An episode of Changing the Conversation podcast.
Laurie Johnson-Wade shares her experiences starting and running a recovery community organization in Pennsylvania with host Livia Davis.
February 2, 2026
[Music]
Livia Davis (Host) (00:01): Hello and welcome to Changing the Conversation. I’m your host, Livia Davis. I’m the Chief Learning Officer at C4 Innovations. Today’s conversation is part of a podcast series called Learning From our Recovery Elders to Inform our Work as Recovery Leaders, where we invite recovery leaders to share their wisdom. Our aim is not only to preserve our guests’ invaluable insight, but also to inspire current and future leaders as we work to continue to expand access to recovery.
(00:33):
My guest today is Laurie Johnson-Wade, calling in from Pennsylvania. Laurie is the co-founder of Lost Dreams Awakening, a recovery and wellness center and recovery community organization in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and the founder of Ubuntu Recovery. She has many accomplishments to her name, including as a certified peer specialist and a family peer specialist. And I am so happy she agreed to get on our podcast today. Laurie, thank you for joining us.
Laurie Johnson-Wade (Guest) (01:03): Thank you for having me, Livia, and I’m glad to be here.
Livia (01:07): Laurie, you have been working in the field of recovery for many years, and I am proud to say that we have worked on some projects together. I am wondering if you can start by letting our audience know how you got involved in recovery and why you co-founded Lost Dreams Awakening?
Laurie (01:27): Oh, thank you, Liv. Well, I am a woman in long-term recovery, so I started my journey on the recovery road May 30th of 1991. And so I’ve been on that journey uninterrupted since then, a little over 34 years. And the reason I got on it, the path, is it was necessary and quite frankly, I got a nudge from the judge. And so they said, “You need to get yourself together.” And so at the end of the road, so to speak, my husband and I, my husband now, we weren’t husband and wife then, we were running together and we both struggled with substance use disorder. And I entered into recovery, went to treatment, and then he got into recovery in August of the same year. That’s kind of an unlikely story. It doesn’t happen like that most of the time, but he’s got over 34 years as well. August 5th, he had his 34th year.
(02:42):
And in the beginning, we had a lot of zeal and energy around this new way of life. And probably five years in, we started volunteering for a recovery organization in the city of Pittsburgh, Message Carriers Pennsylvania, and really got excited about what they were doing in the community. And they recovered out loud. We only knew the anonymous way, which was fine and it still is fine, but we had never been introduced to the concept of recovering out loud. That was mind-blowing to me. And of course, I didn’t mind that because I had a public substance use disorder. I mean, I had a public addiction. Maybe five years we volunteered for them. My husband ended up chairing, he was their chairman of the board. And I said, “We need this in our community.” Pittsburgh’s like a world away from our little town, but it’s not that far.
(03:47):
I think the greatest compliment, really you can pay somebody who mentors you is to replicate it, to do it, make that available in your own community. And so we started thinking about it, started looking at different models. We looked at Recovery Cafe, we looked at Faces and Voices of Recovery. We did research on, “What do we want the model to look like?” And then my husband came up with, we asked the community what they’d like to see. And so they kind of liked the Recovery Community Center, Recovery Community Organization model. And it just so happened that we were living in a way that we really were implementing spiritual principles in our lives. We felt like this was the greatest way to really make a living amends to our community for taking away our contributions for years.
(04:42):
And so that’s where we came up with it. And so in 2014, we acquired a one little room and a restaurant donated some tables and chairs. When I look today, because that one room was part of a building that had five suites or maybe more, today we occupy the entire building. So now that one room we started in and were in for years and we self-funded it, that one room’s our gym in our building. And I’m like, “Whoa.” But it happened gradually, it didn’t happen all at once. It’s just been this affirmation and confirmation that this is what we’re supposed to be doing, because the unfolding of it is just so natural.
(05:30):
So yeah, and we’re still there. And now we’ve expanded into a micro enterprise. We acquired a property that we operate, a restaurant and Airbnb to help fund our 501(c)(3) nonprofits. And that’s the Delancey Street model, right? Each one, teach one. And so that came full circle also, so none of our experiences in recovery have been wasted. A lot of times you may not understand why you’re really doing something at the time, the fullness of it. But as you walk out your journey, you’ll start seeing that all your experiences add up and will contribute to where you’re supposed to be. It’s just a beautiful… It’s phenomenal.
