{"id":3478,"date":"2020-04-20T12:16:26","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T16:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=3478"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:31","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:31","slug":"a-voice-to-serve-in-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2020\/04\/a-voice-to-serve-in-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"A Voice to Serve in Recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"
Keaton Douglas has taken her talents for entertaining and created a program to help people heal from addiction. A class at the Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology changed her life \u2014 and the lives of those in recovery. <\/div><\/div>\n

Keaton Douglas had already changed careers once. She ran the marketing department of a Wall Street investment firm before changing focus to her original love: music and theater. \u201cI had a journeyman\u2019s career as a singer,\u201d says Douglas. \u201cI\u2019m the great singer that no one heard of.\u201d For 25 years, she sang at huge galas and worked with some of the finest musicians in the country.<\/p>\n

But somewhere along the way, Douglas began suffering: her marriage fell apart while her son was very young. She was extremely hurt, but eventually she found healing \u2014 and regained her faith. The process of forgiveness brought her slowly back into the Church, she says. \u201cAnd once I forgave, my heart changed. God had done for me something I couldn\u2019t do myself: I was unburdened and unchained from resentment and self-doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n

She began to explore her Catholic faith and started to use her background as a performer to speak to groups of people about her devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when she saw an advertisement in The Beacon<\/em> newspaper for a one-day class at Seton Hall called \u201cSpirituality and Public Speaking.\u201d It sounded like it was created just for her, but her heart fell when she saw the schedule: the class was to be held on a Saturday, when she taught private voice lessons. Still, she decided to go and speak with the school anyway.<\/p>\n

Dianne Traflet, associate dean of graduate studies at Seton Hall\u2019s Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, remembers the day Douglas walked into her office in 2012. \u201cWhen she came in thinking she\u2019d take a class, I saw not just a musician, but someone who is so enthusiastic about learning her faith,\u201d Traflet recalls. As their conversation started, Traflet began to think: \u2018Maybe this woman could use her vocal talents to inspire people through Christian music.\u2019<\/p>\n

But then she realized there was much more to Douglas. \u201cShe\u2019s self-confident, enthusiastic, prayerful, so I just sat back and let her talk,\u201d Traflet says. \u201cI was seeing someone so ready to put her life in God\u2019s hands, and so willing to wait on God for the next step she would be called to take.\u201d<\/p>\n

Douglas said she felt God was calling her to do something \u2014 though she didn\u2019t know what yet. Traflet advised her to enroll as a student, take things one day at a time and see where the path led. \u201cI said, it\u2019s going to be fun to see what God has in mind for you,\u201d she remembers.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Douglas enrolled as a master\u2019s student in theology. As it happened, her son was headed to Seton Hall as a student that fall, and when his friends discovered her presence on campus, they told him how cool it was that his mom attended the same college.<\/p>\n

Douglas found herself a bit out of sorts when she started taking classes at the seminary. After all, the last time she had written a paper, it was in the pre-computer era. On her second day, she was waiting outside a classroom when a young seminarian came up to her.
\n\u201cYou look like you could use a friend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That seminarian was a student named Aro from a community of priests and brothers \u2014 Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity \u2014 at the Shrine of Saint Joseph in Stirling, New Jersey. He\u2019s now Father \u2028Aro Varnabas, S.T., and he remembers the day well. \u201cShe looked very simple and very friendly \u2014 that\u2019s why I approached her,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Soon, a fast friendship was formed, and he invited Douglas to a retreat at the shrine to speak to a group of women in recovery from heroin addiction. Douglas couldn\u2019t understand why they wanted to hear from her, but she went anyway, asking herself, \u2018What can I learn from these women?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI have sung in front of 17,000 people, but I was nervous in front of these women,\u201d she remembers. \u201cI told them how my life was put together by faith. I was crying, they cried. When I laughed, they laughed.\u201d Douglas left the room with a changed view. \u201cIt did not matter what caused our brokenness. What\u2019s important is that we are all wounded.\u201d<\/p>\n

At that moment, Douglas felt her life shift \u2014 she had felt called to serve others, and now she had an idea as to how. She began working as a regular spirituality speaker at Straight and Narrow, a recovery program in Paterson. \u201cThe recovery community became the audience that I prepared for all my life,\u201d she says. \u201cI could speak to them, and I just loved them.\u201d<\/p>\n

As her work in the recovery community deepened, she began to see the issues that all addiction \u2014 chemical substances, pornography, food \u2014 had in common. \u201cThe hallmarks were the same: the feelings of guilt, shame, unworthiness: these were at their roots part of one\u2019s spiritual condition,\u201d she says. \u201cSo we needed to provide \u2028a spiritual remedy. And who better to provide this than our Church?\u201d<\/p>\n

