Meet Our mentors

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My name is Debbie Jo, Co Dependent.

I like others thought that NFF was for others not me. However God took me to a place in my life I needed help in a situation, I was at rock bottom. There was help from Rose and Jon only if I would start NFF, of course the one thing I said I would never do. It took God to humble me to do what He wanted me to do. I’m going on eleven years in recovery It wasn’t easy going through the Life principals and filling feelings from my life growing up in an alcoholic  home. Anger and hurt  I had buried and breaking down walls that I used as protection. However I would say that for me one of the most important thing that in these past eleven years that  I have learned is to love me and that  I am  worth loving. As my mentor told me and continues to tell me is that I am a Stradivarius. I have been mentoring  for the last 9 1/2 years and through mentoring God has allowed me to continue to heal  and to see the work God has done in the lives of the ones  I have mentor  and continue to mentor.

Recovery has changed my life completely and allowed me to live in true freedom. I come from a long line of addicts, alcoholics, and codependent individuals and was destined to follow those patterns but through New Found Family, I am destined to live a life free from these generational curses. I have now been an active member of New Found Family for 7 years. The Recovery Principles have brought about change in my body, mind, and soul to learn about myself and why I operate the way that I do. Recovery is so much more than sitting in a room talking about how I feel – it’s about actual transformation at the core of my being. I would not be alive and living the blessed life that I do without the help of this program and the Mentors that have helped me every step of the way. You can’t heal a sick mind with a sick mind. The accountability of this program helped me to work out my issues with real people who told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. I’m eternally grateful for this program and it’s mentors.

I’m Michal and on my own I’m an addict but with help I’m recovering!

I used to think that recovery was only for someone with a substance addiction… I was wrong! Recovery is for everyone! I was living in an abusive home and I had a lot of bad habits and hurts, but I didn’t think that qualified me for help. I was sexually abused for 13 years as a child, and then continued living with my abusers for 6 years after that. I was sick, tired, desperate and wanted to be free from them. After attending New Found Family for a few months, I realized that I couldn’t do this on my own anymore. My mentor helped me start really dealing with my past. Now that I’ve made the effort to change something, my whole life is different. I work through the Life Principles every day and now volunteer for New Found Family GenZ to help mentor teens and young adults who have struggled through situations similar to mine. We all have bad habits. We all have hurts. I’m no better and no worse than anyone else. Recovery has helped me to learn who I truly am so that I can live a positive life instead of remaining a victim and living in my own personal prison. Thanks for letting me share!

Recovery has changed my life in understanding God’s authority and dominion in my life. In practical terms, my life is submitted to a mentor and accountability partner as well as other counselors in every area of my life. Every important decision is covered by authority. Also God’s dominion in my life brings unsurpassed peace in my life. Learning to release each and every thing that attempts to steal that peace to another human being truly creates humility, repentance, joy and transparency. New Found Family has guided through financial, relational and business struggles. 

My name is Daniel and I have been in recovery for about two years. In this span of time, I have found a tremendous freedom in this new way of life I have discovered through these principles, my mentors and a community of people who all want to help others grow in their recovery. Ever since I was young, I always struggled with depression and anxiety. It would overwhelm me and I felt trapped in it with no way out. I eventually felt that this was how life would always be for me. I had no hope and no way to do anything different. However, I discovered that we don’t have to be stuck in our addictions, our depression, our anxiety, or our codependency. Recovery has given me real answers and real hope through these God given principles and my mentor by helping me understand how past events in my life have affected me today and what the proper way to address them are. It allowed me to address the actual issues I had been running from and trying to ignore, and it was like a weight that I didn’t even know I was carrying was lifted off my shoulders. It has helped me also get my life back in order by helping me set a budget and create a schedule for myself. Even though I struggle sometimes, the joy and purpose I feel now has been more than I could have asked for.

Hi I’m Faith, a recovering codependent. 

