Colby Love on Recovery, Family & Finding PurposeColby Love on Recovery, Family & Finding Purpose
Recovery On-Air
Colby Love talks about her journey from addiction and a seven-year prison sentence to deep recovery, reconnecting with her daughters and launching a pet-care nonprofit. The conversation highlights practical tools, community support and the emotional realities of building a new life after incarceration.
59:22•2 Oct 2026
From Prison to Purpose: Colby Love, Her Daughters and 80 Rescue Animals
Episode Overview
- Consistent 12-step work, meetings and service can transform even a long prison sentence into a foundation for lasting recovery.
- Writing regular, honest letters without blame or promises can slowly rebuild trust with estranged children.
- Finding a supportive recovery community can carry someone through intense grief and early sobriety when family support is limited.
- Hormone and thyroid checks may be important for people in midlife recovery who feel emotionally off but don’t know why.
- Providing safe care for pets while people attend treatment, as Colby Love Can does, can remove a major barrier to seeking help.
“All I ever wanted was my kids back. All I ever wanted was to be a mom again.”
Get ready to be moved by real-life accounts of addiction, prison and second chances. This episode of Recovery On-Air follows Colby Love, who grew up with alcoholic parents, lost herself to cocaine and meth, and ended up facing a 9–22 year prison sentence in Arizona.
Her story shifts the moment Phoenix Police lock her up "non-bondable" and a woman brings a recovery meeting into jail, lighting a spark that Colby says is "literally why I'm sober today." You’ll hear how that spark turns into seven years of prison, fourteen full rounds of working the 12 steps, starting daily recovery meetings behind the wall, and even building a sober softball team with one rule: you have to be clean to play.
Colby talks about learning to live again after release, riding a bicycle everywhere on parole, and being held together by a tiny AA clubhouse when her mum dies and she isn’t allowed to travel to say goodbye. The episode also digs into family repair: years of letters to her daughters from prison, one child writing back, another ripping up letters yet checking they still arrive, and the messy reality when both eventually move in with her.
Her line "All I ever wanted was my kids back" sums up the heart of the conversation. On top of that, there’s Colby Love Can – her nonprofit that looks after pets while their owners go to treatment. She explains how 80+ animals are fed, loved and medically cared for, including a tiny chihuahua whose spinal meningitis care ran to $20,000, and why this work feels like living amends.
Colby and host Kristen Day keep things honest, funny and raw, touching on hormones, ageing, co-occurring trauma and practical advice to "find your tribe" and not give up. If you’re wondering whether hope can survive prison, separation from kids and deep grief, this episode might be exactly what you need today.
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