Women’s experience of recovery often comes with a specific set of considerations and hurdles; Women’s History Month has been our excuse to dive into the subject.

Dee Young was expecting a man to catch her when she fell, but found that it was the women she met through AA who held her up. In her piece “The Women of AA” she explains how they “surrounded [her] like mother hens” and “treated [her] like their little sister” and eventually became the reason she sought out the all-women meeting that supported through her first decade of sobriety.

In “Women and alcohol: Getting sober, staying sober,” Ann Dowsett Johnson introduces us to the women she met during her first week in rehab and describes that all too familiar feeling of “I want to go home. I’m in the wrong place: I am healthier than these people.” Johnson is also the author of Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol, in which she combines extensive research with her own recovery story.

How have your female friendships impacted your recovery journey? Let us know in the comments and take a tour of the Graham Munro Centre, our residential treatment house for women, here.