Unsettling Recovery
A 6-month online course for white-bodied folks.
Let’s unsettle this
This is a somatic and intuitive online, weekly course for white-bodied folks of moving through the ways in which settler colonialism informs white people's relationship to substance use, and how struggles with substance use systemically is informed by the history of settler colonialism and systems of oppression.
Historically, substance use understanding, resources, and recovery has centered the perspective and comfort of white, cis, heterosexual, able-bodied, straight-sized people. This gatekeeping has led to a lack of grounding in the historical and systemic context that informs struggles with substance use and perspectives that do not challenge the ways in which these struggles also require support that moves through and supports a dismantling of these systems from an individual and collective lens.
How much of substance use recovery is held back from its fullest potential because of this gatekeeping, white-centering lens?
This 6 month online course will explore this question and tap into the possibility for healing and transformation when we contextualize the history and systems that inform our lives, the lives of our ancestors, and our society at large.
Options available for certificate of completion.
Who is this course for?
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You are white and have experienced struggles with substance use or struggles in relationship to others' use.
You don’t have to identify with any specific labels (i.e. alcoholic, addict, sober/sober curious/al anon/adult child of alcoholics, substance use counselor/sober coach) in order to be in this space (though you can!). We ask those without lived experience around struggles with substance use to not participate in this space.
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You're here for exploring the interconnection of whiteness, systemic oppression, and substance use.
If you’re completely closed off to this notion, this is not gonna be a good time for any of us. There are a myriad of other options that will never challenge this for you if that feels right.
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You're not seeking this as a place to seek support specifically to get or stay sober.
This space is not specifically designed with the intention of supporting the needs of folks beginning to get sober. Though this may be a supportive space for folks beginning their journeys (especially given how white comfort-centering so many recovery resources are), supporting people to get sober is not the focus of the space.
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You're excited to get into some practice of recovering and returning from the impacts of whiteness, settler colonialism, and substance use.
This is not purely a lecture space. Though there will be historical context setting, so much of white comfort lives in staying in the head, intellectualizing or in spiritual bypass. If getting into the body, especially around colonization, whiteness, and substance use feels beyond your capacity in this container, this might not be a good fit.
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You are here for understanding, unpacking, and mobilizing around the connection of substance use struggles and Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty.
Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty will be centered throughout this work.
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You are ready to be self-accountable for your feelings.
This experience will likely be activating. Ideally you have collective support and other resources to support processing and care around what comes up.
Disclaimer
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This course is not a substitute for therapy or substance abuse counseling.
None of the facilitators in this space are licensed mental health professionals or substance use/substance abuse counselors. This offering is informed by lived experience as a queer, non-binary, two-spirit, Afro-Taino neurodivergent person in long-term recovery from struggles with substance use, and study of systemic oppression, colonization, and somatics. If you feel like you need the support of a therapist and/or substance use counselor, we invite you to seek out other resources.
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We will not center white comfort. We will not coddle whiteness.
When whiteness is activated, it so often asks Black, Indigenous, and people of color to comfort it and to withhold the intensity of the truth of colonization, white supremacy, racial capitalism, patriarchy, ableism, and fatphobia and the need for mobilization for liberation in because white people are perceived as fragile.
We won’t do that here.
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We’ll have an application process and a 1:1 before being admitted to the program.
In order to be admitted, you must fill out an application. We will then reach out to schedule a 30 minute zoom call where we will determine if we would like to offer you a spot.
We only have 8-10 spots available for this round of this offering in order to create an intimate container to support care and transformation.
Ready to revolutionize your recovery?
Applications open are open!
Deadline to apply: Wednesday May 31st, midnight PDT.
The Learning Container
The Learning Container will meet bi-weekly over Zoom for six months broken down into three parts:
Context: Grounding in the history of settler colonialism and its interconnection to substance use.
Practice: Rooting into practices that support unsettling as individuals and for your lineage.
Praxis: Mobilizing into action with the context and practices that we have explored.
