Recovery for the Revolution: A Conversation with Carolyn Collado

Carolyn and I first met in the spring of 2020 when they took my course “Trauma and Intimacy.” I was immediately enamoured by Carolyn’s presence and after they took my “Beyond Conflict” course, I asked them if they wanted to be friends. Since then I’ve been watching Carolyn build their project Recovery for the Revolution, a community that brings a trauma-informed anti-oppressive lens to being in recovery. Last week we sat down to talk about recovery as a practice of homecoming, healing from ancestral and systemic trauma, and the power of transformative justice. You can listen to our full conversation via the recording at the bottom of the page, or read an excerpted version below.

Carolyn Collado (they/them) is a 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 and believe recovery from a decolonized, anti-oppression lens can point the collective towards liberation. They name how intergenerational colonial trauma and the pressures of 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. You can follow them on IG @recoveryfortherevolution

Image ID: Color photo of a non-binary Black Indigenous mixed race human with short, curly hair, a brown beard, the LGBTQIA2S+ progress flag painted on their face and a glitter tear near their eye wearing a denim vest, smirking at the camera.

Margeaux: You know me. I love listening to people's stories. And so I'm curious if you can give a bit of like a story of how you got from being in AA getting sober to starting Recovery for the Revolution?

Carolyn: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I got sober January 6, 2018. I had not really heard of AA prior to joining. I got familiar with some 12 step programs before and it was kind of, like, I'm not so sure about this fit. And then someone in those programs brought me into AA. In that first meeting that I went to, there was a feeling of, oh, wow, there are tons of young people in this room, which is really cool. And I could tell immediately I was surrounded by a room of white folks and that was going to be a problem for me, because I could feel on some subconscious level, that a lot of what I was struggling with was related to race and how I had suppressed myself throughout my life to survive under white supremacy, and patriarchy, and ableism, and all those things. 

But, actually, when I first got sober, I didn't know that I needed to get sober. Or that that was something that I wanted to do. I was so in denial of it. So much of my drinking was lot of binge-drinking on the weekends. As 23-year-old person, it's not immediately a red flag. But I could tell the more that I was in those rooms, and just listening to folks, what I came to identify was that for me, alcohol consumption put me in a lot of situations that were pretty scary. So I stayed in AA. I got very, very involved right away doing all the conferences for young people. Trying to make changes on micro and macro levels. Like one of the things that existed in AA was the preamble, which historically has said that AA is a fellowship of “men and women” and so working to change that to “people” because, you know, if somebody walks into any AA meeting, and they hear that, and they're queer, trans, nonbinary, quite frankly, if they're a young person, since most young people feel that the binary is not a thing and transphobia is not cool – which I'm so grateful for. But there was a lot of pain trying to make AA work for what I needed.

My sobriety is such a dedication and like, honoring of my grandfather, chanfla, who struggled with alcohol, and didn't get sober until late in life. That that feeling and that desire for the ancestral healing that he wasn't able to do, and that my ancestors weren't able to do, like reckoning with being survivors of the dictatorship in the Dominican Republic with Trujillo, and that being a product of why we're in this country, my mixed lineage and descendancy, and trying to reconcile all of that was calling to be healed. With all the ways I had suppressed myself in order to survive under these systems – and all of that was looking to be healed.

“the more I was able to come home to my body, the more that I was able to examine the ways in which I had been suppressing myself, the more that I could really walk towards my healing, where it's honoring my ancestry through my lineage and my healing.”

There's an argument to be made for the fact that AA is the largest organization and it's entirely mutual aid based, free for people seeking sobriety. At the same time, there are so many institutional harms that have been upheld. So I hold both of those things. In order to really validate my own healing, I started to seek resources outside of AA that really center decolonization. I learned a lot from Black Buddhist teachers, like Reverend angel Kyodo williams and Lama Rod Owens and Dr. Jasmine Syedullah. I learned a lot from a shaman here in DC, Richael Faithful, and in that experience with them, learned a lot about coming back to my body after so much time trying to exist under the daily traumatizing forces, and how much my body had been numb to that, on some level, like even without the substances. My body just kept operating with so much trauma in it, because that's all that I could know, right? Like if we were to really stop and address that or care for it, the only solution would be to get out of the systems really, which is eventually what I did. Because the more I was able to come home to my body, the more that I was able to examine the ways in which I had been suppressing myself, the more that I could really walk towards my healing, where it's honoring my ancestry through my lineage and my healing. The more that I could walk towards being in community with other folks who felt the same. I have to shout out decolonizing therapy, Dr. Jennifer, because she also was super helpful in getting this work started. And really mirroring to me that there was a need.

