Celebrate Recovery: Faith and Accountability
Tawny LeBlanc in the Gulkana Village Library
Allison Sayer - CRR Staff
On New Year’s Eve of 2021, Tawny LeBlanc and Lorraine Jackson were sitting outside the hall in Gulkana. People were milling around outside, or in vehicles, due to the continuing pandemic. Jackson and LeBlanc were talking about addiction and how devastating its effects were, not just in Gulkana, but in the greater Copper River Valley.
“I just wish we had some sort of recovery program,” said Jackson. LeBlanc thought for a moment. “Well, I attended Celebrate Recovery in Anchorage.”
Remembering back, LeBlanc said, “That’s where it all started. We said a prayer.” With the dogged support of Tribal Administrator Robin Eleazer, LeBlanc started the Gulkana chapter of the Celebrate Recovery program. Celebrate Recovery bears some similarities to AA but is unequivocally based in the Christian faith.
Although the program is religious, LeBlanc says “You don’t have to be religious to attend and benefit from it.” There are steps, like AA, but the steps have “more structure” according to LeBlanc. Celebrate Recovery recommends having an “accountability partner,” similar to an AA “sponsor,” but the accountability partner does not have to be in recovery themself. Although the program is Biblically based, LeBlanc says speakers also share a great deal of addiction science with participants.
LeBlanc said she imagined only people from Gulkana would be interested in the program. However, people have come from as far away as Chitina and Mentasta.
Gulkana Village’s Soaring Eagle Transit program has been making transportation available since February, which has made it possible for people who do not have vehicles, could not afford gas, or lost their driver’s license, to attend. The Gulkana Celebrate Recovery meetings have also been approved to fulfill court orders to attend addiction meetings.
When we spoke in early March, LeBlanc said she had 11 attendees at her last meeting, all of whom were newly fighting their addictions.
The goal of Celebrate Recovery is to get to the root of people’s “hurts, habits and hang ups.”
The Celebrate Recovery program provides detailed, structured materials to local chapters (more than 55,000 around the world) for their meetings. LeBlanc spends countless hours each week curating and collating lessons and testimonies, getting food together, lining up speakers, pursuing donations, and promoting the program.
The Village of Gulkana found a way to pay for some of LeBlanc’s time, although many of her hours are volunteer. Donations of food and program support have come from private individuals including Roberta Neeley and the Bowers. The Tazlina Fellowship was an early donor to the program.
Both Eleazer and LeBlanc are appreciative of each other’s efforts. Eleazer shared, “This whole thing has all been Tawny. If she wasn’t here there would not be a program.” LeBlanc quickly replied, “Well if you weren’t here it would’ve never started.”
The goal of Celebrate Recovery is to get to the root of people’s “hurts, habits and hang ups.” The habits can be drug or alcohol use but they can also be any compulsive behavior that interferes with health and happiness such as gambling or overeating. Hangups, including depression, anger, shame, jealousy, guilt and others, must be addressed in the recovery program.
The first step is: “to admit we are powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives have become unmanageable.” Once that first step is taken, the work continues. “We have a root to why we use or drink,” said LeBlanc, “If we don’t get to the root, we will continue relapsing.”
There seems to be a power in bringing the struggles of addiction into the open.
LeBlanc is open about her own recovery process. “When we have open share it helps to hear what I have gone through,” she said. People do not need to share all the “gory” details of their past behavior when using, but LeBlanc says, “I’ve seen healing because people have admitted” to what they have done. There seems to be a power in bringing the struggles of addiction into the open.
I asked LeBlanc about how people navigate attending meetings in an area where so many people know each other. She said that some people do choose not to go if their children are participants in the program, to give them that space.
LeBlanc does welcome having young children in the building during the meetings. “They can see their parents trying,” she said, and they are unlikely to hear anything they have not already lived in their own experience.
One of the messages LeBlanc wanted to make sure was stated about the recovery process is, “You have to be active in recovery or recovery doesn’t work.” She said continuing to be active in recovery includes helping others who are just beginning their journey.
“I was not delivered. I worked,” said LeBlanc, “It’s a long game and then it becomes a lifelong journey.”
Celebrate Recovery meetings are held every Wednesday in the Gulkana Library from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Dinner is provided and transportation is available upon request. Call Tawny LeBlanc at (907)444-1094 for more information.
Disclosure: The Village of Gulkana is a Copper River Record Advertiser. This did not influence our coverage of this topic