Livia (06:17): I love your origin story so much. And I love how you’re weaving in all the wisdom, so much of your wisdom that you’ve amassed as well along the way. I love how you thought of saying, “We learned about recovery out loud,” and the multiple pathways and how everything in your life in a way, can be applied to supporting your community and supporting yourself. It’s beautiful in how you’re talking about it, so I really appreciate you sharing that because it’s an example also of a recovery community organization evolving over time and sharing that and how can it expand and what else might it expand into like micro enterprises and doing an Airbnb?
(07:01):
So now you’re doing a small business component to support your nonprofit piece, right? There’s just so much here to unpack. And I really hope that our audience will go check out your website. We will put it in the show notes. There’s a link to Lost Dreams Awakening so that people can learn more. With the long time you’ve been in the field of recovery, I am sure that you have seen your share of challenges. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges facing the field of recovery now?
Laurie (07:30): The challenges are many right now, right now in the here and now. And I’ve seen challenges over the years, but I’m going to talk about present time. Money’s always needed, it’s needed. You need money to do the things that need to be done. Passion alone doesn’t pay the bills. And it’s a beautiful thing, but it will not. You can’t send that into your utility company. And I used to say, and I said to one of the leaders, well-known leaders in the recovery space, and I used to complain all the time, “We don’t get no funding, we don’t get no money. Everybody else is getting money and we’re not getting any money.” And he looked at me and he said, “You don’t know how lucky you are.” He said, “You don’t know how lucky you are.” And I didn’t understand that at the time.
(08:25):
I did not understand really the fullness of what he was saying to me. It’s not that I don’t want my taxpayer dollars or your taxpayer dollars going to support wellness, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that as we have eventually got funded, there’s a beginning and an endpoint to that. And so when you build, when you have the support to build and you build it, and they asked you in the beginning, “What are you going to do about sustainability?” And I usually would say, “Well, I hope you keep supporting us.” But there is a trap in that. There’s a trap in that and you’ve got to only build what you can maintain without the help. It’s been a big eye-opener for me. The way we got into our micro enterprise, it’s a fairytale story, it really is. It’s a fairytale story and how everything came together, it was meant to be.
(09:34):
It’s a tremendous amount of work. And after you’ve been doing this work for so long, and then now there’s even more work to try to get what you already had, but didn’t realize you had it, which is your independence, right? Self-efficacy. It’s kind of a catch-22, but I think the greatest challenge is learning how to take care of ourselves, using our creativity, our innovation, all the lessons that we’ve learned and what is it that we do that people will pay for? Or what is it that we do that people would be willing to support and get behind and in exchange for? That seems like the greatest challenge to me now, is really not staying stuck when things end or when things change, but being the creative, innovative people that we are and bringing those skills to bear. We got what it takes, we got what it takes. And just finding strategic ways to survive, I’m talking about survival. The bottom line is we need to learn how to survive and then possibly and hopefully thrive.
Livia (11:02): Well, that’s a lot. Part of what you’re saying makes me think about the efforts and supports we have been providing as a team to recovery community organizations and community-based organizations to develop the business skills in a way to do just what you’re talking about. And understanding that those business skills are as important as the passion and the lived expertise. And that if there’s a way to embrace both and really work together to learn that, then you’re taking an incredibly important first step. And of course, there are lots of resources. And I also love the vision that just as we as people develop agency and sustainability, and that we are also doing that for our organizations.
(11:53):
Because it’s a win-win and you get some confidence when you can do that also to then sell your value to people who want to purchase your services or contract with you for services. I love everything you said about that. And Laurie, I happen to know that one of your superpowers is that you can help people adapt while not compromising their values. And sometimes when we talk to recovery community organization staff, they’re sometimes articulating, “Well, if I go in the business direction, I’m giving up my mission or my values,” and that’s not necessarily the case, but I’ve heard that conversation. So I’m just wondering if you could talk a little bit about why is it an important conversation in this day and age to be able to talk without compromising your values?
Laurie (12:47): That’s an important question, Livia. In our experience, as you know better, you can do better. And so very often you have to really do an inventory. You have to do some analysis in saying, “Where are we? Where have we been? How are we doing with things? Did we have our ladder up against the right wall in the first place?” You look sometimes and you say, “No, our mission in the beginning was based on what we knew and the reality that we were living in. We didn’t know anything else.” And so as information and things evolve and there’s best practices and things change, we have to adapt. We have, “Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape.” You have to be able to make the turns in life. There’s a saying, “A bend in the road doesn’t have to be the end of the road unless you miss the turn.”