Participants will engage with pre-recorded course materials made by Carolyn Collado (they/them) and process live with other participants and facilitators Kali Boehle-Silva (they/them) or Em Morrison (she/her).
The Processing Container
The Processing Container will be facilitated bi-weekly over Zoom, on weeks the Learning Container doesn’t meet.
This space will serve as an opportunity to support integration and processing from what has come up as participants the core material presented by the. This is a space open for vulnerability, to be in the feels, and process and make mistakes around settler colonialism, white supremacy, whiteness, and substance use without depending on Black, Indigenous, and people of color to carry the emotional labor. The space will be emergent, shifting according to what comes up in the container and over the course of our time together.
Kali Boehle-Silva (they/them) or Em Morisson (she/her) will facilitate the Processing Container.
What we’ll explore:
Part 1: Context
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This week, we’ll unpack the historical question and consideration of substance use. We will explore the ways what we know today as substances have been considered throughout history, the continued questions around them and their use being “good or bad”, and how this impacts how we police our substance use as well as the substance use of those in our lives and our societies at large.
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This week, we’ll explore the historical contexts that led up to colonization in Europe. We will look at its interconnectedess with substance use and how this informed colonization.
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This week, we’ll explore the colonial roots of sugar and alcohol production in the Western Hemisphere, its fueling of the Trans Atlantic slave trade and the genocide and land theft of Indigenous peoples, and how that birthed racial capitalism and the prison industrial complex as we know it today.
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In this week, we’ll explore the cost of white supremacy and the creation and practice of whiteness. We’ll explore the dehumanization of whiteness, and impact this has had for your lineages, your connection to body, to the planet, to relationships with all beings.
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This week, we’ll explore the cost that systems of oppression and the weaponization of struggles with substance use and the gatekeeping of support structures for Black, Indigenous, and people of color around substance use has had. We will emphasize the inextricable, unavoidable connection of racial capitalism and substance use.
What we’ll explore:
Part 2: Practice
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This week, we will explore our relationship to intuition and self-trust and how that can guide us in our recovery, to reparational work, and liberation.
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In this week, we’ll sit with connection to ancestors as a source of support in our recovery journeys and as a source of reparational liberation work.
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This week, we’ll explore the relationship to body. We will look at the ways that settler colonialism and substance use struggles inform our relationship to our bodies, and our bodies as a guide for liberation.
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This week, we’ll ground in unsettling as a process of dismantling the way as white settlers you and your ancestors have related to nature and the Earth, and its intersection to recovery and reparational work.
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In this week, we’ll unpack the ways that recovery efforts relate to community building and collectivism, its roots in wisdom of Black and Indigenous communities, and how white supremacy informs and hinders capacity to be a part of community and collective.
What we’ll explore:
Part 3: Praxis
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This week, we’ll review the takeaways from prior weeks, and reflect on the potential of recovery informed by unsettling as a catalyst for dismantling systems of oppression.
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This week, we will explore the ways that we can be in action as we unsettle our recovery for our liberation and the liberation of the collective.
Let’s get into practice together.
Applications are open!
Deadline to apply: Wednesday May 31st, midnight PDT.
Sliding Scale Pricing
Struggles with substances has been an intentional weapon of colonization and empire-building across generations. The cultivation of alcohol and sugar in the Western Hemisphere created the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. It is responsible for the enslavement of Black people and the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the theft of land and cultural practices used to exploit to this day. Mass distilled alcohol and the weaponization of plant medicines like cannabis and coca against Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color has threatened our communities and destabilized our homelands for centuries. Major institutions and families have built enormous wealth from their sale of, distribution of, and policing of alcohol and other substances.
Charging these prices is reparational. Not only does it support myself, a person whose island of Kiskeya was the beginning of the colonial project, whose ancestors were ripped from their African homeland to be part of the incredible violence of colonization, where slavery to cultivate alcohol proceeds to this day, but also so this work can thrive, prosper, and resources can be redistributed to support the growth of this work for queer, trans, intersex, Black, Indigenous, and people of color who have been impacted by this history and to whom recovery that centers these histories and our needs in response has been inaccessible for centuries. And for whom struggles with these substances continues to create immense profit.
