Human Up Season 1 Ep 7: Transformative Leadership in Recovery

This is a transcript of Human Up Podcast Season 1, Episode 7 with Nyla Christian, which you can watch and listen to here:

Dave: Welcome to the Human Up Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Marlon, and today it's a huge honor to have my dear friend Nyla Christian. She's recognized as a powerful keynote speaker, an industry subject matter expert. Nyla embodies the spirits of transformative leadership and recovery. I'm also a big fan of transformative leadership. She's a founding member and executive director of the Center for African-American Recovery Development. Her advocacy and recovery coaching, training, education and curriculum development and cultural awareness is not just a career, but it's a lifelong mission to create lasting positive change, a nationally certified intervention professional and a life empowerment Coach Nyla is a passionate advocate for women and those underserved across communities. She has led such initiatives as the Las Vegas Mayor's Faith Initiative for Addiction and Recovery Task Force, and serves on several boards including the Global Recovery Initiative Foundation, Vegas Stronger, and the Los Angeles Painted Brain. Nyla. You are one of the most amazing recovery advocates, certainly in the United States, and we've had a friendship that's gone back over a decade. Could we start by you telling a little about you and your personal journey because it's pretty key and who you

Nyla: Are? Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me, Dave. You are. And for all those who don't know, I call this wonderful person in bright light, brother Dave, because we have known each other over a decade from the Las Vegas Grassroots Recovery advocacy community, and I'm so glad to join you. I'm joining you from Los Angeles today, but at heart, I'm a New Yorker, but I spent a good 27 years in Las Vegas. I found the answer to my behavioral health challenges and issues and substance use disorder challenges in Las Vegas in the 12 step mutual aid community. I'm very, very proud of that. I'm very proud of what transformed my life, and I spend a lot of my personal time in helping women transform their lives through that particular 12 step mutual aid group. But I also found the need to join the Recovery advocacy movement, which really kind of changed my life and my career, all of what, 17, 15, 17 years ago now.

And I'm very proud to say that I started that journey in Las Vegas watching people like yourself, Dave, actually way back in the day, I don't know solutions, I think it was so long ago, and I watched what I thought was an incredible movement where people with lived experience began to really in the advocacy movement help people who were experiencing challenges. And we were no strangers to mutual aid support and what that looks like and social recovery movements and role models and what that looked like. But I watched folks like you build communities that were about life changing help and support, and it sparked me to become part of that advocacy movement. So myself, I've been sober for 16, 17, almost 17 years now, and I'm very, very proud of that with the help of women and a family and a community of respectful, wonderful, and supportive men like yourself. I am living a life that's beyond my dreams now. So that's a little bit about me, a little bit about the beginning of my career, and I'm so glad to be here, and I'm so glad to be part of what Vegas Stronger does in Las Vegas, which for me, Las Vegas is my home. It's where my rebirth began, all of those 17 years ago.

Dave: Yeah, mine as well. I don't know if you recall, but it was more than a decade ago. I was a social media troll and you and I began sparring. I don't know if it was on Facebook or something. And at the time, I considered myself pretty bright, and I remember going back and forth with you, and I remember while we were arguing different positions that I was just building a tremendous amount of respect for you and recognizing that I had initially underestimated you and that you were heavyweight. And then to me, ever since that I've just been in love with you. I love them for your passion and the level that you approach recovery, that you approach life. I'm one of your biggest fans. And

Nyla: The feelings mutual. The feelings mutual. Dave, I love the idea that we can all hold our differing and circumstantial opinions, but that we can all be human. I love just the idea of this podcast and the idea of the work that you do at Vegas Stronger and the work I do in the world is that we're humans first, and the opportunity to respect each other and to hear each other and to meet people and friends and colleagues, and sometimes even foes where they are, what a wonderful skill that is in the world that we live in. So I'm a fan as well.

