Still Here Recovery Coaching

10/12/2026

Gratitude isn’t just about the good things in our lives. Sometimes it’s about recognizing the people who keep showing up, even when life is difficult.

This Thanksgiving, we’re thinking about the people we’ve had the privilege of walking alongside. Those finding their way in recovery, those supporting someone they love, and those doing the often unseen work of making a difference in their communities.

We know that holidays can bring up different feelings for different people. For some, today is filled with celebration and connection. For others, it may be a quieter day, or even a difficult one.

Wherever you find yourself this Thanksgiving, we hope you can recognize something worth honouring in your own journey.

From both of us at Still Here, thank you for allowing us to be part of yours.

Happy Thanksgiving. 🍂

~ Kevin and Shelley

10/09/2026

Thanksgiving weekend is here, and with it comes a familiar invitation to reflect on what we’re grateful for.

But gratitude can be complicated.

For some, this weekend will be filled with family, laughter, good food and meaningful connection.

For others, it may bring reminders of people who are no longer here, relationships that have changed, financial pressures, loneliness, or the challenges of navigating recovery through a holiday weekend.

And for many, it will be a little of both.

At Still Here, we believe gratitude doesn’t have to mean overlooking what’s difficult.

We can be grateful for something small while acknowledging that other parts of life are hard.

A conversation that helped.
A moment of quiet.
Someone who checked in.
A decision we’re proud of.
A little more hope than we had yesterday.

Sometimes gratitude isn’t a feeling we can summon on demand. Sometimes it’s something we notice when we give ourselves the opportunity.

Whatever this weekend holds for you, we hope there’s room for connection, kindness, and a little compassion for yourself.

We’re Still Here.

10/07/2026

We make assumptions all the time.

We hear part of someone’s story and begin filling in the blanks.

We think we know why they made a particular choice. What they need. What they should do next. What would work if they would only try it.

Recovery coaching asks us to notice that impulse—and get curious instead.

What matters most to you right now?

What have you already tried?

What worked, even a little?

What would you like to be different?

What do you think your next step might be?

Good questions don’t simply gather information.

They create space for someone to hear themselves think.

And when we resist the urge to supply the answer, we may discover that the person sitting across from us already knows far more about what they need than we assumed.

That’s part of the practice of recovery coaching: not becoming the expert on someone else’s life, but becoming skilled at helping them access their own strengths, wisdom and possibilities.

Curiosity changes the conversation.

We’re Still Here.

10/05/2026

You don’t have to be in crisis to work with a recovery coach.

Recovery coaching isn’t only for moments when everything is falling apart.

Maybe you’ve already made significant changes and you’re wondering what comes next.

Maybe you’re leaving treatment and want someone alongside you as you navigate everyday life again.

Maybe you’ve been in recovery for some time, but something has shifted and what once worked isn’t working quite as well anymore.

Or maybe you simply know something needs to change, but you’re not yet sure what that change looks like.

A recovery coach isn’t there to tell you what your recovery should look like.

We listen. We ask questions. We help you recognize your strengths and resources, explore possibilities, identify what matters to you, and turn those things into meaningful next steps.

At Still Here, we don’t only train recovery coaches.

We are recovery coaches.

Shelley and Kevin both work directly with clients, and you can book a conversation with either of us to see whether working together feels like a good fit.

Book with Shelley:
https://calendly.com/shelley-rc

Book with Kevin:
https://calendly.com/kevin-rc

On Instagram, our booking links are also available through the link in our bio.

And if neither of us is the right fit, that’s okay. We have other recovery coaches on our team with different experiences and areas of focus, and we’re happy to help connect you with someone who may be a better fit.

Because recovery is personal. The support you choose should be, too.

We’re Still Here.

10/03/2026

Foundations are where the learning begins. Next, we deepen the practice.

For the first time, we’re offering Recovery Coach Essentials and Recovery Coach Mastery as a defined 10-week learning experience, with a clear beginning, a clear end, and the opportunity to progress through both modules with the same cohort.

We begin Tuesday, October 6.

Recovery Coach Essentials and Mastery each run for five weeks, with two live online sessions each week:

Tuesdays: topic learning and skill development
Thursdays: motivational interviewing practice
4–5 PM Pacific / 7–8 PM Eastern

Essentials focuses on developing the coach approach—how we structure our coaching, treat others as resourceful, ask better questions, manage our own “stuff,” and strengthen listening and reflective skills.

Mastery takes those skills deeper, exploring core values, accurate empathy, generative moments, cognitive dissonance, and reocurrence prevention and management.

These courses were designed as the next step for people who have completed our Recovery Coach Foundations training, but they’re not limited to Still Here graduates. Recovery coaches who have completed other foundational training, including CCAR training, may also find them valuable—especially those who want to strengthen their coaching skills as they prepare for an RCP panel interview.

October 6–December 10, 2026
Live online | Tuesdays & Thursdays
4–5 PM Pacific / 7–8 PM Eastern

Each 5-week module: $850 + GST
Take both: $1,495 + GST

If you’ve been looking for a reason to get back into learning, practice your skills, and take your coaching beyond the foundations, this is your next opportunity.

Email us at [email protected] to register, and we’ll get you the details.