(13:51):
And so our very survival depends on our ability to adapt, to bend, to change. And sometimes that can feel like you are betraying something that you held very dear and near to you when it wasn’t the reality that it is today. It’s an interesting time now and we’re being challenged in many ways. There’s certain things that are going on where we are being asked to use certain language or we’re asked to not do this when we just did that and we just gained traction in that area. You also have to be adaptive and flexible in the way you communicate your why.
(14:39):
I’m going to serve whoever wants to be served. I don’t care about your age, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, I don’t care about any of that. I’m going to serve whoever needs to be served because they’re human and they deserve care, respect, dignity. Now, I can’t use people’s money who said, “We don’t want our money going towards that.” And unfortunately, if that’s the only money you’re working with, then you need to do it for free. We have more power very often than we give ourselves credit for. And we have to keep ourselves educated on our options. Knowing our options also helps us with the ebbs and flows.
Livia (15:23): That’s so good, you shared so much right there. Thank you. I think a lot of what you’re talking about will be helpful to our listeners because the mindset and the shift and as you’re talking about, there’s a lot of internal work that goes on as we go through this life journey as well, so thank you for kind of uplifting that. And talking about life journey, what kind of wisdom might you be able to share with young people in the recovery movement?
Laurie (15:49): Okay, there are so many. First of all, young people blow my mind. They’re phenomenal. They know way more than I knew when I was their age, let me just say that. It’s like get with and get up under. We used to say in recovery, “Get in somebody’s back pocket,” right? Find a mentor, not later, sooner. Somebody who has walked out the journey, who can teach you the roots of the journey, and then you add all the beautiful things that you bring to the experience. That’s what I would say to young people. And also that the elders can be teachable, that it’s a two-way street.
(16:30):
Sort of like in business practices, staffing your weakness. There’s certain people I like to keep around me that really hold me up where they’re stronger. We don’t have all the answers and young people have some answers. They do, they have some answers. And I find it intriguing how they look at things. I’m somewhat of an old-fashioned person. I’m a lover of history, and so I try to hold onto that dearly, but I can’t hold onto it so tight that I can’t embrace what’s new.
Livia (17:02): Thank you, Laurie. I know our time is growing short here on this podcast, but I do want to invite you to please say a little bit about Ubuntu Recovery, because I introduced you as the founder of Ubuntu Recovery and I’d love for our listeners to know a little bit more about that.
Laurie (17:21): Thank you, Livia. Ubuntu Recovery is a way of life. Ubuntu is an ancient African philosophy. Translation loosely is, “I am because we are.” It’s a way of being. It’s a way of practicing your life in community that if I hurt you, I’m inevitably hurting myself. It’s so applicable to the recovery community because we have what we call it, we-covery. And so we help each other and we do things and get to the next place together. And so Ubuntu fits perfectly into that whole idea, that whole practice. It’s a practice and there’s 14 principles. There is a workbook that’s going to be coming out that will help people facilitate circles.
(18:10):
So we have gatherings where people gather and we talk about, “How can we be better together?” Kind of eludes Western civilization in that we don’t have a word that adequately expresses the fullness of it, but it really is a way of being and treating other people. And it really fosters belonging, one of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We all belong. Nobody has the right to say you don’t belong. That’s what it’s about. It’s much deeper and I’d be glad to talk to anybody about it. I do some trainings on it. I’m going to be doing a Pennsylvania Recovery Organization Alliance, their Recovery Leadership Conference. I’m going to be teaching how to facilitate circles and the whole philosophy.
Livia (18:57):
I love that. Can people learn more about it?
Laurie (18:59): They want to reach out by email, awakeninglostdreams@gmail. But we will have the handbook on our website, we will make it available to everybody and they can download it. There’s reflection pages and application and there’s science and data to support each of the principles.
Livia (19:21): Laurie, thank you for joining us today. It’s been a pleasure.
Laurie (19:25): Thank you. Time flies, I can’t believe it’s over.
Livia (19:29):
And to our listeners, join us next time on Changing the Conversation.
Lee Locke-Hardy (Producer) (19:34):
Visit C4innovates.com and follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube for more resources to grow your impact. Thank you for joining us. This episode was produced by Lee Locke-Hardy and Christina Murphy. Our theme song was written and performed by Peter Hanlon. Join us next time on Changing the Conversation.
Listen to other episodes in the “Learning from Recovery Elders” series.