Pondoff's Anonymous Season 3 Episode 31: "The System Isn't Built To Make Recovery Easy" with Dawn Stanley

For nearly 30 years, Dawn Stanley worked inside Missouri’s probation and parole system, helping people navigate addiction, mental health struggles, incarceration and re-entry. Eventually, she thought she was ready to walk away from helping people altogether.Turns out, that wasn’t really the problem.On this episode of Pondoff’s Anonymous, Dawn joins Chris, Kurt, and Zoë to talk about a career spent trying to help people inside systems that don’t always make helping people easy and how that experience ultimately led her to the work she does today with TMAC.Dawn talks about her introduction to the recovery world, what families taught her about addiction, the importance of meeting people where they are, and why there is no single treatment center or recovery path that works for everyone. Sometimes the most important part of helping someone is knowing the right questions to ask and knowing how to navigate a system that can be incredibly difficult to understand from the outside.We also get into the realities of insurance and treatment, supporting the families affected by addiction, and what it actually looks like when someone calls asking for help and has nowhere else to turn.Dawn describes herself as relentless. After this conversation, it’s pretty easy to understand why.