Nursing is a profession built on care, and is one that often asks people to carry enormous emotional, ethical, and relational weight. For nurses navigating recovery from substance use disorder, that weight can be compounded by stigma, fear, and isolation.
When people work in recovery, peer support, and community care, they often spend their days holding space for others. But where do they go to pause, reflect, and be supported?
Recently, staff from Choice Recovery Coaching from Greenfield, MA came together for a focus group to share their experiences with GPS training and GPS support groups. What emerged was a powerful picture of connection, safety, and healing, not just for individuals in recovery, but for the people who support recovery every day.
Across the country, healthcare is straining under the weight of demand it simply cannot meet. No amount of individual appointments can address the scale of loneliness, chronic disease, behavioral health needs, and workforce burnout that continues to grow. Yet right in front of us is a solution that is both ancient and innovative: bringing people together in groups.
In every healthcare setting, time is the tightest currency. Staff move from crisis to crisis, schedules overflow, and anything that isn’t urgent is pushed aside. In that reality, support groups, no matter how meaningful, can easily be dismissed as “nice to have” rather than essential.
When I first encountered the GPS Group Peer Support model, I recognized something deeply familiar: a reflection of the way many faith communities already walk alongside one another in prayer, compassion, and hope. Yet GPS also gave me the language, structure, and grounding to what I had long felt in my spirit— healing happens when we make space for honest conversation, shared humanity, and the divine presence that meets us there.
At Deliverance Center Ministries in Springfield, Massachusetts, Pastor Mark and Co-Pastor Johnetta Baymon have spent decades ministering their community through loss, postpartum depression, substance use, and the everyday trials that stretch families thin. With 20 grandchildren and a spiritual family that extends across dozens of churches, they’ve built a life of service rooted in faith,…
Sometimes a community decides, quietly and courageously, that it wants to love people better. That’s what happened this spring at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Bloomington, Indiana. They reached out to GPS because they wanted to create spaces where people who have been hurt—by religious trauma, by exclusion, by silence—could finally exhale.
There are people whose presence feels like a soft place to land, people who make you breathe a little easier the moment you sit beside them. For so many in our GPS community, Michelle Hagues-Fullwood is that person.
Bullying doesn’t end when the words stop or the classroom empties. Its impact lingers quietly in the body, mind, and heart, leaving scars others can’t see. Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, isolation, and even suicidal thoughts often follow long after the initial harm. What we don’t always talk about is how bullying doesn’t just happen to one child. When one child hurts, the whole family hurts.
As the government shutdown continues to ripple across communities, many people are feeling the weight of uncertainty — emotionally, financially, and personally. At GPS Group Peer Support, we know that moments like these can shake our sense of safety and stability. That’s why we’re opening our doors wider than ever, offering spaces where people can…
