Dear SMART Volunteer Community,

As we prepare to wrap up Volunteer Appreciation Month at Tuesday’s Town Hall session, I wanted to take a moment to share my sincere personal thanks for all that you do every day for us and our participants. I enjoyed meeting some of you at our conference at the beginning of the month. And I look forward to continuing to get to know more and more of you over time. I have been a SMART facilitator myself for 6 years, and I know the commitment that it takes to show up week in and week out in service to others.

Here are some excerpts from my opening remarks at the conference. They convey a lot about where we’re at as an organization and where we’re headed.

This year’s conference theme is SMART Empowerment for All. Why this theme?

The truth is, that despite all of our successes over the last 30 years, and there have been many, we’re still one of several underdogs in the mutual support group space – a leader among the underdogs perhaps, but an underdog nonetheless. How can we get our empowering approach into more communities, serving more diverse individuals, in a more stable and sustainable way? That is the question before us.

Each of our presenters today and tomorrow has some wisdom to share, but so do you. The power in coming together in a space like this is that we get to learn from one another, encourage one another, and cultivate self-empowerment in one another as we contemplate this important question.

Some paths to SMART Empowerment for All are already clear. Our new National Meeting model has made SMART more accessible online by removing the barriers that previously existed to participation. Are those large national meetings the same as the meeting that I host locally in Chapel Hill, North Carolina? Of course not. But they are informative, affirmative, helpful, and a gateway to getting folks interested in bringing SMART Recovery to their communities.

Our new Multiple Pathway Partner Program is transforming the way that we interact with treatment providers, mental health professionals, recovery community organizations, and other organizations to support them in implementing SMART in their practices and in their communities. Our goal with our partners is to build communities of practice – nationally and locally – that can help us more quickly realize our vision of SMART Empowerment for All.

Importantly, we’re also in the process of updating our handbooks and training to be more accessible to and representative of all. Don’t worry – the goal is not to make drastic changes to the tools themselves – but rather to make them more accessible by simplifying the language used around the tools. We’ll likely also add some third-wave cognitive behavioral tools like mindfulness and self-compassion to the mix as well. And we’ll continue to improve on our language as our understanding of helpful and less helpful language has evolved. For example, I don’t expect the term “enabling” to be in the name of a chapter in the 2nd edition of the Family & Friends handbook. Instead, we’ll talk about productive and counterproductive behaviors.

We’ll also be updating our self-paced facilitator training modules to make them more modern and aligned with best practices in adult Learning & Development. As we roll out the new handbooks and training, we will engage in a robust change management process to ensure that folks are supported in our meetings regardless of the version of the handbook that they have.

Other components of our path are less certain, but we’re working on them. For example, we know that we want to provide more structure and support for local communities of practice to build SMART community locally. We’re exploring several options in San Diego, New York City, and Charlotte to see what model is the most realistic for broader implementation in a clear and stable manner.

We also have a wonderful group of individuals exploring our culture, and what we can do to make SMART’s culture more inclusive. That group is in the process of developing a plan to guide us as we remove and transcend barriers to participation in SMART Recovery. It’s easy to get sidetracked by the political backlash against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts nationally. But if we look at ourselves with true humility, we can see that we have work to do to better live up to our values and our vision of SMART Empowerment for All.

At our best, we are a community that supports self-empowerment. At our worst, we can be as paternalistic as any other pathway.

At our best, we truly welcome individuals into our meetings regardless of their chosen goal. At our worst, folks who have adopted a harm reduction or moderation goal don’t feel that they belong.

At our best, we validate the feelings of someone who has experienced trauma, and encourage them to seek further support for processing that trauma from trained mental health professionals. At our worst, we invalidate someone’s trauma by shutting them down or offering them solutions to “fix” their trauma using SMART tools.

At our best, we effectively welcome individuals with any challenging behavior into our meetings. At our worst, folks who struggle with gambling, compulsive sexual behaviors, or gaming addictions don’t feel that they belong.

At our best, we support individuals in sharing about any aspect of the balanced life that they’re building beyond their addiction. At our worst, folks whose balanced life includes a religious or spiritual component are shut down because we “don’t talk about religion in SMART Recovery.”

The truth is that SMART Recovery is not a cult or a club. Purity tests have no place in a community dedicated to self-empowerment. Of course, we need to be clear about what is and is not acceptable in our meetings. And we need to improve our training to ensure that every facilitator is equipped to deal with the challenging situations that are bound to arise.

But we need to do that in a spirit of true humility. We have made great strides, largely thanks to the efforts of our wonderful volunteers you can see on the volunteer wall of gratitude hanging out in the lobby. We also have an amazing National Office Team that works their tails off to support our volunteers.

Our job moving forward is consistent with the personal motto that I adopted after the murder of George Floyd. Listen Humbly, Love Deeply, Shift Power. That’s the only way that we’re going to build a community that truly makes our beautiful self-empowering approach available to all.

I look forward to conversing with some of you at the Town Hall on Tuesday evening. To all of you, I wish you a peaceful and restorative weekend.

Peace,