An episode of Changing the Conversation podcast
Maryanne Frangules and Noel Sierra discuss the advantages to sharing the voices of people with lived/living experience with host Ashley Stewart.
September 9, 2024
[Music]
Ashley Stewart, Host (00:05): Hello, everyone, and welcome to Changing the Conversation. I’m your host Dr. Ashley Stewart, the director of the Center for Health Equity at C4 Innovations.
(00:14):Today we have two special guests with us, and I’m really excited to introduce them to you all. First we have Maryanne Frangules, who is a person in long-term recovery from alcohol and other drugs, and is also the executive director for the Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery, also known as MOAR. Maryanne, so glad to have you join us today.
Maryanne Frangules, Guest (00:36): Glad to be here. Thank you, Ashley.
Ashley (00:38): And also we’re joined by Noel Sierra. Noel is the Southeast Regional Coordinator for MOAR and identifies as a Latino man in long-term recovery. Hi Noel.
Noel Sierra, Guest (00:48): How you doing, Ashley? Thank you for having me.
Ashley (00:50): Thanks for being here. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to talk with you both. This is a podcast in a series of podcasts about the REC. The REC is the Recovery Education Collaborative, and to my knowledge, MOAR plays a really important role in that. So maybe we could start off with you telling me a little bit about MOAR and then maybe a little bit about MOAR’s role within the REC. Maryanne, can you kick us off?
Maryanne (01:20): MOAR started back in about 1991. I was at the time a alcohol and drug clinician and working in an outpatient clinic. And lo and behold, the world was taken over by managed care, a pot of insurance coverage that was not covering so very well. It was like a surprise attack on our people that were coming through the doors. And those that having services were coming to me. I had no administrative role, but they were saying, “Maryanne, Maryanne, the insurance isn’t paying for our treatment. What can we do?” And I searched everywhere for help and support, and is anybody doing anything about this? And looked out to others, found a person named Leroy Kelly, who was definitely an activist in the area, found others. And then, we began to form MOAR at that time.
(02:29): And as an aside, it was the Massachusetts Organization of Americans for Recovery way back when. And so, it was educating ourselves and continuing to educate the public by people in recovery who are affected by services, social justice, what have you, so that they can have a voice. And that’s been very, very important. And our role goes hand in hand with the Recovery Education Collaborative, because education is at our core. We help our people to articulate their stories, and we turn those stories into public education and are so very happy to be with the Recovery Education Collaborative. Joining Bay State Community Services, Torchlight, and C4. So we honor that and want to be there to engage the community, especially those that come from marginalized communities, communities of color, so that nobody gets forgotten and they can help to dictate the education that should be happening for our peer recovery education workforce.
Ashley (03:28): What a powerful history that MOAR is built on the foundation of. Noel, is there anything you would add about what MOAR’s role is in the REC and what that looks like?
Noel (03:41): One of the major roles, like Maryanne said, is the education piece and the outreach. Because we have regional coordinators, such as myself, that covers different sections of the state. I cover the Southeast Coast, and we have Boston and Points North covered, Metro West covered. We also have Central Mass covered and Western Mass. So we kind of have regional coordinators around each section of the state that kind of carry that torch for MOAR. And so, being part of the REC, we’re doing the same thing at every meeting, every event that we go to as far as educating the community about policies, but we’re also educating the recovery community about the REC.
Ashley (04:22): One of the things that I’m really excited to lean into today is about MOAR’s commitment to uplifting and honoring living expertise. And so, I’m hoping that you both could share about how lived experience plays a role in your work and how you got to doing work that centers and focalizes lived and living expertise. Noel?
Noel (04:46): When it comes to my lived experience, I was embarrassed to talk about my history. I was ashamed to talk about any addiction, or any hangups if some people call them, that I would have. Until I started working with the organization in Boston, and part of my contract was to connect with MOAR. And when I started connecting with MOAR, I connected with Maryanne. She told me about a meeting, and I came to the meeting and really started listening to what people were saying. And I’m sitting in this room, there’s probably 10 or 15 people in the room, and I’m looking around and everyone in the room has no problem talking about their past, their history, their lived experience. And hearing that, it gave me a freedom, if you would, to start talking about, “Hey, you know what? It’s okay for me to start talking about my lived experience. It’s okay for me to let people know that’s who I was, not who I am now.”