Dave: That's awesome. And I appreciate you saying that when so many people, even families, are split due to ideology, due to politics, due to decisions. And I'm not sure if it's now that I call it, I'm on my back nine as a golfer, the front nine. I'm on the back nine of my life right now, and I played differently on the back nine of my life than I did on the front nine. And recognize that when even if someone yells at me or says something, I'm at the point of my life where I could listen and I could say, you're telling me about you. You're actually not telling me about me when you're yelling at me. I'm going to listen to you, tell me about you, and I'm going to then respond accordingly. We just lost your camera for a sec. Hopefully you put back no idea

Nyla: Why that's happening, but I am back. Alright, cool. Everything you said, I am back.

Dave: Could you take a minute and tell me a little bit about the Living Well Project?

Nyla: Yeah, sure. So all those years ago in Las Vegas, as I was looking around at organizations like the one that you grew and you nurtured and cultivated, and I was saying to myself, there's something here that goes beyond those first 30, 60, or 90 days. Treatment is a fantastic and obviously an integral part of people recreating their lives and how incredibly important the clinical sector of our journey is and always is in terms of support in a clearly well-rounded recovery life. But there was something else that people like you were doing and that was addressing those things that not only helped me restart a person in recovery, not only helps a person in recovery start their lives, but also what are the things that help me thrive? What are the pieces that are missing from my life that might possibly set me in a different direction or a new direction or create a new pathway?

I got very interested in looking around the recovery community, looking at things like peer led support, peer support, what was happening there. A lot of what I saw is there were representatives in the community that were and really well skilled, but there was a lack of representation, diverse representation in that space. And I thought it was important for me to take a look at how I could be part of creating pathways for black women in particular to become representatives of people with lived experience, helping people living the experience. So I started living well in my living room. I invited women who were well embedded in recovery, women who were of color and had created their lives anew in all sorts of dissects of recovery. So we had women who were veterans, women who were younger, women who were older, women who were LGBTQs plus women who were from backgrounds that were well healed in academics and women who had experience in skills and trades.

And we started together studying for peer support certification because there was this idea that if I could help broaden and deepen and widen representation in that space, that it would draw more women who were, and what I call my sisters on the other side of the door, there was a feeling of being invited into the space and not always necessarily heard, not necessarily well and culturally supported, so invited, but not exactly part of. And so I thought that I could change that. And the wonderful thing about Living Well Project is it was not just about peer support certification, but it was about creating a community, a networking community, a supportive community. So Living Well really sparked my ideals and living Well was part of me building and cultivating my ideals, which really the core of my ideals in recovery advocacy have to do with inclusion and belonging and equity and access.

Dave: Wow, amazing. And so important. We have strong peer support. We have seven peer support specialists that work that we pay for at Vegas Stronger. And when I try to explain to people who are not in recovery, the benefits of lived experience, of peer support of someone who's walked the path before, I always feel like I come short of explaining how critical and how important it is, but it shows in our success rates right now at Vegas Stronger, we're running an 86% success rate of clients staying clean, sober, getting jobs and getting housed, and with us treating the underserved and often the incarcerated population, that statistic is better than anything I had at Solutions Recovery, dealing with commercial populations. And to me, the peer support is just a critical, it's a linchpin for our programming because every one of our clients has a person that they're teamed up with who's done, they've done the walk before, making them feel welcomed and not judged and being able to help them along the way. Because a guy like me with Neuropathways, I drank and used for 20 years, my neuro pathways were ingrained. And to me, I often say it was two years before when I stubbed my toe, my first thought wasn't Jack Daniels.

Absolutely. Or if my ex-wife, wife talk to me with a little hint of disgust, my first thought was often, go drink or use, I'll show them. Absolutely. So changing that is so critical and peers help do that.

Nyla: Absolutely. Dave, as a woman, as a woman, and I'll start there because the beginning of my advocacy journey had everything to do with speaking directly to and into the core of women who were trying to recreate their lives as a woman. And I won't speak for all women because just like there is no black experience, there's no woman experience that's monolithic, right? But I will say for me, it was the shame, it was the embarrassment, it was the guilt. I was a mother when I became, I had been a mother for eight years when I finally sat all the way down in my mutual aid, in my 12 step mutual aid group. And it was the regret. It was the embarrassment and shame of what happens as a woman in terms of my ethics and my morals and my values, my dreams and my aspirations to be a mother, to be a strong mother, to be a guide, and to be a steward.

