May is Mental Health Awareness Month
There is a moment in every recovery journey when something shifts. It does not always arrive with fanfare. For Michael Tillem, Co-Founder and CEO of Journey House Recovery Center, it arrived in the rain, on his knees, at a fence, surrounded by 1,200 men, feeling more alone than he ever had in his life.
“I hit my knees crying like I had never cried before,” Michael shares. “It was a soulful cry. And I had given up. I said, ‘God, if you just keep me clean, I will spend the rest of my life being of service to others.’ At that moment, I bought into it a hundred percent. And I think that’s the pivotal moment.”
That moment did not just change Michael’s life. It became the seed of everything Journey House Recovery Center was built to be, and the living proof that recovery, real and lasting recovery, is possible for anyone willing to take that first step.
Mental Health and Recovery: Two Sides of the Same Journey
This May, as we recognize Mental Health Awareness Month, we are reminded that healing rarely fits neatly into one category. For the individuals Journey House Foundation serves, the path forward often involves substance use disorder, mental health challenges, trauma, family rupture, and housing instability, all woven together.
Addressing one without the others is not enough. That is why Journey House Foundation exists as a Recovery Community Organization: to wrap peer support, basic needs, family programming, and community connection around the whole person, not just the diagnosis.
Michael describes his own experience with that wholeness: “My disease lives in my head. My recovery lives in my heart. And that is what I pull from when my head starts telling me things.”
Recovery, at its core, is the daily practice of choosing what lives in your heart over what your mind tries to tell you. That is not a simple thing. It takes structure, community, and people who believe in you until you can believe in yourself. That is exactly what Journey House Foundation provides every single day, for as long as it takes.
A Place to Feel Seen
Co-Founder and COO Kimberly Braine-Tillem has spent nearly two decades walking alongside people in recovery, first as a recovery ally learning alongside Michael, and now as a leader shaping the culture, programs, and future of Journey House Recovery Center.
Her belief about what healing truly requires is straightforward: “Everyone has value and everyone wants to be accepted, loved, seen, and cherished. When someone walks through that door, we want them to feel exactly that.”
That philosophy is not a policy. It is a posture that every staff member, peer specialist, and volunteer at Journey House Foundation is called to carry into every interaction.
Mental health struggles thrive in silence and isolation. They weaken when a person is genuinely seen, genuinely heard, and genuinely supported by a community that refuses to give up on them.
Kimberly understands this reach better than most: “Recovery doesn’t just impact the individual. It impacts the entire family, the friend groups, their place of employment, their places of worship. That is a big part of the passion and why we do what we do.”
It is that understanding that gave rise to programs like Hope at Home, a monthly gathering that brings parents in recovery together with their children in a safe, supportive space to grow, reconnect, and strengthen family bonds. Because when a parent heals, a family heals. And when a family heals, a community grows stronger.
The Peer Who Shows the Way
One of the most powerful tools in the Journey House Foundation model is also one of the most human: peer-to-peer support.
Michael describes it this way: “The peer doesn’t tell them what to do. The peer shows them how to do it. There’s an old saying — get in the back pocket of somebody in long-term recovery. You want to follow a peer that started at rock bottom and was able to climb out and make something of themselves. When they tell you how they did it, you want to listen. Because you’ve got that example right in front of you.”
Kimberly adds an equally important dimension: the role of the recovery ally: “I’m able to walk alongside parents, loved ones, friends, and coworkers who are not in recovery themselves, teaching them how to be a good listener, how to meet the person right where they are, and how to encourage the individual along the way without enabling. Peer-to-peer goes hand in hand with those in recovery from substance use disorder, and it is also something deeply valuable for the recovery allies surrounding that person.”
This is the heart of Journey House Foundation’s model. Not a program that processes people, rather a community that walks with them.
Why We Do This Work
When asked what keeps him coming back every single day, Michael does not hesitate.
“Every day I walk through these doors, I see the lost look in people’s eyes — the blank stare and the fear of what am I going to do, what is going to happen to me, am I going to die? That is what keeps me coming back. Because I get to reassure them every day that they are in control of their life and we are here to help them.”
Kimberly holds onto a different kind of moment that speaks to what recovery looks like years down the road.
“Just the other day, we had a former participant bring in her family, her children. She came in years ago with nothing and with a future that didn’t look its best. And now, all these years later, to be able to hold her child and hear about her life — going back to school, being married, raising these beautiful children. It’s moments like that which happen every single day here. That is why we are here.”
Recovery Is Possible. Community Makes It Stronger.
This Mental Health Awareness Month, Journey House Foundation wants every person in our community to hear this clearly: you do not have to carry this alone. Whether you are navigating your own recovery, loving someone who is, or simply looking for a place where you will be met with compassion rather than judgment. There is a place for you here.
As Michael says: “Journey House is just a safe place to come. The people coming through here — those are the real heroes. Those moments in their lives are the moments of greatness.”
We believe that. We are honored to witness it every day.
Journey House Foundation provides:
- Peer-to-peer recovery support services
- Hope at Home family programming
- Access to safe and stable recovery housing
- Basic needs support including our food pantry and in-kind drive
- Awareness, advocacy, and stigma reduction
- Connections to clinical treatment and community resources
Journey House Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit Recovery Community Organization and part of the Journey House Recovery Center integrated network of affiliated recovery care and support services in Richmond, VA, which also includes Journey House Behavioral Health and Journey House Richmond Recovery Residences.
Call (877) 484-5769 to learn more about our services.
To support our mission: journeyhouserecovery.org/donate-and-partner