Unsettling Recovery is being offered on a sliding scale. Please consider purchasing at a price where you are most able to pay.
The lower tiers have limited availability and are reserved for those who need them. Purchases in the higher tiers keep the lower tiers available and provide more access to create spaces and resources for queer, trans, intersex, Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
Certificates of completion and bonus coaching with pay-in-full
Certificates of completion are only available at the highest tier. Certificates of completion are not an endorsement of the people or organizations who receive them, and are not an indication of whether or not the people or organizations who receive them are safe. They are merely an indication that a person or organization has completed this course.
Two 30 minute one-on-one coaching sessions with Carolyn or Kali/Em will be provided for those who pay in full. These can be booked at any time during the course.
Take a breath.
Notice what comes up in the body as you consider the different price offerings.
Sliding scale credit to Worts and Cunning. Shoutout to Trauma of Money for this guidance of somatic reflection and trauma activation with money.
$10,000 or $1,667/month on payment plan
Certificate/Institutional Rate
This tier is for those who are being backed by their organizations to attend as well as those with wealth privilege. This tier is for you if you have intergenerational wealth, can comfortably afford this rate, if you have ancestors who built intergenerational wealth off the mass distribution of or policing of alcohol and other drugs.
This rate will include a certificate of completion at the end of the program.
Two 30 minute one-on-one coaching sessions with Carolyn will be provided for those who pay in full. These can be booked at any time during the course.
Purchasing at this rate makes more spaces available at lower tiers and for work for queer, trans, intersex, Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
$6,000 total or $1,000/month on payment plan
Pay-it-Forward Rate
This tier is for you if you have intergenerational wealth, can comfortably afford this rate without sacrifice or hardship, if you have ancestors who built intergenerational wealth off the mass distribution of or policing of alcohol and other drugs.
Two 30 minute one-on-one coaching sessions with Carolyn will be provided for those who pay in full. These can be booked at any time during the course.
Purchasing at this rate makes more spaces available at lower tiers and for work for queer, trans, intersex, Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
$3,000 total or $500/month on payment plan
Medium rate
This rate is limited to people who are taking this to support their personal recovery.
Two 30 minute one-on-one coaching sessions with Carolyn will be provided for those who pay in full. These can be booked at any time during the course.
This tier is open for for those with significant debt, living paycheck to paycheck, and/or who have access to steady income, and can continuously meet basic needs such as housing, food, healthcare, child care, etc. This rate may be appropriate for those for whom paying this rate would be a sacrifice, but wouldn’t pose financial hardship.
$1,500 total or $250/month on payment plan
Low rate
This rate is limited to people who are taking this to support their personal recovery.
Two 30 minute one-on-one coaching sessions with Carolyn will be provided for those who pay in full. These can be booked at any time during the course.
This tier is open for those in significant debt, who struggle to meet their basic needs like food, housing, child care, health care, and are living paycheck to paycheck. This rate is for those for whom they could not otherwise have access to this space without this rate.
No refunds will be issued for this coaching program.
Let’s unsettle this.
Applications are open!
Deadline to apply: Wednesday May 31st, midnight PDT.
FAQs
Why is it weekly? Why is it so long?
So much of what is catered to white folks in engaging with systemic oppression is short-term, bandaid solutions centered around keeping white folks comfortable. You can go to your job’s diversity, equity, and inclusion space and they can check off that they did surface-level work without changing what is fundamentally harming folks.
This course is intentionally designed where we are meeting consistently, across a long period of time, engaging with the same folks on these topics creates a sense of safety to move through these topics that live in our bodies, that we have lived experience with, that can feel so unsettling to confront.
It takes time to sit with these concepts and build upon them, and hope that 6 months can provide that time to integrate consistently.