(05:49): And so, being able to take that message and add my, I’m Latino, so we add a little different flavor to everything. So every meeting that I go to, every event that I go to, I make that statement, “Listen, your yesterday doesn’t dictate your tomorrow or your today, who you were is not who you are.” And so, being able to take that message to all the recovery centers that I go to. Right now, in the Southeast, there’s like 14, maybe 15 recovery centers that I go to. And I facilitate different meetings, different trainings at different locations. And that’s one of the messages, it’s like, “Hey, listen, your yesterday is your resume today.” So the things that you experienced that at one point in time this country would hold against you, right now, the recovery coaching movement, your yesterday is your resume for your tomorrow.
(06:45): So that’s kind of how I try to educate the community, especially the recovery community coming from the mindset of being ashamed to talk about it. And Covid changed that a lot as well. None of my children ever saw me in my addiction. They never knew I was an addict. I’m sitting at home all of a sudden I’m facilitating meetings at home and my oldest daughter sitting on the stairway listening to papi working at home. And she came down the stairs after I closed out a meeting and she said, “I never knew you were an addict.” But the fact that I was working with MOAR, and I knew how to tell my story in a way that would not leave my daughter with the idea that your father’s an addict now. Your father was, but that’s not who he is.
(07:34): So I think being able to take the message of recovery, take the message of the recovery coach collaboration, and being able to help people understand it used to be this other organization, now it’s the REC. This is what we’re doing. We’re trying to reach the community. Let your resume from yesterday be your job, your career for tomorrow.
Ashley (07:56): Wow, that’s so powerful. Thank you for sharing. I can only imagine how that connects with so many people listening to this, either your own experiences or our loved ones. So I appreciate your willingness to share that with us. Maryanne?
Maryanne (08:10): I can really share with you that similarly, and different at the same time, I was a trained clinician and clinicians aren’t supposed to share their recovery or what have you. So it was an evolution for me to be able to speak. And I also choose when I speak, how far I go, feeling the pulse of the community. Will it be helpful? Which is really important. And that is so important to me because we should feel very proud of being in recovery. I think of our logo as a butterfly, and if you think of the butterfly, it moves from being trapped in a cocoon to that blossoming feeling, the pain of coming out, not that I’ve literally been a butterfly, but literally coming out from the caterpillar that’s crawling along and then all of a sudden establishing those beautiful wings and then learning to fly and flying in a cluster with other butterflies, just really and truly flying away in a great way.
(09:24): So what we do through MOAR, as well as being encouraged by our fiscal sponsor, which is Bay State Community Services, that is also fiscal sponsor for the Recovery Education Collaborative, has been a really good relationship to help to grow this in a big way. And Noel mentioned the connection to the peer recovery centers. When we first started MOAR, there were no recovery centers. And then people, there was a strategic plan that came out of the opioid epidemic. So there were many strategic plans, but within it that said, there needs to be places for people to meet and grow. So thus started the first 5, and now 39 recovery centers, where people are learning how to be a volunteer, to honor their recovery and support one another, have events.
(10:21): And those are supported by MOAR through our regional coordinators, as Noel just shared so eloquently. We’re so proud to have Noel as well as the other four regional coordinators, which is really, really important. And with events such as every September is National Recovery Month, and we help to support that. We have a statewide and people share their stories. And how does the voice of recovery help with that? Is that we have our meetings with people that are members of the recovery community that help to share what would be best, what do we want to focus on? And that happens with our annual holiday celebration, our public policy forums, of which we have, in the Boston area as well as in Western Mass, and want to grow with that, and in fact, in our comedy show every year, which is great, it’s a great way to share the humor of experiencing recovery. And we also have educational tools that recovery messaging, how do I share my story with purpose, point, and passion. As well as policy advocacy 101.