I just really recognize that AA, at its core, still retains a lot of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism. That just doesn't work for me. I am constantly being triggered and activated in meetings. I'm waiting, I'm bracing to hear something that is really disruptive to my nervous system. It's been beautiful to like, develop my work, have my own workshops, and, and needing to go to the meetings of other folks like La Conextion, they have QTBIPOC meetings. And the Sober Black Girls Club, also has QTBIPOC meetings for Black women and femmes. So I quit my job at a big four company consulting firm, in February 2020, two weeks before the pandemic kind of went mainstream in the US, which I totally believe is like divine timing, because who knows if I would have stayed or not.

Margeaux: Thank you for sharing your story. In your interview with Sober Curious, you talked about recovery as a process of coming back to ourselves, like a homecoming. Could you expand on what that means for you, because that just feels like such a radically different definition of recovery. And so expansive.

“Recovery is such a homecoming. It's a homecoming to our inner children or inner teenagers. What did they want and how we've left them behind? It is also the importance of remembering what we collectively lived like before colonization, before capitalism.”

Carolyn: Number one, the place that is most home for me, is myself in my body, right? Like that is the vessel that I am in 24/7 in my life. When I think about recovery – and it's not only from substances. Codependency and trauma and relationships can also be recovery. My recovery is coming home to my body and what it was telling me and it was very loud in the beginning, like very, very loud. I'm like, wow, take away the substances, and this is what's here: this house. My friend talks about almost like it’s this broken house within us or this house where the foundations are kind of crumbling. How can we tend to them?

So much practice of embodiment, so much practice of beginning to show my nervous system differently. When I was in my drinking, I was reinforcing the trauma. You know, oh, nobody likes me, because of the way that I look, because of my racial identity. That was very common narrative, and I’d go home and cry about that a lot in my drinking. So showing myself that things could be different was part of this homecoming. Part of building up new foundations was saying Hey, I know that this is something we've been holding for a really long time. What if it was different? What if the belief that I'm terrible, was different?

There’s all of this intergenerational trauma too. I come from a lineage that for like, 500 years of the colonization of the Kiskeya, the Dominican Republic hasn't been able to deal with the with what went down and how that has played out, how patriarchy has played out, how colorism and anti-Blackness has played out. So there's something to the fact that I'm the first one doing this healing – and it's taken so much struggle – I'm the first one to really be able to sit and feel it. And I want to acknowledge my class privilege, and it’s taken 500 years to be able to have some space to do this work.

Recovery is such a homecoming. It's a homecoming to our inner children or inner teenagers. What did they want and how we've left them behind? It is also the importance of remembering what we collectively lived like before colonization, before capitalism. The process of embodiment is a practice that we had, but colonization erased it. Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands talks about colonization and what was happening in Europe in terms of punitive justice prior to colonization, and the disembodiment there. And then how that was brought over here, here to this country. This disembodiment was passed through the gender binary and homophobia and the severing of the relationship with the land, through the genocide and removal of Indigenous folks from the land, the transatlantic slave trade – all of this taking people from land, moving people from their land and installing this system that relies on disembodiment. From those very origins and beginnings. And reinforcing that disembodiement through violence. We don't have to live like this. It's such a thing that I struggle with and these systems reinforce the notion that this is all that there is. And they do that through continuous trauma.

So when I think about homecoming, it's like coming home to land, coming home to the practices, coming home to our bodies, coming home to each other. And that's why I so gravitated to your work because that's something that you've interrogated a lot: relationships and how they are informed by trauma, and how do we move towards something else? How do we move through that trauma so we can move towards each other? And that's so big and community is so important in divesting from capitalism. Mutual Aid is so important from divesting from capitalism.

