Recovering Together Cafés: Creating Space for Families to Heal Together

Recovery is often treated as an individual journey. Be Strong Families’ Recovering Together Cafés were developed around a different idea: families need opportunities to navigate recovery together.

To create the approach, Be Strong Families convened partners with expertise in substance use disorder and recovery, including Archways in New Hampshire and NET in Philadelphia. Those partners brought deep experience working alongside individuals and families affected by substance use, while Be Strong Families brought its expertise in developing questions and facilitating strength-based conversations through the Café model.

Together, they developed Recovering Together Cafés and a conversation deck designed specifically for recovery communities. The process also centered lived experience, using focus groups with participants to help determine the questions families actually needed space to explore. Michelle Lennon of Archways described the principle behind that process as “nothing for us without us.”

For Michelle, that approach was personal. Her own family spent years navigating recovery after her husband developed an opioid addiction following a serious accident. She knew firsthand how difficult it was to find opportunities for families to participate in recovery together.

Archways first learned the foundation of the approach through Parent Café and Vitality Café training before helping develop Recovering Together Cafés. Michelle brought substance use disorder expertise to the work, while Be Strong Families led the Café component.

Nearly a decade later, Recovering Together Cafés have become part of Archways’ core programming and have reached hundreds of people. What began as a collaborative development process is now simply part of how the organization supports families.

The relationship has continued to generate new learning. Michelle and Be Strong Families later worked together around relationships between foster families and parents affected by addiction. Michelle says that experience changed how she approaches people who want to support families but may not yet understand substance use disorder.

For Archways, Recovering Together Cafés are no longer a new initiative. They are part of the framework. For Be Strong Families, the work demonstrates something that can extend beyond recovery: when communities identify conversations that need to happen, BSF can bring together subject-matter expertise, lived experience, and its expertise in developing meaningful Café conversations to help create tools designed around those needs.

What conversation does your community need to have?

Recovering Together Cafés began with a need for families affected by substance use to have different conversations about recovery. Other communities have different conversations waiting to happen. Be Strong Families can work alongside organizations, experts, and people with lived experience to develop Café conversation tools around the issues that matter to their communities.