There were those things that I needed the ability to sit across from a woman who had lived that experience and had traversed that gap and had become a woman of glory and of respect and grace. And so when I started, I was present at every, I was at Salvation Army, I was at the women's shelter and I was talking with women, and I was available for women to be heard and to be seen. And for black women, the stigma runs deep. We know in the recovery community that the stigma runs deep. And there's an intersectionality of stigma when it comes to some of our underserved. And as a black woman, we're dealing with sexism, we're dealing with racism, we're dealing with bias. We're dealing with substance use disorder, we're dealing with mental health. We're dealing with our own, our internal shame and guilt. So I needed to be, and I remember Dave, there was a woman very well respected in our community, Betty Betty from WeCare.

Betty from WeCare told me early on in my recovery journey, she bought me really close to her one day. She had been in the throes of ending her journey. And she wasn't always lucid. She wasn't always lucid, but she knew when she saw me, Dave, and she bought me to her so closely, and she says, I need you to stay here. The black girls are going to need you. And that didn't mean that the brown girls weren't going to need me, and that didn't mean that the Caucasian girls or the Asian girls weren't going to need me. But because there is such a lack of consistent representation, both in 12 step mutual aid group rooms and communities, and also in treatment and in recovery circles,

Dave: There's

Nyla: Such a lack of representation of women of color. What this woman who died with I think 46 years of recovery was saying to me is that my journey was important and was going to help guide and change the journey of many women after me. And I took it to heart. I really took it to heart. Dave, I could go on and on with this, but please, yeah, please.

Dave: That's beautiful. And that helps capture the essence of our mission and what we are here to do. Speaking of mission, I'm grateful that you've hung in there as a board member on Vegas Stronger. Now, there's some current policy things that are missing. And I'm curious if you have any thoughts on in LA or in Las Vegas, what's your sense on what's missing from the policy standpoint? Oh

Nyla: Boy. Oh boy. Well, Dave, that's a week long podcast, right? It's a week long podcast. First of all, let me just say in terms of my support of Vegas stronger, Dave, I'd probably support just about anything that you decided to cultivate and build and grow and seed and water from the ground up. I admire your journey, and I admire your dedication and commitment to the core challenge that people in recovery have. And that's how do we, in a human way, how do we support people, set them free on their journey, meet them where they are, and then set them free on their journey? So thank you for the work that you do generally, and with Vegas stronger. I live in Los Angeles now. I was in Las Vegas for 27 years. I've watched Las Vegas, my family's been there since 1972. I know Vegas pretty well, and I've seen Vegas change over the years. And I think that the national policies obviously affect us locally. But if I were to look at Las Vegas and look at Los Angeles, I mean, the challenge here is just as chronic. Everything is relative. So the challenge here is just as chronic as it is in Las Vegas, if I were to talk about policies that we're missing, we we're treating, we're treating the gash with a bandaid.

A person comes into emergency with their leg falling off, and we're saying, here's an aspirin. And the idea that we're not dealing with behavioral health, I believe in a way that is comprehensive in a way that is human is I would say part of a main issue. And there's a possibility. I see you chipping away at what's happening. And when I say chipping, I don't mean that the efforts of Vegas stronger are not significant.

Dave: Oh, not taken that way. Yeah,

Nyla: No, yeah, please don't take it that way. But I think it's so interesting because I was just at Nevada Homeless Alliance gathering in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, and I was talking to the soldiers, the advocates that are in the world, in the streets, in their particular corners and crevices doing the work that we could possibly do. We're chipping away at a challenge that has to do with our humanity to begin with. Before we start talking about policies, we're talking about ethics, we're talking about morals. I traveled, Dave, this challenge that we're having in America, the greatest power in the world, is just not something that is as prevalent other places. And it makes me wonder about who we are morally, who we are ethically. But in terms of policies, I would say really, really getting to the core of our behavioral health and mental health issues would be one of the things I think that I admire, that you go more concretely at policy and we can talk about that kind of stuff. And I know that this is your area of get down, and I tend to leave who's good at the thing to do the thing. But from I guess the theoretical or theory standpoint, I just don't think that we're human enough in dealing with the core challenges with mental health and behavioral health. That's