We hope that meeting consistently over time together helps create the conditions that can facilitate transformation and change, which is so needed when it comes to the intergenerational harms of white supremacy.
Is it okay if I miss sessions? Will there be recordings available?
Yes! Recordings will be available for each session.
Let’s be in practice of possibility together.
Applications are open!
Deadline to apply: Wednesday May 31st, midnight PDT.
Carolyn Collado (they/them) is a coach, writer, decolonial dreamer, and founding steward of Recovery for the Revolution. They are a queer, non-binary, Afro-Taino, neurodivergent human in long-term recovery.
Carolyn believes recovery from a decolonized, liberation-centered lens can point the collective towards liberation. They name how intergenerational, historical colonial trauma and the pressures of racial capitalism impact our relationship to self, each other, the planet, and the divine. They believe bringing to light what we have hidden in shame and fear can bring about transformative healing and community.
Their facilitation is rooted in practice of returning to the body, of pause, of grounding in the wisdom of the ancestors, of deconstructing the ways in which academia and white supremacist notions of authority show up and highlighting the ways of wisdom of queer, trans, intersex, Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
Carolyn is not a licensed mental health professional or substance use counselor. This course is not a substitute for therapy or substance use counseling.
Kali is a white, queer + nonbinary writer and facilitator. They study systems of harm like capitalism, white supremacy, and neoliberalism, and ask what we might learn from our bodies, our relationships, and the earth about making a different kind of world together.
Their facilitation is grounded in questions, stories, and somatic practices that help people identify the ways systems work in and on and between us, and the skills needed to live in ways that move us toward reciprocity, connection, and repair.
Kali comes from European colonizers, settlers, and immigrants who worked with their hands, lived near water, and who chose allegiance to systems of harm and whiteness over collective care and struggle. They have their grandmother’s laugh, and her love of trees.
Kali is not a licensed mental health professional or substance use counselor. This course is not a substitute for therapy or substance use counseling.
Em Morrison (she/her) is a white, cisgender, bisexual queer facilitator and educator. She brings an anti-oppression lens to all of her work, whether it is conflict transformation, culture change, anti-racist consciousness-raising, or trauma-informed mindfulness teaching.
Her facilitation style is grounded and heartful, with a dash of playfulness, humor, and laughter. Em believes in looking with clear eyes to honestly appraise what's arising in the moment, with a lot of care and space for holding whatever we find.
Em has been in recovery from substance abuse for over a decade, an achievement of individual freedom that she knows was made possible by a collective community of care. Her journey continually inspires her to seek impactful approaches to community healing and transformative justice. She feels the greatest access to belonging amongst other rad youth workers and teens on teen mindfulness retreats she facilitates.
Em is not a licensed mental health professional or substance use counselor. This course is not a substitute for therapy or substance use counseling.
Lineage
Settler colonialism and white supremacy would have us erasing our sources, especially those of Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
Here are the lineages that inform this work.
Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation by rev. angel kyodo williams, dr yasmin sydullah, and Lama Rod Owens
Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger by Lama Rod Owens
Radical Dharma Conversation and Camp hosted by rev. angel kyodo williams
Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out by Ruth King
My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Mending of Our Bodies and Hearts by Resmaa Menakem
Somatic Abolitionism by Resmaa Menakem
Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy Degruy
Toi Marie Smith’s Business Beyond Profit presentation
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, by adrienne maree brown
The work of Dr. Jennifer Mullan and Decolonizing Therapy
The work of Dr. Rosalez Mesa
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Dr. Gabor Maté
“And Now My Watch Begins: (Almost) Seven Years Sober” by Golden Collier
The work of Jen Lemen.
Authentic & Impactful Speaking workshop by yasmin marrero and yasmin’s spaceholding badassery.
Embodiment Basics course by The Embodiment Institute
Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America by William L. White
Lived experience in recovery from struggles with substance use and in struggles with others’ use.
Lifelong experience in predominantly white environments
Carolyn’s BA in Sociology from Yale University