Take the first step in becoming a certified recovery coach in Canada and the U.S. 5-day intensive, trauma-informed training prepares you for peer recovery certification. No degree is required.

09/30/2026

A personal reflection from Shelley:

For my family, the residential school system is not distant history. Its impacts have reached across generations.

My mother spent ten years in residential school. She was one of eight children in her family who attended. She was also the daughter of the medicine man in our community.

What was interrupted and taken from her did not end when she left residential school.

When my mother had children of her own, one of the ways she tried to protect us was by taking us away from our community and raising us elsewhere.

I understand that differently now.

The forces that separated my mother from her culture didn’t end with her generation. The natural passing down of culture, language, teachings and connection to community had been disrupted, and that loss reached her children too.

As an adult, I have had to find my own way back. I have sought out my culture and tried to reclaim what would once have been passed naturally from one generation to the next. That has included taking nêhiyawêwin language classes, trying to learn a language that should have had the opportunity to come to me through my family.

There are immense losses in our family because of residential schools. There are things I cannot recover because the people who carried that knowledge are gone.

There is resilience in our family, too. But resilience doesn’t erase what was taken. Both things are true.

And somehow, things remained. A connection. A recognition. Something I can only describe as ancestral memory—a knowing that something still belongs to us, even after so much was interrupted.

Today, I ask you to remember that residential schools happened to real people.

People like my mother.

And their children.

And their children’s children.

The impacts did not end when the schools closed.

Neither did we.

Please listen. Believe. Do your best to understand.

We are still healing.

09/28/2026

Recovery is often described by what someone has stopped doing.

Stopped drinking.
Stopped using.
Stopped engaging in a behaviour that was causing harm.

And while those changes can be significant, they don’t tell the whole story of recovery.

Recovery can also be about what begins to take their place.

Connection. Purpose. Relationships. Health. Culture. Community. Meaning. A sense of belonging. The ability to imagine a future differently.

For some, it may be rebuilding what was lost. For others, it may be discovering things they have never experienced before.

And just as there is no single pathway into recovery, there is no single picture of what a life in recovery should become.

As Recovery Month comes to a close, perhaps that’s something worth carrying forward:

Recovery isn’t only about what we leave behind.

It’s also about the life we get to build from here.

We’re Still Here.

09/25/2026

Supporting someone through change as a recovery coach can ask something different of us.

It means getting curious before offering advice.
Listening without immediately trying to solve.
Recognizing strengths that may be difficult for the other person to see.
And trusting that their answers may not look like ours.

This is at the heart of a coach approach.

As recovery coaches, we aren’t there to determine what someone’s recovery should look like or to take responsibility for creating change in their life.

We’re there to create the conditions where they can explore what matters to them, recognize their own strengths and resources, and discover what their next step might be.

That shift, from fixing to facilitating a change process, can take practice.

Sometimes it can even feel like we’re doing less.

But when we stop filling the space with our answers, we make room for something much more important:

Theirs.

During Recovery Month, it’s worth remembering that if recovery looks different for everyone, the way we support recovery needs to leave room for those differences too.

Walk alongside. Don’t take over.

We’re Still Here.

09/24/2026

What does it actually mean to become a recovery coach?

It’s not about having all the answers.

It’s about learning how to listen differently. How to ask questions that create possibility. How to recognize strengths. How to support motivation for change without taking ownership of someone else’s recovery.

And it takes practice.

From October 19–23, we’ll be in London, Ontario for five days and 40 hours of in-person Recovery Coach Foundations training.

This is an experiential course. We don’t just talk about recovery coaching—we practice it.

You’ll explore the foundations of a coach approach, motivational interviewing, mindful communication, boundaries, self-care and what it means to support people in finding and sustaining their pathway to recovery.

Whether you bring professional experience, lived or living experience, or are simply drawn to supporting others, this is where the learning begins.

Recovery Coach Foundations
📍 London, Ontario
📅 October 19–23, 2026

Course Fees: $2395 + HST
Note: Corporate rates are available if sending three or more participants from the same organization to the same course dates.

Limited spaces remain.

Link in bio.

We’re Still Here.

Take the first step in becoming a certified recovery coach in Canada and the U.S. 5-day intensive, trauma-informed training prepares you for peer recovery certification. No degree is required.

09/21/2026

September is Recovery Month.

And if there is one thing we have learned through our own recovery and through walking alongside others, it is this:

Recovery doesn’t look the same for everyone.

For one person, recovery might mean abstinence. For another, it might begin with reducing harm.

It can include treatment, medication, mutual-aid meetings, ceremony, therapy, community, culture, spirituality, recovery coaching—or a combination that changes over time.

Some people celebrate recovery dates.

Some don’t.

Some speak openly about their recovery. Others hold it quietly and privately.

There are many pathways, and there are many ways to build a life that feels worth staying for.

Recovery Month gives us an opportunity to celebrate people who are finding those lives, while remembering those who are still struggling and those we have lost along the way.

And perhaps it also gives us an opportunity to challenge one of the ideas that continues to get in the way:

That recovery has to look a certain way to count.

It doesn’t.

Recovery is personal. Recovery is possible. And recovery belongs to the person living it.

We’re Still Here.