Grand Opening of Recovery Community Center
The Love and Respect Community for Recovery and Wellness is celebrating their Grand Opening on Friday, September 30, 2022.
This Recovery Community Center (RCC) is the very first African American led, authentic, Certified Peer Support Specialist RCC in Western North Carolina. Come anytime between 12 noon and 4 p.m. to 120 Chadwick Square Court, Suite D. in Hendersonville to learn what we do and tour our facility. Free food provided by a local food truck.
“Certified Peer Support Specialists are those of us living in our community in a state of recovery and wellness,” says Lexie Wilkins, founder and executive director for Love and Respect Community for Recovery and Wellness.
“We are productive and responsible members of our society using our “lived experience” in the areas of substance use disorder and or mental health diagnoses to support our “peers” in achieving a lifestyle of recovery as they see it.”
“Love and Respect is a vision that I have had for a number of years. I am a person in long-term recovery from substance use disorder with 17 years, 9 months, and 24 days of total and complete, uninterrupted abstinence from all mod-mind altering substances. I found that on many occasions, I was the only person of color in rooms of recovery.”
“I truly feel that Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) would be more inclined and interested in embarking upon the journey of recovery if they saw themselves in these rooms. We welcome, serve and support all people in all stages of recovery. We will be specifically outreaching to the BIPOC communities, as they are traditionally under-served.”
North Carolina Certified Peer Support Specialists receive 60 hours of training and are certified by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work. They are required to take an additional twenty hours of continuing education units to qualify, with additional training every two years to maintain a valid certification.
Peer Support Specialists utilize their lived experience with mental health and substance use challenges and combine it with the required professional training to engage, support, encourage, and advocate for those in any stage of the recovery process.
You are invited to welcome the Love and Respect Community for Recovery and Wellness, and meet the awesome Peer Support Specialists. Dr. April Bragg of the Dogwood Health Trust will speak, as well as Peers, sharing their perspectives on why this is such a needed space to help combat not only opioid crisis, which is ravaging and wreaking havoc in our community, but all substance use and mental health challenges.
The Love and Respect Community for Recovery and Wellness is located at 120 Chadwick Square Court, Suite D, Hendersonville, NC 28739. For more information, please visit www.loveandrespectcommunityforrecoveryandwellness.org or call (828) 595-2202.