Margeaux: Right! Recovery is in and of itself revolutionary. And, we've been separated from that belief, because we're just focused on the individual’s healing. You know my tagline is when we heal ourselves, we heal the world. I feel like you're putting this at the forefront:

healing work is not just for us. This healing work is for the collective that we are in the present with; it is for the collective that we will hopefully be in the future with; and it is for those in our lineages who didn't have access to this healing, who couldn't come home to themselves.

That just wasn't a possibility on the table. That's what feels so revolutionary to me about the work that you're doing. I just see the trauma-informed anti-oppressive lens, just so fucking clearly in your work. It moves us away from focusing solely on the individual.

I read your blog post on why you're not using the language of like addict or alcoholic. You articulate so brilliantly the ways in which this identity-first language, which in so many other communities is really empowering, but within the world of like recovery, and especially when we're talking about folks who are racialized, and folks who are queer and trans, having these labels put on them actually supports systemic oppression. You write that, “the cycle of addiction is linked with colonization, capitalism, ableism, white supremacy, and patriarchy” and note how these forms of oppression “have perpetuated wealth inequality and have vested interest in upholding addiction and preventing widespread access to recovery.” I'm wondering if you can share more about why and how that is the case.

Carolyn: Yeah, using this identity-first language really perpetuate cycles of abuse and continues to make access to recovery impossible. In my own experience, I felt like you had to identify as such in meetings in order to find social acceptance. You had to identify as an alcoholic or addict. That always felt so complex to me, because it was like, Well, what does that mean? There's so much loss there. In AA people will be like, You know, this trait about myself, it's because I'm an alcoholic. My fear of connecting with people is because I'm an alcoholic. My lateness is because I'm an alcoholic. It’s so pervasive in terms of practice. One of the big ones, for me, that was really painful, is the notion that alcoholics and addicts are inherently selfish and self-centered beings. Oh Lord, the pain that that brought me.

When we bring in trauma into this, I can look at the experiences that I had where I was afraid of people: I was afraid of connecting with people of color, because I was afraid that they would think I was too white, or I was afraid of connecting with white folks, because they would think I was too much of a person of color. So much of that is informed by trauma. If you are coming to internalize that you're selfish and self-centered, and that's the framework with which you should view yourself, oh, what a tough framework. And especially again, with the context of the historical, I think about the fact that sugar plantations were cultivated on like my ancestral homeland. And the very history of that, and the ways in which my communities, my ancestors, and people like me have been under threat of policing, under threat of being on under-resourced, because of racism and patriarchy. So to say that all alcoholics and addicts are inherently like selfish, self centered is so painful, so painful.

Margeaux: Yeah, it's just so wild to me. And this is obviously why – and we're both, you know, preaching to the choir here – that trauma-informed perspective is so vital. Because we don't change through shame. Not at least in the deep, deep way. If you frame alcoholism or addiction as this character flaw that results in X, Y, and Z character traits, you’re never really going to get at the root of why we turn to alcohol or substances in the first place. This is why I just flat out don't like the framing of addiction and alcoholism as diseases. I was not born an addict. I was a human who suffered immense trauma. And I didn't have the coping mechanisms that I deserved to have, and that I should have had. And so then teenage me is like, Alright, here's this tool that I can use to survive my present. Addiction isn’t “self-destructive,” – it’s self-preservation in this paradoxical way, because obviously I was putting shit in my body that could have killed me and that was really harming me in so many ways. But I wasn't doing it because I wanted to hurt myself or because I thought that I deserved that. Or because I was selfish. If anything, in my particular circumstances of having to be a young caregiver to my brother, and then to my dad, the drugs actually allowed me to show up and do the care work that was necessary. Without this trauma-informed lens, we're not getting the systemic understanding of why these things are happening.

I just so appreciate the nuance that you're bringing to that language. We are human beings impacted by language, whether we know it or not. In my own therapy work, which is about unblending from my parts, we talk about the difference between saying I'm a horrible person, and a part of me believes that I'm a horrible person. And so in the same way, I'm an addict, or there's a part of me that is an addict, or there's a part of me that has needed addiction to survive. And so when I can do that separation, it's not a disavowal. It’s allowing us to be so much more, then just one word.

