The "Long" Road to Success

The "Long" Road to Success

What remarkable journeys have people faced head-on against addiction? This conversation between coach Blu Robinson and long-time Team AIIA member Christy Long gives a raw, yet hopeful look at what long-term recovery can really look like – especially for women who’ve been told they “just can’t”. Christy shares how addiction and alcoholism ran through her family, leading to homelessness, injecting drugs, and the devastating trauma of finding her children’s father after his suicide.

She lost custody of her boys and hit what she calls “the bottom of the barrel”, yet now lives a life where, as she says, “that is so far from where my life is today.” You’ll hear how mentors like Richard Nance, Desmond Lomax and Mike Jorgensen nudged her towards education, substance use counselling, and now graduate school in counselling and therapy.

Christy talks honestly about impostor syndrome, negative self-talk, and what changed when she realised, “I can get straight A’s. I can do this.” A big theme is service. Christy describes her passion for people with prison histories, shaped by growing up visiting her brother inside and refusing to see prisoners as “garbage”. She wants to help them re-enter society with dignity, saying she treats people “the way that I wanted my own family treated”.

There’s also plenty of heart: family Sunday dinners, her kids running half marathons with their late dad’s picture on their shirts, and her eight-year-old wanting to give her own money to a classmate with cancer. Through it all, Christy keeps coming back to integrity, spirituality, and showing up: “To thine own self be true, 100%.” If you’ve ever thought your past has written your ending, Christy’s story gently asks: what if it’s just the first chapter?