Ashley (11:33): Yeah. I’m so grateful that you’re bringing up these tangible things and I think that that’s probably something we should lean into. First, just honoring the incredible work that you all are doing and the important work that you’re doing. A lot of folks always ask us about lived experience. How do you honor lived experience? How do you bring in and incorporate lived and living experience? How do you do that? And how do you do it in a way that really honors people? There’s a lot of performative ways that people incorporate lived and living experience. A lot of people speaking for people, really lifting up this idea that we’re in solidarity with. We stand with people. What are some of the best strategies you all have for incorporating, meaningfully, people with lived experience and expertise?
Noel (12:24): When I first was working with individuals that were in active use seeking treatment and services, one of the major questions was how do we accommodate lived experience? When I was working as a treatment coordinator, as recovery coach, and as a supervisor, one of the major questions that we would get asked was, “Do you have lived experience? And it’s like recognizing that an individual feels more comfortable with somebody that has experienced some of the things they’ve experienced and recognizing that, being able to say, “Hey, you know what?” So this is where the recovery coaching aspect comes in, where you have someone with lived experience walking alongside someone that’s experiencing this right now that’s maybe trying to get out of it. And even looking back at my weekend experience at the powwow, how the indigenous community used to deal with individuals like that back in the day. They would actually take an individual into a sweat tank, the young, and they would mold them, they would talk to them. They were recovery coaching before recovery coaching was even made.
(13:39): And so, to have the idea of using my lived experience to be able to pour into someone to help them change or have a mindset of change, walking alongside someone, accommodate and recognizing, being transparent, that you know what? But knowing how much, like Maryanne mentioned earlier, knowing how much to share, how much to encourage, and being transparent in working together with that individual, listening to that individual and letting them know that your experience from yesterday doesn’t determine who you are today. That’s how I look at being able to accommodate lived experience. Many people have a low self-esteem and picture themselves very low. And so to be able to say, “Hey, hold on a minute. You’re doing all the work. You’re in recovery. You have so many months in recovery now. You’re building your resume.” And this is how you can accommodate someone and work with someone to have them use their lived the experience for them. Instead of it being a crutch, it can actually be a step in the right direction.
Maryanne (14:48): And I know MOAR’s decision to make recovery and coaching part of what we do, which is a service, just leads to also the advocacy because of the support that a recovery coach who is doing something that is peer directed, peer designed and peer supported, but also has to follow a code of ethics. And we want to be able to honor those ethics and support the fidelity of the role. So within that, we have achieved members who have come up through the role of recovery coach.
(15:27): In fact, one person actually works for us that was a recovery coach. And then, expanding it into the movement, as we talk about policy, moving to licensed recovery coaches, which was having our voices heard, the voices of those in recovery speak before a government assigned commission called the Recovery Coach Commission. And we follow that with a community group made up of recovering persons, recovery coaches, which led to a formulation of something that we are moving towards today in regards to moving towards that. And our whole mission is about educating the public about the value of recovery from addiction with a collective voice. We decided maybe we’re not going to be united, but we can be collective because we want to honor that voice and really, shall we say, respect differences. And that’s a way of ending discrimination within our own selves, leading towards another aspect of being supportive of multiple pathways to recovery.
Ashley (16:37): That’s awesome. Thank you. One of the things that I think is really interesting is the way that the issue is being framed as it relates to policies, procedures, and practices. And so, I’m hoping that you both could speak to what’s up. What’s up for change within public policy? And in that conversation, also acknowledging the need for support in addressing public health issues. So I’m hoping you could talk about what’s up for changes, what’s the public policy landscape look like, and how things are shaping at the current moment for you all in the work that you’re doing.
Maryanne (17:17): I mentioned about the recovery coaches and how that formulated from being totally volunteer to becoming a profession and now acting on that to wanting a policy change towards licensing, which honors, again, the fidelity part of it, which is really important, which also leads towards mothers who have had 51A’s and had to be reported to DCF because they had opiates in their system. And those opioids came from medication-assisted treatment. And that’s a policy that we are working on to change in a very big way.