“We don't want to be defined by the worst things that we've ever done. And the importance of giving nuance to humanity, and the way that trauma shows up in that and the ways in which it's so important for us to have these processes of repair and transformation.”

Carolyn: Oh, absolutely. There’s a shame in our society. You struggle with addiction, and it’s very cathartic to connect with other folks who relate. And, for some of us, that identity-first language continues to reinforce the shame we already feel.

Margeaux: I'm seeing some threads here to transformative justice.I always want to talk to you about TJ. Because I'm just thinking about shame as being a tool of punitive forms of accountability, but also these like labels of abuser and convict. These labels that end up defining the whole person. And, you know, even before I really knew anything, like had the language of TJ, there was always this part of me that didn’t love those labels. And I'm curious, what threads you're seeing there. How TJ has informed the work you do and how you approach recovery.

Carolyn: Oh, my God, I mean, it's so interesting. I also don't love those words, you know, and I think alcoholic and addict can feel that way. We don't want to be defined by the worst things that we've ever done. And the importance of giving nuance to humanity, and the way that trauma shows up in that and the ways in which it's so important for us to have these processes of repair and transformation. Because in the systems that we currently have of punitive justice, that's not a thing, you know. And somebody will always be defined by the worst things that they've done, and there's so much harm that is caused for everyone, because that's our frame of operation at this moment in the criminal justice system.

When I think about AA, it is this really interesting place where folks who have both experienced harm and caused harm, where there's no shame. You'll likely find somebody else who has caused the same kind of harm as you and is living their best life now and has found a way to make amends for that. And that's so incredibly transformative and healing. I love that so much. I think that's one of its greatest assets as a program. I just wonder how can that continue to be cultivated outside of that space? Like, where can we create spaces for people to be held in their full selves, and to be able to work on repair and work on being able to take accountability and also repair themselves in the process, because that's so big. In AA, they'll tell you to do the steps in order and step nine is when you make amends. There are so many other steps that are designed to repair your relationship to yourself before you get there. I just think that these frameworks of self-repair help us to work on our nervous systems, work on our trauma, and help us build the capacity to be able to be in relationship. I think there's so much potential here, what do you think? 

Margeaux: So many things! I want to return to an earlier point: the spaciousness that you hold for the term recovery, and not just having that be in connection to addictions, or substance use, but also one’s healing from trauma. The reality is, I've been in TJ spaces where I've witnessed, caused, and been subject to harm. And I mean, we can't ever get rid of harm, like harm is always going to exist. I mean, ideally, maybe in my queer fucking crip vision of the utopia it doesn’t. But we're humans, and we're messy, and so hurt and harm are going to happen. 

What became really clear to me and what continues to be clear to me as I watch TJ and community accountability stuff play out on Instagram, and the internet, is that a lot of people are moving towards this work, without having done enough of their own healing to show up in a way that stops replicating harm. Because that's supposed to be the goal of TJ: to address harm without causing further harm. And I just continue to see people who want to do this work show up in ways that are really harmful, and they can have the best of intentions, but that impact is still happening. Obviously, accessing healing is a fucking privilege, and one that I do not take lightly in any way, as someone who was able to use funding from my university to pay for weekly therapy for all of the time that I was in grad school. And as a white person in the world, it's easier for me to find folks that can be my therapist, and aren't going to perpetuate harm, because of their lack of understanding of racism, or systemic oppression, or colonization, etc.

I've had people in my life very close to me who have been in different recovery programs, and when they are talking about the steps, I think that just the sounds like transformative justice. Holding space for the fact that we harm other people. And that's not like an excuse, but we need to be able to recognize the humanity there. This is where not labeling people really feels important to me in that project, because as soon as we start to put labels on people, whether those labels have real validity or not, it doesn't matter, because we internalize them. I'm more interested in naming the behaviors rather than labeling the person because we can still address the fucked up shit that we've done using different language that actually supports us in moving towards repair and moving towards healing.

