Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Today on the program, Tina Cahill, executive director of Recovered Souls, is with us to talk about that organization that helps folks go through the process of substance use and recovery, and also about their annual walk that is happening on Sunday, October 25, at Page and Field. Tina, great to see you.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Thank you. Great to see you, too. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: You're very welcome. It's a pleasure to bring this opportunity to folks to learn about recovered souls, first of all, and then to get them to come out to the walk on Sunday.
What's recovered souls, Tina?
[00:00:30] Speaker B: So Recovered Souls, I actually came on board in 2021 in January. So January this year, I will have been here for six years as their executive director.
We're a small foundation basically supporting people in recovery.
Our main focus right now is to help people with their sober living after they've gone through treatment, and they need another place to go for a while that structured peer support and giving them a space to get away from maybe any of their triggers that they might be having.
It's kind of controversial because there are some sober homes that maybe aren't doing the work that we would like them to do. But Recovered Souls works with some partners in the sober living world that are really gold standards. And they do a great job supporting people because, you know, you might have a mom or a dad who's having trouble with substances, and.
And they've gone through treatment for a month or so, and then to go back home right away maybe isn't a great situation for them. So the sober living gives people more time to kind of settle into their recovery, feel stronger, have support with their peers, and go to meetings and things like that that help them to continue to grow in their recovery, you know, and so that's really helpful. And the second piece that we've really developed over the years is professional development again, you know, some people maybe have struggled with substances early in their life and never really had an opportunity to build a professional career or, you know, a life where they can sustain their living with a job or employment. And some people maybe have had work, but they've fallen off or had issues because of their substances, and they want to grow in their professional development. So we've been helping people with different kinds of licensing, degree program, certifications, helping them navigate process so that they can figure out what makes sense for their next move and then help them figure out what they need to do and be successful. So I spent almost seven years at Quincy College, and my whole life has been in education, and when I was at Quincy College, I did see that people would come in and get intimidated by process.
Maybe financial aid or figuring out which certificate or which degree or license would really make sense for what their goals were.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Too much information. Right.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: All at once. And it's hard. Right. And if you're feeling any kind of insecurity about how to manage a process, it can be scary, and people usually will walk away.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: You shut down, you walk away. Just say, I can't deal with this.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just too much.
Or I'll come back. Yeah, I'll come back tomorrow. And then we'll never see them again.
You know, it's the truth, and it's unfortunate, and that's what would happen. And so we've really. I saw that, and I felt like this was a good place to kind of bring some. Some guidance for people.
And that's what we've been doing. And we've had some really good success with that. So we want to continue to. I'm actually, you know, I have a great partnership with Quincy College. I'm having some communications with massasoi, which are great because they're a good entry for people. Affordable.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: And talking with Plymouth right now to put together a program to help people in recovery get some economic development behind them so that they can get jobs in the community that are helpful.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: Yeah. I was gonna ask how you kind of find the folks to help, you know?
[00:04:20] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I think, for me, which was. Which was really interesting, this opportunity came to me, and I wasn't sure.
I wasn't sure how I could help, let's put it that way.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Fair enough.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: And so once I got there, I started making relationships, but meeting people, people in the recovery world, between the treatment centers, the soba homes, just people in general who are in the recovery community. And with conversation and building relationships and really getting to understand maybe what the needs are, we've been able to make some great connections and figure out how we could help and what the best steps would be. And I just think my background at that point just kind of made sense.
And, you know, knowing some people in the recovery space that have had issues themselves that I can trust and rely on for some good feedback has been really helpful. And we've been. I think we've been really successful in meeting our needs, you know, meeting the needs of people in the community.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: So it's been great.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: Recovery is a lifelong process. Right. I mean, it's not just quick getting clean, it's staying.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's. That's the point. And here's the thing, you know, again, when we talk about the sober homes, if someone goes right home to their environment or wherever they were living, not necessarily just with families, but you could go back to an apartment where you live with a friend and you could have your dealer around the corner or friends who are using and it just doesn't, you know, people are human, right. In that situation. And then in the work front, you know, I think about people who, let's say they work at Dunkin Donuts, which is a great career. And I'm not a multi billion dollar corporation. It's a corporation, but for people, if they're coming out of recovery and they're going and working at Dunkin Donuts every morning, right, and working 40 hours or 50 hours, and they're making just enough to really make the rent or pay for their bills or.
And then they get sick and they don't work for a week because maybe they had Covid or the flu or whatever, now they're behind, you know, and to me, that's a place where people can get triggered again, you know, and saying, hey, I'm trying to do all the right things, you know, I'm working, I'm going to meetings, I'm, you know, with friends and I can't get ahead.
That can be a trigger.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: And this is why I felt the professional development piece was important, because you want to help people get to a place where they can sustain their living, be comfortable and not be stressed. And if we can help them do that, that's helpful for their recovery, you
[00:07:10] Speaker A: know, Must be so gratifying for you to see the success.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: It is. It really, you know, people ask us all the time, they'll say, you know, what's the success rate? You know, it's a natural question, right? It doesn't work if you help 10 people.
