what did the two of you see in terms of that growing freedom that the room has been engaged, engaged differently, frankly engaged well? What do you begin to see in the faces, bodies, interactions of the people that you work with? Let’s say we begin on Sunday, by Thursday, even by Friday. What things are some of the sweet gifts that you get to see?

Wendell: Kind of what we started and talk about in this conversation, I recall often seeing the men laugh from a different place. I think that the laughter can almost start out with a sense of fear, kind of a sense of still denying, kind of a sense of almost a guard. But to see the laughter come truly from a sense of freedom, a sense of joy, not that it’s where I struggle, but it’s something that I’ve let some joy come in. And I’ve allowed these men to be witnesses that have allowed me a freedom that I can laugh, not out of denial, but I can laugh because I’ve been taken in. And also not even taken because I’ve taken that little boy in. And I’m laughing out of a little less hatred for the little boy. I’m actually laughing because I actually am experiencing his laughter and I’m joining his laugh in a way that I’ve never been willing to. So that’s why that hits me.

Sue: Yeah, that’s so good. I was just thinking of the dynamic that is very unique to this kind of experience where we are very welcoming of honest questioning regarding God. And there are not that many places I’ve found that you can be honest about your questions and not have them shamed or talked over or spiritual bypass or something like that. And so to be able to let the participants at whatever age they want to engage or ask really hard, painful questions about God or about their spiritual life or about where they have held their own guilt or shame for reasons that were not legitimate, all those self-content, all that and wondering, does God hate me? All the things that we don’t just answer from our head, no, that’s ridiculous. But to be able to be like, no, what is your story saying? And as I was saying, to see the faces change, to see the posture change from kind of a burdened, heavy shoulders, like gray looking face, to, oh, there is some kind of hope, even though maybe I have now many more questions than I even started with, but there’s space for that and you can hold that and God becomes part of the healing process. Not that God did this to me, but God is weeping with me. God is caring for me in this. It’s very powerful, the unburdening, I guess is what I want to say.

Dan: Let me bring two categories and have you both respond. The first is the events of the original abuse, be it a single event or multiple events, the complication for most of those folks that come to a Recovery Week is whether male or female, there have been sexual struggles after that. And again, sexual struggles are part of being human, but when you bear the reality of the damage of some degree of violation, it just gets intensified, it gets complex, it gets interwoven. So one’s own struggles with past sexual partners. I don’t want to list all the potential sexual violations, but from the original abuse and the aftermath of sexual struggles, there’s just a war of being able to sort of, how do we look at our own judgment of our body in the original harm? How do we look at the judgment that we bear with regard to our own sexuality? So let me leave it at that. I have another question, but start with that. What have you seen for those who have been willing to walk into those rooms in that house?

Sue: That’s where I do think the interaction with the other participants that help us get there, because sometimes that’s a very fierce battle to be able to say, yeah, I like the idea of that, but for me to actually become tender to myself or tender to the younger me can be very, very entrenched and difficult. But when you see other people doing it and when they can even help you do it, like I said, they can offer a word or a look on their face or tears, it helps you get there. Yeah, that’s what’s coming to mind.

Wendell: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more, Sue. I think what comes to my mind is exactly that where I’ve seen so many men and they’re able to borrow from each other. And so the way you just put it, for so many men, it has had to start with, I can’t have empathy for myself right now, but I can take yours in. And that’s often a beginning step. And there’s something about being able to have those other folks in the group be able to do what you can. And it’s okay and do that without judgment. My introduction to this is borrowing your tears. I’m watching you weep for me. I don’t have mine right now, but I’m taking yours in. Thank you.

Sue: Yeah.

Wendell: And that being part of it. Yeah.

Dan: I mean, we’re very clear with folks from the very beginning. We’re not interested in an itinerary of your past sexual sin or present. The reality, again, of it is so hard to face where you’ve been harmed. And what we ask of people is, we’re not denying that you have sinned, that you have broken hearts, and that there is a profound need for the cleansing blood of Christ and for what it means to be forgiven. But the reality is that we can’t offer, in one sense, forgiveness because you spend the majority of your time refusing it out of judgment against, in some sense, the original violation of your body. It is easier for you to blame yourself and to judge your own sexual sin in a way in which you refuse the kindness of God. We go back to that stunning statement of Paul in Romans 2:4, “Why do you treat the kindness of God with contempt?” So part of the work here is, and part of the benefit we’ve seen with folks who have been through the Recovery Week, sometimes decades ago, is that there is a greater ability to see the difference between conviction and contempt, between judgment and in many ways just the honoring of I’m a broken man or woman.