“I'm not interested in those labels. What I want to know is how can we create accessible healing? How can we help people heal from these woundings? And how can that healing stop the harm that is perpetuating these systems that are creating even more harm and more trauma? Because that's really where things will happen.”

I love thinking about all of the ways that we just know that the punitive justice system does not work. However many years in our fucking history at this point, we still have prisons, and in fact, more prisons are being built. And like, of course, we know that the main goal of prisons isn't to address harm, but to make money and profit and oppress Black, Indigenous, and people of color. So we know that and so why do we still have prisons? Why is the rate of recidivism so high? Because, and this comes to this piece, I think, around disconnecting the most marginalized from access to recovery, which is happening through imprisonment, where you’re deprived of connection, deprived of a sense of belonging, being shamed and punished. That is not going to result in healing. And healing was what is necessary for that change.

Carolyn: And even you know the damage that it does to communities, like Black, Indigenous, people of color communities – the extraction through the prison system, taking people out of their families, taking people out of their communities. That intergenerational trauma and harm and fear, it's just so, so present. So yeah, I'm not interested in those labels. What I want to know is how can we create accessible healing? How can we help people heal from these woundings? And how can that healing stop the harm that is perpetuating these systems that are creating even more harm and more trauma? Because that's really where things will happen. Like that prevention is what I'm so interested in and I do think that will come from eradicating systemic oppression and healing intergenerational wounds. I think that that is so necessary, and we don't talk about that enough, because recovery has been so individualized, because we take on these labels, because systemic change is not the focus. I think so much is possible.

Margeaux: Mm hmm. I have a million other questions here. But I also want to be mindful of time. Speaking to this idea of possibility, what are your like hopes and dreams and like visions for Recovery for the Revolution? What are the hopes and dreams and possibilities that keep you going and like doing this work?

Carolyn: Oh, so many. I'm always out here being like, Oh, that's it, that's a download. In the immediate term, I'm having an event on September 18th about AA and why it might not work and why that's totally okay.

Image ID: Color photo with an orange filter of a non-binary Black Indigenous mixed race human with short, curly hair, a brown beard, the LGBTQIA2S+ progress flag painted on their face and a glitter tear near their eye wearing a denim vest, smirking at the camera. Text reads: “WEBINAR: AA Might Not Work for You: Why That’s Okay. September 18th QTIBIPOC only: 2-3 PM EDT, all folks: 3:30 PM-4:30 PM EDT.”

And that will touch on a lot of what we've touched on today. I'm also working on creating community spaces and workshop spaces that are like centering this kind of recovery and topics like embodiment, our relationship to climate change, disembodiment from lands, topics that are related to trauma – and really making that accessible for folks. So in the immediate term, I would just love to see more spaces and communities that practice like that. If you're interested, get on my Patreon, since a lot of those events will be funneled out of that space.

And then in the medium term, long term, I want more gathering spaces for us. I want us to be able to meet up, hang out, and celebrate ourselves. I want us to be able to help each other to divest from capitalism, and white supremacy and capitalism, patriarchy and ableism. Through you know, supporting each other. Mutual aid is something that I think about a lot in this work, like if we can invest in each other and in each other's mutual aid, can we help each other to recover? Can we help each other to move in community away from the system so people can be well? And I just envision this being mainstream conversation, you know, not a co-opted conversation, but a conversation that we're having across the board, where we look at our relationships to substances, food, relationships, that can be you harmful, and seeing them not as just like the symptom, but as what needs addressing. I just really hope that we can get to a place where globally we can really heal, and divest from these systems, quite frankly, like divest, divest, divest and create new things. In the medium to short term, if you're interested in supporting this work and getting on board, definitely check out my Patreon.

Margeaux: I just think that what you're doing is so vital, and I hope that they're white folks who are also thinking about these things and are trying to create spaces where they can be addressing how white supremacy really is at like the core of this work. And that they can pay you and learn from you about how to decolonize recovery work. Because like, we all fucking benefit from that. I love the softness of what you're bringing into the world.

For more updates and to support Carolyn's work, join their Patreon