‘Walking alongside them’: Bellingham Café offers addiction recovery support, community
More than a dozen people — mainly community members dealing with the challenges of addiction — waited for the doors to open at Bellingham’s new Recovery Café on a Wednesday afternoon in January.
Once inside, guests check in with Café volunteers and find a warm space to get comfortable. They’re immediately greeted by the smell of brewing coffee and a hot, freshly cooked meal.
“Food is an important part of recovery. If somebody’s hungry and they’re cold they’re not necessarily going to be able to receive the same support as if we are able to provide some of those basic services,” Recovery Café Bellingham Operations Director Amy Kenna said.
The Recovery Café in Bellingham has a peer-support-based membership model focused on helping individuals move through addiction recovery. The Café joined a network of 77 Recovery Cafés nationwide — 17 in Washington — when it opened its doors to guests just a few months ago.
Members must be clean and sober while in the space, participate in acts of service at the Café to give back to the community and participate in weekly, peer-run recovery circles.
“Those requirements differentiate us from a traditional drop-in center,” Kenna told The Herald. “We work in tandem with service providers that are offering the most basic supports. We’re a place somebody can go when they’re really ready to plug in to recovery.”
Many of the individuals seeking support at the Recovery Café are experiencing homelessness or are housing insecure. While the Café doesn’t specifically exist to provide outreach to unhoused community members, Kenna said they have seen a significant overlap of unsheltered people with recovery needs in Bellingham.
“What we’re seeing is that the opioid crisis in particular is putting people in a situation where those most in dire need of recovery support are houseless and often lacking the basics of what they need. We’re here to strengthen that connection between outreach and recovery support,” Kenna said.
Kenna said the Café is expecting an increase in guests amid recent encampment clearings in Bellingham. Café volunteers offered outreach at the Bakerview encampment before it was cleared in January to let individuals living there know they could seek support at the Café.
Clearing begins at Bellingham’s Bakerview encampment with excavators, hand crews on scene
“We understand these clearings are happening. We’re not judging the decision-making process. But what we want to do is provide something stable for people who might feel displaced,” Kenna said.
The Recovery Café partners with local service providers at the space to help guests navigate available resources such as additional treatment support, medical care, shelter availability and housing opportunities.
The Café also offers access to a small library, art classes and free donated clothing.
“We’re not necessarily case managing. We’re not case working in a clinical way,” Kenna said. “We’re peers coming alongside peers. Part of peer support is meeting somebody where they’re at and walking alongside them versus trying to rescue or trying to tell them what to do.”
Recovery Café is unique in that many of the core team of volunteers and peer supporters are also actively in recovery, having experienced everything from addiction and mental health crises to housing insecurity and homelessness.
“We saw that there needed to be a space where there wasn’t stigma, where it was a safe and sober space that was also accepting and understanding,” said Recovery Café Team Member Lucy Rose. “All of us who are volunteers, all of us who are core team members, we have all been through it.”
A major tenet of the Recovery Café is something called “loving accountability” — walking alongside individuals in active recovery and empowering them to continue on their journey.
Café team members told The Herald they’ve seen significant success with members in just the short time it has been open.
“We’ve had many members say ‘I would have relapsed if it weren’t for the Café,’” Rose told The Herald. “The leading predictor of recovery from basically anything is having a community, having a family. That’s what we’re providing here. It is the solution.”
The Recovery Café is open from noon to 4 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays at the First Baptist Church on Flora Street in Bellingham. The goal is for the Café to move into its own space and expand its operating hours before next year’s cold season, according to Kenna.
“Recovery is a full-time job — especially early recovery. So we want to be able to provide more recovery-oriented support with more availability,” Kenna said.