Wendell: And I think Recovery Week is often opportunity to really see that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That’s what Recovery Week holds, because that’s a passage that many men and women come in with. Implicitly or explicitly, I come in with condemnation, whether it be from myself and others and even therefore Jesus as well. But I think that is often one of the pieces where I see a face change when they even take that passage in that, oh my gosh, there is really no condemnation.

Sue: Yeah. And when they have the chance, I’ve never, ever met a person who wants to condemn the other people. They’re so willing to be like, yes, for you. Yes, grace, grace for you, freedom for you. But like you said, Dan, those places of refusal. But one thing that I think is really important to say, and Dan, you say this many, many times in your teaching is we have no agenda. We’re not pushing people to get to a certain place. Everybody takes the time that it takes for their own process. And so sometimes some of these awarenesses or epiphanies or just willingness to accept and receive, it takes time. It takes hours, it takes days, it takes weeks. Sometimes it’s post-Recovery Week that these things happen. And I have the privilege over the years of working with lots of women who have gone through Recovery Weeks, and it’s like the gift that keeps on giving because the time it keeps unfolding more. And what you couldn’t see in Recovery Week, which a lot of times people are very overwhelmed as they would be, but it keeps on showing up. It keeps on coming up so you can take the time that you need.

Wendell: And I think Recovery Week, it handles the robustness. When we talk about forgiveness, when we talk about having no judgment, we’re not talking about it in this anemic way where don’t worry about it or having this dismissive way that we’re often invited, but inviting people to hold where they’ve harmed, where they’ve been harmed, having to hold it all and be able to experience someone saying, we heard it all. Jesus heard it all. And let’s talk about where you’ve been harmed. Let’s talk about the causes and what has led you to harm other people. And yet there is no condemnation, but let’s engage it.

Dan: Oh, I love that.

Wendell: So it’s not anemic.

Dan: Well, here’s my second question. I was going to burden you both with both questions, but when people do that to me, especially at my age, I can never remember the second question. It’s like, “I have two questions for you. I’m like, no, start with one and then we’ll see if there’s any room left. That’s my acknowledgement, even though two of you are vastly younger. So here’s the second question. Relationships. And what happens is shame and the power of shame and the power of judgment begins. Again, we’re not making the claim it’s all resolved, but when there is a significant hole in that shame and it begins to dissipate, it begins to ameliorate to at least a degree, there’s freedom. Both of you have used that. And part of the way of talking about that is I still, after doing this almost 38 years, I’m still stunned at the laughter and my own laughter in the midst of such deep heartache and horror. Now, what happens with relationships as you’ve seen with regard to friendships, marriages, jobs, et cetera?

Wendell: I will say this, I’ve seen a spectrum. I’ve seen relationships just become… they have much more depth. The conversations are different, what they’re willing to engage. You see that with the men as they relate to each other throughout the week, how they start talking in the beginning and what you see talking about at the end of the week. But when I talk with men afterwards, it’s like they long for more in their relationships. And I’ve seen where the relationships have become tougher because of they’ve been transformed and they’ve healed and now they don’t want to do the same things the relationships were held before. So now I’ve seen where the relationships have been disrupted, but disrupted because something has needed to change and it’s made them question, does the other person want to change? I’ve seen a lot of this in the marriages. So it’s exposed a lot. So the relationships have become harder that way. But again, and they’ve began fighting differently. So they’re not fighting, but they begin to fight differently in a way that is actually towards growth. So we’re not saying that relationships, they won’t be disruptive. Oh no, we’re saying that there’s going to be sweet death and robust, but we’re also saying having men be willing to take in the disruption in a way that they’ve never been able to take in before when it comes to the relationships to handle it better.