Dave: What I would say. I agree with you a hundred percent. And to me, that's the government, that's the communities, that's us as individuals. The fact that it's normal for us to drive and come to a stoplight and have a person who's suffering there, and we don't stop the world and fix that, all of us as an immediate crisis, as somebody's in our village suffering,

It's shocking to me how quickly we've all become hardened. And what got me excited about Vegas Stronger initially is that today there's 7,900 unhoused in Vegas. And to me, we've now treated over 2000 at Vegas stronger. So our little chipping away, we just crossed a hundred employees. So we have a small army of behavioral health clinicians, psychiatric prescribers, case managers, peer support specialists. So we're not able to fully meet the whole challenge full on, but we've been able to treat a quarter of it and we're still growing. And you know me, I have no anticipation of slowing at all. We do have plans in place to double again next year. So I don't want to rest until we could solve this local problem of homelessness.

Nyla: And Dave, first of all, I know you won't rest. And second of all, I'm glad that you quoted some stats because that's pretty significant in terms of the percentage that the chip, that Vegas stronger, that's pretty significant. That's a pretty significant number we can squabble about who loves America the most. But I got to tell you, as an American, I travel quite a bit and I absolutely love the creature comforts of being an American. I absolutely love the creature comforts. I will also say I was in Cannes a couple of times actually over the last couple of years. We were just in Rome, we were just in Macedonia. And the chronic issue that we have here, you do not see in other places. And one would wonder why. And one would wonder, and again, Dave, you said, we can talk about government, we can talk about community, but let's talk about us.

Let's talk about us as humans. How do we drive by someone on the street and not say that is someone's son, that is someone's uncle, that is someone's child. It is embarrassing is what it's actually, but again, I'm thankful for the work that you do. I also think it's important to remember as the advocates that we are, and instead of looking here, I'm going to look directly at you now and say, as the advocates we are, it's so important that we remember we're not slowing down, but this is heavy. It's heavy work, man. This is heavy, serious world changing work that we do. And so we just have to remember to take care of ourselves too.

Dave: Good points. I'm glad you're traveling. That's part of my self-care as well, that traveling. I do want to comment that another statistic that I've been astounded by is in just over 2200 people that we've coaxed through our golden door, 95% of them ended up having a serious substance use disorder.

Now, many people like to say, this is not a drug problem. And I recognize I'm a drug counselor, and if you give a carpenter something to fix and you give 'em a hammer, everything's going to be a nail. But I'm telling you that 95% of the people who've walked in our door have had a substance use disorder. So I think part of this uniquely America problem is just like uniquely America has this addiction problem. Now America has this unique homelessness problem, and I believe they're intrinsically connected. And my position is good news. I know how to help treat substance use disorders.

Nyla: And I think that that's important. I think they are intrinsically, they're intertwined. And one would wonder, because one of the most terrifying terms, but really accurate terms I've ever heard is this overdose rate that we're experiencing their deaths of despair. And what I find so interesting about that is where is the chicken before the horse? Are we self-medicating because of our position and status in terms of being unhoused or being disconnected from our careers or jobs or our sustenance? Or is it the chicken before the horse is the question?

Dave: Definitely both. Because if you use Fentanyl for a period of time, there's a high likelihood you're going to be homeless. And if I was homeless in Las Vegas for a period of time, I assure you I would want to use Fentanyl to help address the pain. So to me, I understand both this cause and effect, and they're both in play. And you bring up some much bigger issues of inequities, which end up pushing people towards the street, which I'll say straight up Vegas stronger. We're doing almost nothing. We're trying to catch the ones that are in the stream. We are not doing enough going up the stream and seeing why people are falling in the water.

Nyla: It is up the stream. It absolutely is up the stream. And Dave, so the reason that I got connected with Center for African-American Recovery Development, and I'm a founding board member who was kind of cajoled, maybe tricked into this executive director position because we lost our, well, we didn't lose. We let SAMSA borrow our executive director. We hope that he'll be back on the board at one point. But he went up to be the deputy at the Office of Recovery Services. And so I stepped into the position, but the reason I got connected with card is because over the last two years, actually not these last two years, but from 20 to 20 22, 20 20 through 2022, we saw a 44% uptick in the rise in overdose deaths in the black community across the country, which is a terrifying, that's almost 50%, right? I mean, let's just round it up.

