Every year, on International Recovery Day, we celebrate the resilience, hope, and transformation of people who have overcome addiction and moved toward meaningful, thriving lives. It is a day of reflection as well as recognition that people do recover and flourish in their communities. As a community, we have the responsibility to provide the necessary guidance where possible, to support each individual’s recovery journey, starting with the destigmatisation of recovery and building recovery communities.

Today, the WFAD Global Gender Committee wishes to highlight women in particular, and its coinciding truth: women recover, women thrive, and women’s recovery often exceeds what many imagine, not just getting well, but living better than well.

For many women, recovery is not only a journey out of addiction but also a journey from trauma to post-traumatic growth, reclaiming dignity, rebuilding lives, and creating futures richer and stronger than before.

The particular challenges and strengths of women in recovery

When we talk about “recovery from addiction,” too often the dominant narratives centre on men. But women’s journeys intertwine with gendered burdens, societal expectations, trauma, caregiving roles, stigma, and systemic inequities. Many women face difficult choices: between seeking treatment or caring for children, between hiding their addiction to protect their reputation or risking exposure, between coping with histories of violence and building new life paths.

Yet these very challenges also give rise to uniquely powerful strengths. Women often draw on relational networks, interdependence, creativity, and deep commitments to their children, families, and communities. Their recovery pathways often involve weaving together social, cultural, emotional, and community resources, which is often called recovery capital. The more capital one can access and build, and the lower the barriers (stigma, gender-based violence, poverty), the more sustained and flourishing recovery becomes.

Women’s recovery pathways, as our own work has shown, are not linear. They are nonlinear, relational, embedded in everyday life, adaptive, creative, and often collective.

Why women’s recovery matters for individuals, communities, systems

1. Transforming intergenerational cycles
   When women recover, entire families and communities benefit. Mothers who heal influence the emotional, psychological, and social well-being of children and families. Recovery becomes not just an individual act, but a generational legacy.
2. Role models of resilience and agency
   Stories of women overcoming addiction often involve reclaiming voice, identity, dignity, and leadership. These become powerful counters to stigma and exclusion and serve as beacons for others still in the shadows.
3. Policy, justice, and gender-responsive systems
   Women’s paths to recovery must be supported by systems attuned to gender: services that are trauma-informed, that consider childcare, that provide safe shelters, that protect women from violence and discrimination. Women must not be forced to choose between recovery and surviving the hazards of their environment.
4. Expanding the definition of “better than well”
   Recovery is not simply “no longer using.” True recovery is flourishing: stable housing, meaningful participation, education, employment, family reconnection, community engagement, mental and physical health, and a sense of dignity and purpose. Many women in recovery move into lives richer than before.

The evidence: what we have learned from our work

We want to highlight three works our GGC members have been privileged to be part of, which exemplify how women’s recovery is real, deep, and transformative.

1. Blood Is Thicker Than Alcohol
   This is a memoir by Tracey Ford and offers a moving exploration of how addiction and recovery are interwoven with family, identity, and generational ties. Combining lived experience with sharp insight, it highlights recovery as a process of healing and reconnection. More than a story of abstinence, it shows recovery as reclaiming selfhood and restoring relationships across generations. The book, recently released and available on Amazon, has already sparked attention for its authenticity and depth.
2. What constitutes a woman’s recovery from addiction?
   The majority of research on addiction recovery has been based on male samples using traditional, structured methods and interviews. This study brings the voices of women from diverse European countries to bring authentic lived experience voices into research and showcase their perspectives on what constitutes their recovery journey and how these sources are intertwined. This study uses the Photovoice method as a participatory, arts-based approach to examine the recovery experiences of women from diverse backgrounds in the UK, Sweden, and the Balkans. The paper, co-authored by Nisic, M., Best, D., Patton, D., Ford, T., & Heine, S., is available online.
3. Women’s Recovery Capital Pathways
   This groundbreaking volume (edited by Dr David Patton and Mulka Nisic) brings together fourteen powerful chapters that showcase the strength, resilience, and leadership of women in recovery. At its core lies one central question: what helps or hinders women’s recovery pathways? By centring women’s voices and lived experience, the book highlights recovery capital, personal, social, and community resources, as the key to breaking cycles of addiction and building sustainable recovery. It argues that what women need most is not only better services, but a fundamental shift in perspective: to recognise that the knowledge, authority, and power to transform recovery already exist within women and the communities they create. The book is available on Amazon.

These works demonstrate that women in recovery are not passive recipients of care; they are knowledge producers, storytellers, and leaders of change. Their agency is central.

Call to action: how we can support women’s recovery globally

As we mark International Recovery Day, we urge all of us, policymakers, funders, clinicians, communities,  and advocates, to act with gendered insight:

• Support and fund recovery services that are gender-responsive (childcare, trauma-informed care, safety).
• Recognise and remunerate women with lived experience as leaders, co-researchers, peer mentors, not just consumers.
• Centre women’s voices in policy and practice.
• Advocate for structural supports: housing, safe spaces, family reunification, employment equity, and healthcare access.
• Promote public narratives of recovery that include women’s voices, not stereotypes.

Let us remember: when women recover, they don’t just survive, they give life to possibility. They rebuild, reimagine, and reweave the social fabric around them. On this International Recovery Day, let us commit to amplifying and sustaining women’s recovery journeys, not just for this day, but for every day that follows.