I always say, you know, I don't know, someone could be in recovery for a year and someone could be five years, someone could be 40, you don't know. And they could fall off, you know. But when you help, if we have 10 people and we help two, okay, those two people, it's not just them, right? It's their families, their friends, their colleagues, the community in general. You know, you're helping a lot of people behind that person, you know, And I, you know, I don't usually share this, but my father was an alcoholic in the early years of our life, and my mother was a strong woman who went to Al Anon and helped to bring the message back to him, to get him to Go to AA and to go and get into a life, a sober lifestyle.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: That was very hard for her too.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: I'm sure it was hard for her a long time ago, years ago, you know.
And what that did was really turned our family around. You know, we struggled a lot in those first few years and.
And because of her strength and then his strength, and then he was sober 40 years by the time he passed away.
And one of the things that I think is really important for us to understand is that AA is really a strong community. It's worldwide, millions and millions and millions of people.
And part of their philosophy is to help others to get to where he was. And he specialized, spent the rest of his years helping people and going to meetings and being with people and helping them.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: It's a great success story. Because addiction, whether or not it's in your family or not, it affects everyone.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: It does.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: As a community or as a family.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Exactly. And if you're working with someone and you have a friend that you work with and you see them spiral and get to a point where if you're compassionate, you care and you care for that person, you know, your family, your friends again, your community. We see it in the community all the time.
And so we're just playing a little piece where, you know, there's a lot of bigger entities like AA and treatment centers and that do a lot of work. And if we can support in our way, that's what we do.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Absolutely. The one way to do that is to go to the Quincy Recovery Walk.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Yeah, tell me about that.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: So we have the Quincy Recovery Walk. It's going to be Sunday, October 25th. We're starting at around 9:30.
We'll have refreshments and music and, you know, and some things for people to do at the field we're going to be at this year. We're going to be at fax and field, where the track and field is.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: Because we had a little bit of a confusion because Pageant Field is going to be occupied by. They haven't banned the Massachusetts band competition.
So there's going to be all kinds of teams here and they're going to be taking up the stadium and Pageant Field.
So we had to move down the street.
Still a lovely day, which is going to be great. The field is. The track is gorgeous, so it's going to be great.
So what we've done is a few years ago, a couple of people who worked in the recovery world asked me to help them put together this recovery walk.
And so we did. And it Started out small, and we recognized some people. And the focus is really to celebrate people in recovery, to recognize people who.
Individuals or organizations that do the work. And then we take a little moment of intention for people who continue to struggle and, you know, take a moment and hope that, you know, they will also get clean and sober at some point. So we kind of say it's united in recovery service and hope.
And so we started recognizing people. And this year, we're recognizing Willie Ostergai and Diana Clary.
Willie actually is a Quincy resident, and I've known him for a long time, and. And I had no idea that. I had no idea about his history.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Just like you talked about it.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: It's really interesting to see one of the. I would say the biggest gift I have is to meet these people. And I am lucky because I got to sit down with Willie. Used to work out with him at the ymca, but we never really had a conversation in depth like this. And. And then also with this woman, Diana. And I've been fortunate to be able to sit with them at lunch or breakfast and really have a long conversation and learn about them, but also learn about the work that they've done in our community and in the recovery space. And it's so impressive. I mean, I can't even speak about the work that they've done without getting kind of emotional and really understand. Yeah, they're unbelievable. They're great people.
And together they have 68 years in recovery, and in that time, have also given themselves in service to others, to help others, to meet the goal of being clean and sober and joining the recovery community.
I'll give you a little background on Willie.
I had to write it down because I didn't want to miss anything, but he's 55 years in recovery. He was over 40 years as a Boston fireman.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Is that right?
[00:13:19] Speaker B: In Boston. A member of the fire department.
While he was in the Boston fire department. During that time, he was influential in bringing the Boston fire department employee assistance program, which was to help individuals who needed behavioral health or addiction services.
And then he also was influential in bringing that to the international association of firefighters, the behavioral health program. He also was a critical incident stress management program initiated that where when he was there, he led the critical incident stress team for six weeks on the ground at 9 11.
And that. Katrina, is that right? Yeah, Hurricane Katrina. And then this is really something that's special is he served on the Gavin foundation board for 32 years, and for 28 years, he was the chair of the Gavin.
And he also helped to establish the first high school in Massachusetts, the Willie Ostergai High School, for students with addiction that they went to this high school. And what he would say, and I'm paraphrasing, is basically, you know, these kids have addiction issues, and then they go into high school and they're around this environment and influence. And he said, you know, it's better to have them together where we can support them and help them to understand what's happening in their addiction.
So the Willie Ostegai High School, it's in Boston, and. And then also brought the first, I think six years ago, the first woman's halfway house, Eileen's House, which is also in Boston.