That's a terrifying, terrifying number. And when I look at the percentage of nationally, the percentage of folks who find themselves unhoused, and I see the disproportionate amount of people of color that are affected, I go into hyperdrive. And it's again, not because all lives do matter, and I think that that's a great thing, but when I see that there's a possibility that as a person with lived experience, I have the ability to reach people who are of color and black people in particular to help stem that overdose rise. I feel charged to do so. And so I actually travel the country helping stand up black led recovery community organizations across the country. And having the opportunity to share my lived experience, but also share solution, I think is a super important part of why I get up every day and why it's so important for me to not just do the work I do, but also build bridges of succession so that I am cultivating and incubating help incubate new recovery advocacy leaders of color or from underserved communities so that we all can have some access to these life-changing solutions. I think the work that I do intertwines itself in helping stem the amount and that upstream stem of folks that

Unhoused it

Dave: Certainly has an effect. You've spoke at some of our women's groups before, and I've talked to ladies coming out of it, and I guarantee you have a profound impact on people. And I agree some upstream who haven't developed a diagnosis yet and could divert it, which is awesome. And just as important, some folks who are deep into a substance use disorder who recognize that there is a way to live clean and sober, there is joy and service ahead of us in life, despite our past shames.

Nyla: Yeah, I'd say service is such an important piece. And speaking of that, Dave, this is so interesting. I had no idea that this was going to come up, but just recently I had the opportunity to have a good long conversation with someone who I believe is maybe a year into her journey, who came through Vegas stronger. And we met the last time that I actually spoke at Vegas Stronger and with life meeting, all of life's challenges, doing the deal, right, doing the deal. And what was important to me about that is it was a woman of color who said, I remember you from last year, and I'm so glad that you were here. And Dave, I've always said this, that if there's ever anything that I can do as a board member, as a colleague, as a fellow traveler, when it comes to the work you do, I'm always interested.

I'm always excited and I'm always enthused. And what I can say is that there's such reciprocity because I've never called you and said, Hey, Dave, I need, and you've ever shied away. I had love the opportunity to just say this a couple of months ago, a situation where we had, I had someone in my life who said, Hey, I'm ready to be back there. I'm ready to be back there. It's not working for me. And I mean, you were top three people I called. And within moments, within moments, I don't think you were in the country as a matter of fact. And within moments, we had this person connected because upstream is a very relative term, right? Because it could be upstream before somebody develops. It could be upstream before somebody makes that next jump down into the abyss or whatever that level is. And I don't think that we could do this work without each other. So I appreciate you. Yeah.

Dave: Well, likewise so much. Now, you talked about some of the speaking, you're also an interventionist.

Nyla: Yeah. So I believe that all of the pieces work together. And it's so funny that you're talking about intervention. I was just writing a piece, preparing for a presentation, and one of my colleagues did some research on intervention the show some years ago when we were talking about how important it is to develop culturally responsive modalities. And so intervention is one of those pieces that we're working on. How do we develop a way to reach people who have suffered and endured and thrived through systemic racism? How do we adapt intervention, the modality of intervention to help those families in those communities and our families and our communities? So that's a really important piece. But in terms of my speaking, I've been traveling the country. I've just returned from doing a couple of pieces in Michigan for SAMHSA Region five and helping Recovery community collective, let's say in Michigan, to develop an equity workshop so that the recovery community organizations that exist can better understand how to reach people with culturally and trauma-informed practices.

That's a super important thing that's happening. We are card, the Center for African-American Recovery Development, which is made up of recovery Community organization, founders from around the country. Just really quickly want to talk about that. Detroit Recovery Project, about 20 years old, Northern Ohio Recovery Association out of Ohio, Chicago, recovering Communities Coalition out of Chicago. Those founders are actually part of our board, minority Recovery Collective Incorporated out of Indianapolis, also part of our organization. But we'll be traveling to Florida, and I'll be speaking at the American Addiction Psychiatrist as a matter of fact association convention in Naples, Florida coming up here. But I do make myself a available to as much as possible, not just carry the message of recovery, but carry the message of recovery, advocacy and equity and access in that space. I make myself available as much as possible because I think we're kind of talking about it, but not really talking about it.

