Megan Goodrich figured she’d just efficiently check all the boxes the court insisted on by attending SMART meetings and taking the SMART facilitator training too. The meetings covered the group requirement and the training earned her community services hours. What she didn’t count on was identifying so strongly with the people that she met at SMART that she would end up making it a big part of her life.
Today Megan is the SMART Regional Program Coordinator for San Diego and facilitates a weekly meeting. So after a calculating start the equation has shifted, “The transition happened in the connections I made, I became invested in the SMART Community.” Megan says the self-empowering approach just made a lot of sense, and it seemed to fit right in with her desire to manage the challenges that heavy drinking had brought into her life since college at San Diego State.
Megan began struggling with alcohol use during those college years and for the next ten years complications mounted. She knew about 12-step programs via a relative but her involvement with that pathway felt shaming and full of “shoulds.” Megan resisted being told she had no control and started working with a therapist. She continued drinking and ended up getting a DUI, hence the court-ordered requirements that fortuitously linked her with SMART.
As Megan continued to attend SMART meetings and learned more about becoming a facilitator, she was struck by the genuine level of caring that was present among participants. Megan says it boosted her self-confidence and the world opened before her. In addition to being a SMART facilitator since 2014, she is a board certified Holistic Health Coach, runs her own recovery coaching business, and holds multiple certifications from The Health Sciences Academy. She is currently working on her Master's Thesis in Integrative Psychology.
Megan loves being a facilitator and tells people one of the best things about SMART Recovery’s practical tools is their broad application to so many different areas of life, even things like watching too much TV or procrastination. She says her approach to facilitation is mutually beneficial, “I speak to my own experience, letting participants know how it positively impacts my own life,” and since she is pushed to listen and actively engage, she benefits as well.
As far as a way to summarize her own recovery journey and her involvement with SMART, Megan offers a quote from a favorite TV show she watched when she was early in recovery that has stuck with her. The commonsense and kind detective Jessica Fletcher told viewers this, “We repay the good in our own lives by investing in the lives of others” And that’s exactly what Megan Goodrich is doing.