So he's done incredible work.
He's a Quincy guy.
And I don't think people really.
There has not been a light shot, shined on him or shone on him. I don't know how you would say it, but that really shares the work that he's done. But I think the other piece that's really important, and I'll say it again, is the AA piece and being a strong member of the AA community, because even though this work that he's done here, I think he's touched probably hundreds, thousands of people just in their meetings, in their home group, and supporting people in the AA community.
And it's same thing with Diana Cleary, you know, the 12 steps in AA. And she's a woman who has really championed women.
Diana has 13 years in recovery, and she runs now three women's sober homes in our community.
Over 40 beds for women, structured gold standard sober homes for women. And we don't have enough of them. I don't even know there. There's a.
Not many, you know, in comparison to what's available for men.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: And they have a beautiful structured accountability meetings, peer support. They bring programs in, you know, to. For. For people to learn.
And very active in the AA community. And she's also. Diana is active in. There's a South Shore Recovery Alliance, Braintree, has a partnership with people, and then they have mash, which is an entity that certifies sober homes. And she helps to train managers and sober homeowners so that they're also kind of offering quality sober living for individuals.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. So these are two individuals, really, that have found a calling through addiction and then through their experiences in recovery and decided to give that back.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that is like one of the capstones of AA is to, you know, work your recovery, but also to be of service to others and help them be an example Help them to get to a place where they can be successful.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Well, it gives them a goal to achieve. It shows them there is light at the end of the tunnel, right? Yeah. There is a way out.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Good example.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Not easy, but doable.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: I think when you help someone, you feel good about yourself, right?
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Oh, for sure.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: You feel better about yourself and stronger. Right. And then it makes you stronger in your recovery or whatever you're doing, but then also gives you an ability to help others when you feel more confident.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Absolutely. So they'll both be recognized at the moment.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: They're both going to be recognized on Sunday. And they're amazing. And I'm really, I'm grateful that they have agreed to join us on Sunday, but I'm more grateful for the work that they do because. Because they. And they're quiet leaders, which is really important too, you know. So.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: So there, there's a walk, right? There's a three mile walk.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: So actually this year you might be looking at the. Do you have pageant field on this side?
[00:18:38] Speaker A: I do.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Okay, so that's an old. Because we had a switch.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: So we're gonna be at Fox.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: All right. So let's throw that away.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Put that down. We're gonna be at fax and field.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: We're gonna start at 9:30.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: The walk is gonna be a two mile walk.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Which some people are happy about. Right. And if they want, they can do an extra loop or two around the track.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: Oh, so it's just on the track?
[00:18:57] Speaker B: No, we're gonna do. We're actually gonna go down Southern Artery, Furnace Brook, little bit of the beach and then. And then loop around and come back.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: Which is great. And I think we're gonna have beautiful weather. It looks like it's gonna be in the 60s, which is gonna be perfect.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: That'd be great. Yeah.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: And yeah, I think it, you know, and again, the other thing that I like about this walk is a lot of times there are big galas to recognize people, but I feel like it's a cost prohibitive for people in recovery to go to some of these galleries because they can be costly.
So I like the idea of having this walk when it was presented to us a few years ago, because everyone can come, it's free to walk. Okay. We have some great sponsors and so that it's available to us that we don't have to. And people in the recovery world can come and enjoy the day and celebrate these people, celebrate their recovery again and have a moment of intention for people who maybe continue to Struggle.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: So, yeah. So that's why we, like, we really appreciate the event too, because it's available to everyone.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: And any other activities or events happening that day during the walk.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: No, we're going to have. We're going to have Jimmy Peters, who's. Who's a local guy. He's going to play music.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: Oh, fun. Okay.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: And we're going to have face painting for kids and hot chocolate, donuts, hot dogs, ice cream.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: A nice fall festival.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Some cornhole, of course. And the walk.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: And the walk.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: You know, and the walk. It's.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Which.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: Which is nice.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: So we've usually. It usually works out really well and we have a good time.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: I was gonna say, about how many folks do you think?
[00:20:41] Speaker B: I don't know. You know, people ask me and it's. It's so hard to predict because we really don't have a registry. We have some people registered, but it's not required just show up. So people just show up and. And whoever comes. The Quincy police will be helping us to manage the route, which they've been great. And yeah, we're really lucky. It's going to be a great day for people.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Yeah. For folks who'd like to learn more. Tina. About recovered souls or about the walk.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Yeah. You can go to recoveredsouls.org and the walk information is on there and it gives a little bit of a recap of who we are as a foundation.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Great. Excellent. Anything else we should share with folks right now?
[00:21:21] Speaker B: I think that's great. Come and enjoy the walk and we'd love to see you there.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: Great. Thanks for stopping by and tell us. Thank you.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Always a pleasure.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: You too. Thank you.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Thanks for watching us here at AM Quincy. I'm Joe Catalano and we'll see you next time.