Douglas started training as a recovery coach. She dove into a course handbook and found that although it was 178 pages long, there were only two pages dedicated to spirituality. Many of her classmates in the course were in long term recovery themselves, and most had said they had had a spiritual awakening as part of their recovery.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when she came up with the idea for \u201cI THIRST,\u201d a recovery program steeped in faith to give people spiritual tools to stay clean and sober. \u201cI Thirst\u201d is a reference to the words of Christ on the Cross, but it\u2019s also an acronym: The Healing Initiative \u2014 Recovery, Spirituality and Twelve Steps.<\/p>\n

The first part of the program is education and prevention: Douglas developed a curriculum to help the Church become a resource for people suffering from addiction. \u201cIt\u2019s like no other disease because of the stigma,\u201d she says. \u201cEven bereavement is different.\u201d People are often afraid to grieve a loved one\u2019s death from addiction because of the shame \u2014 and that\u2019s driving them from their faith communities. As part of the program, I THIRST volunteers hold assemblies for Catholic schools and youth groups that address addiction and focus on turning their attention toward faith.<\/p>\n

The second part of I THIRST looks to train people to support the spiritual needs of those in treatment programs and prisons, and to sow the seeds of spirituality as a necessary element of wellness. \u201cSome of the people in recovery are angry at God, some are resentful,\u201d says Douglas, adding that teaching how to share love and hope to help people transform is crucial. It also includes retreats, which help people in recovery who are seeking spiritual guidance and community.<\/p>\n

The program\u2019s third prong is the development of aftercare and community-building services for people coming out of treatment facilities. Addiction isolates people, and so developing a community is a big part of the recovery process. Douglas hopes to welcome people back into the Church as a way to build this community and has developed a program of recovery Bible groups, recovery Masses and intercessory prayer sessions that trained volunteers can develop in their own parishes. Her office is located in a sober-living community in downtown Paterson.<\/p>\n

The faith community\u2019s proactive presence has been a missing element in recovery, Douglas says. One in six people in the U.S. struggles with addiction at some point in life, yet in 2017, only 4 million people received treatment, or about 19 percent of those who needed it. Drug abuse and addiction cost American society more than $740 billion annually in lost workplace productivity, healthcare expenses and crime-related costs.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what makes I THIRST all the more necessary. Douglas has been working to pilot the program in the Archdiocese of Boston through Cardinal Sean Patrick O\u2019Malley and its Opioid Task Force as well as other places in the Northeast, making presentations to different Catholic groups. She says many recovery programs are moving toward a clinical model and shying away from systems that integrate faith, like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a real opportunity for the Church to lead in this area, says Father Aro. \u201cThe problems of the society are also problems of the Church,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery priest or religious person, anyone working in name of church, has to be involved in people\u2019s real problems. That\u2019s how we can reach out to them and bring them back to church.\u201d<\/p>\n

Traflet says it\u2019s been a joy to watch Douglas\u2019s evolution from that meeting in her office eight years ago. \u201cShe\u2019s doing something specific that hasn\u2019t been done before in developing this curriculum that is grounded on faith and Scripture, she says. \u201cShe\u2019s very humbly entering into this, using the tools that she was given through her studies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of Douglas\u2019s success with I THIRST comes from her authenticity, she says. \u201cThis is a woman who knows how to pray, and she wants to be able to bring people into a place of prayer as they\u2019re recovering. She understands the power of prayer personally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Douglas is bringing the I THIRST program to Seton Hall\u2019s South Orange campus for continuing education units. Undergraduate students also learn about the program through the core curriculum. Douglas explains that while studying transformation in the work of Socrates, Plato and Dante, for example, students learn about the transformative nature of recovery. Students speak with people in recovery and learn stories from \u2028real transformative ventures.<\/p>\n

Douglas continues to feel called to bring faith to addiction recovery. For too long, she says, too many have acted like the priest and the Levite in the Good Samaritan story \u2014 walking past someone bloodied in the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it was because we didn\u2019t understand the nature of the disease of addiction, but we are commanded by Christ to care for one another, no matter what,\u201d she says. \u201cAddiction is messy; it\u2019s hard to understand a lot of trauma and abuse; it\u2019s tender and difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engaging in recovery communities has changed Douglas, too, bringing her closer to understanding her own vulnerabilities. She still sings every day to inspire people, using her gifts to lift up people who are feeling ill in detox centers or who are alone in their recovery. She often chooses a well-known song such as \u201cLean on Me\u201c or \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Douglas hopes to bring people back to their faith, and she hopes the Church will open its arms and welcome back those who have lost their way. \u201cThere is no group, no element of society that is exempt,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a unique opportunity for a Catholic university to understand this disease and use our spirituality to reach out to people of all faiths, to share the spiritual healing that they do not get in regular treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katharine Gammon<\/em> is a freelance writer based in Santa Monica, CA.<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keaton Douglas has taken her talents for entertaining and created a program to help people heal from addiction. A class at the Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology changed her life \u2014 and the lives of those in recovery. <\/p>\n

Continue ReadingA Voice to Serve in Recovery<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4613,"featured_media":3481,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,259,14,9,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2019-2022","category-articles-2020-2024","category-campus","category-catholicism","category-faculty","category-uncategorized","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3478"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3582,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478\/revisions\/3582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}