(17:55): And another one that is very important to us, which over five years ago we had to wrap our heads around is this the way we want to go, and this has to do with overdose prevention centers, which honors people that are still using to be able to go to a place where they may safely use, but more importantly, get attached to social services as well as health services and be honored with and not being discriminated against because they are in the middle of a drug addiction. So if we’re going to end discrimination, we have to have places for people to go where they can feel welcome as well as enhancing the continuum of care.
Ashley (18:39): The feeling welcome piece cannot be underestimated, cannot be understated. This is especially towards the goal of reducing and ending forms of discrimination. Noel, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Noel (18:52): I’ve had this mindset like tornado go through my head. And the mindset is we have gotten away from we the people. People just get up and just vote for whoever sounds good, not knowing what they stand for. Representatives, do they work for me? Senators, are they working for me? Are they doing my bidding? And so many people that I have spoken with over the last five years that I’ve been with MOAR, not a lot of them vote or not a lot of them have ever picked up the phone to call their representatives. And so I love the idea that we have the ability to educate the community about the value of recovery, but not only that, to educate representatives and senators as well. And we’ve gotten away from we the people, because we don’t pick up the phone to call our representatives. And this is where like Maryanne was talking about. Some of the changes in some of the policies in the state of Massachusetts since 2010, over 23,000 people have died due to overdose. That’s an astronomical number.
(20:00): And to be able to impact change, we need to educate the community to get your voice back. And this is part of being visible, vocal and valuable at MOAR that we take out to the community. Being able to help people say, “Hey, you know what? Just because you had a history of addiction doesn’t mean that your voice can’t be heard.” So being able to say, “Where do you live? This is your address. Let me help you. Let’s put your address in. This is who your representative is. This is their phone number. This is their email.” All you have to do is pick up the phone and make the call.
(20:36): Matter of fact, I was inviting people to have a call, your representative party. You order some pizzas and each one of you call, go down the list of the policies. Hang up, give the next person the phone and call your representatives. They work for us. And we’ve forgotten that. We have forgotten that. When I first came on with MOAR, Maryanne said to me, “Noel, it’s our job to educate the representatives and the senators.” And I looked at her like, “Are you kidding me? They are smarter than me.” Well, lo and behold, I met with a senator and I went down this one policy, and he looked at me and he said, “I never heard of that.” And when he said that, I was shook to the core, and then I heard Maryanne’s voice in the back of my head, “Noel, it’s our job to educate the representatives and the senators.” Well, I’ve taken that football and I think I’m running with it every day, everywhere I go, just educating the community. Let your voice be heard.
(21:36): Things won’t change unless we the people get involved to impact change. So that’s kind of the message I’ve been bringing out to the community to kind of help change happen. These laws, they won’t come to fruition unless we all pick up the phone, call our representatives and say, “Hey, I’m interested for you to co-sponsor this bill.” And read it to them. Matter of fact, I might’ve said something kind of harsh this weekend, but I said to somebody, “We made it like the computer books for dummies.” You know how they have those computer books for dummies? So we kind of made it that simple. We give you the name of the policy, what it does, why it’s important. That’s it. The name, what it does, why it’s important. Pick up the phone, that’s all you say, “I’d like for you to co-sponsor this bill. This is the name. This is what it does. This is why it’s important.”
Ashley (22:30: That’s so important and it’s so tangible. And I really can see that being something that folks listening can easily replicate or model or look at what are the different topics, issues needing advocacy in their states. Maryanne, thank you so much for joining us.
Maryanne (22:46): Thank you so much. Faces who are visible and voices who are vocal are going to prove that the recovery and the recovery process is valuable from all different communities.
Ashley (23:00): Noel, thank you so much for joining us and sharing so much insight and knowledge.
Noel (23:04): Thank you so much, Ashley. I really appreciate being here. Each one reach one. Pick up the phone, call someone, reach out to those individuals you haven’t seen or heard from. Uplift and encourage every day.
Ashley (23:16): And to our listeners, join us next time on Changing the Conversation.
Erika Simon, Producer (23:20): 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 Erika Simon and Christina Murphy. Our theme song was written and performed by Peter Hanlon. Join us next time on changing the conversation.
Music
Access additional “Changing the Conversation” podcast episodes.