Sue: Yeah. I mean, I think to engage this material much less come to a Recovery Week is a huge risk. And when you take the risk, you don’t know how it’s going to go. I’m with you, Wendell. I’ve seen relationships both with spouses, partners, parents get better, and I’ve seen relationships with spouses, partners, parents get worse. You just don’t know because you’re only responsible for yourself. You can only address your story yourself and you can’t address someone else’s story and you can’t make someone respond to you differently. Some people think that if you come to Recovery Week, if you engage this material, you’re going to be fixed, you’re going to be healed, thank God, now our lives will be better because they want you to change and maybe you do want to change, but it’s not in that way. But what I think is so important is just the honest being willing to look and being able to tell the truth and to have those compassionate witnesses like you were both naming. And it kind of calls some things up that have probably been buried that maybe should have been dealt with or addressed years ago that now becomes impossible to ignore. And that I think is a good thing, but it can be a very challenging thing too.

Dan: Well, shame, we know only too well, is a lens through which we interpret reality and interpret relationships. And when that lens begins to get cleansed, where you begin to see at least much more truthfully than you might have before, relationships get more complex because before they fit within the realm of judgment and it’s somehow, be it other centered contempt or self-contempt, it somehow solidifies structures. When that begins to melt and all of a sudden there’s more fluidity, more movement, more depth as you put it, Wendell, so well, you begin to go, oh my goodness, this is now a bit more dangerous, more alive, more what our hearts were meant for. I had a conference that we did in Atlanta so many moons ago and had someone come up, a couple come up and the wife was holding a copy of the Wounded Heart, which is such an honor to still be able to hold the book and sign it and the husband looked at me and he said, as she handed the book asking would I sign it, “Of course.” And he looked at me, he goes, “I hated that book.” Thank goodness he did use the past tense. “I hated that book. “And he said,” I burned two of the copies. I don’t know if it affects your sales. “And I’m like,” Yeah, baby. But he said, “It took a long time for me not to hate you and to realize that in so many ways she married me in order to avoid having to deal with her own judgment because I’m the one who provided her with judgment. And when we began to address something of the reality of the nature of our own marriage, it was hard and horrible, but there has been…” And he looked at me in tears and just said, “Can I give you a hug?” So I think that’s one of those elements to which the people who come are. I mean, many of them have pondered the process of whether they want to come to a week like this for a long season. And many have seen really good therapists and have done good work, but there is something about the intensity of that process, the group interaction, but far more what Becky now calls just the turbo Holy Spirit. There just seems to be significant work done by the courage, by the honor, by the disruption. And before we end, I would love to have a sentence or two from each of you. How have you changed through this process?

Wendell: I’m going to go back to the word that just sits with me a lot now. I feel like I am a much more integrated person, but that means I’ve been able to take in the sweet parts, the tough parts, the traumatic parts of my story, take them in and allow my story to transform me and give me courage and knowing that that is going to be an ongoing process.

Dan: Sue.

Sue: Well, it’s funny, my answer will go back to some of the things I said, but I think the thing that has surprised and delighted me is I started being part of Recovery Weeks without hardly knowing at all where in my story was going to surface. Not even immediately, decades later, still as recently as this past recovery. You sort of think like, well, I’m going to get to the end of all my stories. I’m going to finally hit that bottom. It’s like, nope. I mean, for all the years, and it has surprised me. It’s kind of dumbfounded me, left me a little bit speechless on how could this have been here the whole time and I’ve not seen it. And also, I didn’t see it because I wasn’t ready to see it apparently. And just the kindness of God through the years of this thread of my story and what it means to be loved, to be known, to be created and made into more of who God has always intended and made me to be. Recovery Weeks have been huge and huge in that. And maybe it’s the through line, honestly, for all the work and all the years.

Dan: Well, and I concur in that Wendell knows that this last Recovery Week, a story arose that I’d never told before. And as it’s pretty epidemic in me, I can tell a story and I’m done with it. And the facilitators who I have the privilege of working with kind of brought my own story back with a, “Did you sort of expect us not to hear this? Did you think that we wouldn’t be grieved and want to engage?” I’m like, it was, “I’m good. I’m good.” And the force, the ferocity, but the kindness invited me back into my own story. So I think the thing I would add is one of the things we have seen, we certainly know for the three of us is we’re given so much more ground for gratitude than to say the privilege of working with these men comes back for me, the privilege of working with the two of you. You are such manifestations of the glory of God and to be in this, really the best weeks of my life to be this with you all. I hope I get to do this for at least another 20 years. So thank you both.

Wendell: Thank you.

Sue: Thank you, Dan.