And it's important that we, as in people of color, make ourselves available for a very challenging and oftentimes uncomfortable conversation in both the treatment and recovery space and even the prevention space about making sure that people understand that trauma-informed is great. Healing centered is also better. And I think that people who are underserved need to be, or people from underserved communities need to be in those conversations, need to be at the table, need to be present, need to be accounted for invisible in this space. So I spent this year actually on the road speaking, presenting, moderating, facilitating. We'll get back to self-care in a bit. I probably spent too much time on the road, Dave, but that's another conversation.

Dave: I think we're both cut from the same cloth in that respect. I know,

Nyla: I know, I know.

Dave: Which kind of leads to my next question, you're also a life coach, and I get the feeling you and I could both use a life coach.

Nyla: Oh my God, Dave. So now we're going to get really personal because here's the deal. The deal is I come to find out that I maybe not be walking my talk. I come to find that out.

Dave: I hate when that happens.

Nyla: Who to thunk that? Yeah, exactly. Who to thunk that? So I find myself fully entrenched, totally immersed in the work, going a mile a minute. I'm speaking, I'm writing curriculum coaching folks in my own coaching business. I'm sponsoring women because I sponsor and I stay sponsored. I stay in my own personal discovery work. And come to find out I wasn't breathing

Not to do that. And so I will say that as healers, as healers, we need to be dutiful. We need to be dutiful in our own healing. And I think that that could get lost in the noise. Also, Dave, there's so much work to do. There's so much work to do. Staying focused and grounded is hard because there's so much to do. And I found that I have a family, I have a husband, I have a family, I have a life, I have friends. And finding the balance in the alignment, this is probably the area where I have little to no acumen. And I would like to moving forward, change that we talk about in the fellowship that I love. We talk about a balanced triangle, and I've probably been a little bit unbalanced, working a little bit too much. And so one of the things that I think helps is every once in a while, you're one of the people, I'll just reach out and say, whew, I get it. But being able to speak with my colleagues and my fellow soldiers and my fellow travelers truthfully and transparently about the load, the heavy work and how heavy this work gets, I think is super important.

Dave: Agreed. Yeah. And it's interesting you said we forget to breathe, but that was an analogy,

Nyla: But not really, right? So yeah, it was a metaphor, but not really. And it's funny, Dave, because here's the thing that's even deeper. Here's the deeper thing, putting words around. So I just recently had a cardiac ablation. Whoa.

Whoa. That sounds crazy, right? And what it was, guys, is I literally, my heart was beating faster than I was actually breathing. And I didn't catch it because I was so used to this high level of, so what happened is I get on a plane and I go overseas, and I come back and I get on a plane and I go to speak and Michigan, and I come back and I get on a plane and I go to speak in New Orleans, and I come back and my heart was somewhere route, I dunno, I dunno where my heart was, but come to find out, she was beaten a little too fast. And so I actually had to address that. I actually have a cardio team now, and in my head, Dave, we've talked about this too. It's like I feel a little too young for it, but apparently, here's one of the gifts of recovery and building a great life, is that you get to live and you get to live long.

So I'm a little longer in the tooth than I'd like to think, and my heart knows it. So I say all of this to say, the body keeps score. The body totally keeps score. I've got a great cardio team now, and I've got to do things a little bit differently. And that means not necessarily doing the work with the intention or even really the intensity with which I do it. It's just making smart choices and having some discernment around remembering that I have a body and that the body is important. So I stay in the gym, I do the yoga, I do the prayer, but I also have to remember to breathe and breathing means deeply down into that root chakra where my God lives. So I was breathing, I think it was a very shallow breath, very shallow, because I'm getting a breath in between the next thing, the next, I've got to develop the curriculum over here, and we've got to present it over here, and we've got to do a workshop here. And then I got to fly over there. And maybe just breathing in between and catching a little sun and saying hi to my husband every once in a while. That's a whole other conversation.