Before I joined New Found Family I was at a very dark place. I had just come out of an abusive situation and I was trying to deal with the trauma of uprooting my whole life while also struggling with depression, crippling anxiety, and PTSD. I thought I could handle it on my own and I tried to but I ended up feeling like my life was falling apart and I was scared to ask for help. 

After attending the New Found Family meetings for a few months, hearing the stories of the people who had come out of similar situations finding hope and sanity and seeing the rigorous honesty and transformation in the lives around me, my desperation for true change gave me the courage to pick up a 24 hour chip. 

Since I started working on myself through choosing recovery, with the help of my mentors, I was able to go to the source of my pain and work through it. Now I have the ability to live my life without fear, guilt or shame. These twelve life principles have taught me how to be truly honest, to walk in integrity and humility and they have helped me navigate my relationships and my pain in a healthy way.

My name is Jessica Clark. I am a mentor & member of New Found Family and a founder of New Found Family “GenZ”. As well as an advocate for survivors of childhood trauma & sexual abuse. 

Starting when I was a little girl I experienced mental, emotional, and sexual abuse from my father. Living in a prolonged trauma like that – I developed massive anxiety, depression, complex PTSD & DID. I also developed several addictions… codependency, self harm, & pills. After years of living active in my addiction and reaching a point where I tried to commit suicide – The pain of where I was at became greater than the fear of where I needed to be. I was at my final point of desperation. I joined NFF and started my journey in recovery. March 17, 2020 I picked up my 4 year chip. I never thought I would make it this far… But with the help of my higher power, an amazing sponsor, mentors, therapy, my family, and a lot of working my new principles, I’ve reached a place of healing . And my healing continues. It’s a journey not a destination. I can honestly say I have freedom from my past and true happiness.

I believe everyone deserves recovery & anyone can find healing if they are willing to work for it. I believe in a higher power – May you find Him now.

Michael suffered from the disease of self for many years which led him down a path of personal ruin and destruction. By the age of 35, Michael was divorced, alienated from family, had lost management level jobs with several restaurant chains and had compiled a rather lengthy criminal record due to nearly two decades of an addictive lifestyle. Recovery meetings were court ordered and initially he went just to satisfy the conditions of his probation. Although, by this time he had made up his mind that drugs and alcohol were the problem, the problems and the self loathing had gotten so severe, that his entire lifestyle centered around narcotizing his pain and hiding from the responsibility of taking responsibility for himself, and the problems that he continued to create. It was in the rooms of recovery in South St. Petersburg, where Michael first paid attention to the stories of men and women with years of recovery who had found a new way of living. It was in this small community that he learned to relate and not compare and began to believe that not only could the promises of recovery become real in his life, but that he also was worth a (another) new beginning and that his past would have no bearing on his future. 

Today, Pastor Michael lives with a genuine interest in other people and serves as an ordained elder in the Free Methodist Church, USA. He and his wife, Pastor Yvette (who he met in a recovery meetings in 2011)  devote their lives to sharing the message of hope to the last, least, lost and left out in their community with the simple message that “recovery worked for me and has given me a life beyond my wildest expectations” and that it “will work for you, if you work for it.”

Rose has been in recovery rooms for 34+ years. She founded New Found Family out of a desire to help people reach their greatest potential through educating, equipping and empowering them to work through some of life’s most challenging issues. This desire stemmed from a variety of addictions and internal self harm that made life unmanageable for her. She wanted something different! Rose went from a life of addiction to sobriety to healing and success! 

She now mentors many individuals all over the world and in her own community, including many of our New Found Family mentors and all of the New Found Family Gen Z leaders! She leads our Women of NFF Codependency Meeting every Friday night throughout the year and mentors many women and couples through the Principles of Life books she has helped write and publish. Rose is in the process of writing a new recovery book for those in need of daily recovery based meditations and wisdom. Her intentionality and commitment to sobriety and recovery has paved the way for thousands of others to receive recovery and healing through New Found Family because of her diligent efforts to achieve recovery!