Dave: You mentioned the gym, and to me, you've always had an amazing body. Yeah, you've always been a strong woman.

Nyla: I don't have them right now, but you know what I mean?

Dave: Yeah. So I I know that just doesn't happen. I mean, that takes dedication and

Nyla: Discipline. Yeah, it does. It

Dave: Does. It absolutely does. You must put in the time and the effort to do that. And I know that for decades you have, and that's admirable. But it's interesting. That is not enough.

Nyla: So the way in which we metabolize everything, right? I'm not a person that gets into macrobiotics of my food and all of that kind of stuff. I just don't have that kind of discipline. But the way we metabolize everything, and I think growing Dave, this part, growing an organization, I mean, I took on the responsibility of being the face and the voice of a national organization. And what happened for me is I was moving very, very, very fast. And the way in which you metabolize that responsibility, the accountability, the heaviness of

Dave: The, and the cortisol from the stress,

Nyla: Oh my God, the cortisol, forget about it. Again, that's a whole other conversation. But if you think about it, Dave, we're taking on, I talk about helping the person on the other side of the door, just like you. I'm literally in the streets. I mean, I'm in the streets and I'm talking to SAMHSA and everything in between. And so remembering to metabolize the stuff in a way that is healthy, in a way that is sustainable. That's the other thing, Dave. This is a marathon. This is not a race. This is not a

Dave: Sprint. It's

Nyla: Not a sprint. No, it's not a sprint. The last thing that I'll say about that too, I think is important. One of the things I focus on with card is cultivating the emerging leaders and the emerging voices. Because what is a succession plan, right Dave? I mean, when I run into the inevitable wall, when I get to express my iga, my purpose as just being at my desk in writing and publishing my books. And when I get to that point, who then takes up the gauntlet and continues to run the race. And so that's really important to me. And one of the things I do with Card is making sure that we are cultivating new voices and these new black led RCOs, because I want the next generation to have, I dunno why my camera keeps doing that, Dave, sorry about that.

Dave: No, it's okay. Your audio is fine.

Nyla: Yeah. I want the next generation of recovery advocacy leaders to have the benefit of leaders, people of color, who are well-trained and well cultivated and passionate and well supported in the area of advocacy, which has to do with policy, it has to do with practice. It has to do with being in the streets and making sure that we understand how to do the work that we do without harming others. So that also is something that I've been looking at. How am I proactively part of creating that succession plan? Because we're not, I'm going to say we are

Dave: As you can.

Nyla: We're on the back nine, we're in the

Dave: Back. Nine, we're in the back nine. And thinking about sustainability and succession planning is the responsible thing we need to do. And it takes work effort and just as much dedication as everything else.

Nyla: Yeah.

Dave: I wanted to wrap up by asking you an open-ended question about Human Up. That's the title of the podcast. What does that phrase mean to you?

Nyla: So Dave, I'm so glad you asked this because it's the first thing I thought about. It's the first thing I thought about. And what came to mind for me is us leveling up as folks, as people, as colleagues, as fellow travelers, to join hands in this journey of humanity. When I drop the skin suit, when I drop the cool hat and all the accoutrement, when you drop that, who are we to each other? How are we leaving this world better than when we found it aside from sides of the aisle? What is it that you're doing in the world that creates continuity and connection and respect and love? That's what that means to me. And again, you don't need to do what I do, and you don't need to do what Dave does, but what are you doing? That's that difference between honesty and integrity. What are you doing behind closed doors that really connects you to the humanity of this world? It's about compassion and it's about connection. And I get the tiniest bit frustrated and the tiniest bit. I'm depressed sometimes when I think about how we're not being human enough to each other. And so I think just moments like this, when folks like you and I connect and we spread some love and some joy and some truth, right?

When we do things like this, it creates just a little tiny, like a slice of sunshine in the world. And that's all

Dave: It certainly does in my heart. And I'm so grateful that you were able to carve some time to meet with me. This was better than I hoped it would be. So thank you so much for your time. Thanks for being a guest on Human Up, Nyla Christian.

Nyla: Good to see you guys. Thank you so much, Dave. I appreciate you.

Dave: Alright, take care and be well.