DENVER — All are welcome at the Free Spiritual Community. The organization offers a place where addicts in recovery and their loved ones can go and feel at home with no judgement and no shame.
“Our tag line is we don’t do shame and our mission is breaking the silence of addiction. And that shame piece is important, especially if they’re coming from addiction or loving someone in their lives who’s battling addiction,” explained Ryan Canaday, a pastor and the community’s founder.
Free Spiritual Community is located near the University of Denver in a former church, and offers programs that include everything from recovery meetings, trauma-informed yoga classes, Saturday night sober events and now, its new pay-what-you-can Free Café sells coffee roasted by Wagon Coffee Roasters.
Previously profiled by Rocky Mountain PBS, Wagon Coffee Roasters is a company that employs women in recovery. Free Café is also managed by people in recovery.
Colorado Voices
A café run by and for addicts in recovery
“To give people an opportunity for employment who would maybe otherwise not have it because of the past, the checkered past that they have,” explained Canaday when asked about the café's mission. “Here we want to give second chances and third fourth and fifth chances.”
Alix Glasgow is an assistant manager in the Free Café. She’s also a wife and mom and has been sober for almost six years. Glasgow told Rocky Mountain PBS why she works for the Free Café instead of a corporate job.
“You walk in here and you feel like you are home. You feel like you can take a deep breath," Glasgow said. "It doesn’t matter where you’re at in your journey, or your sobriety; you are safe here. It’s just a beautiful place where you feel very accepted.”
Canaday got sober from alcohol almost a decade ago. In 2018, he and his wife Tami came up with the idea of starting the Free Spiritual Community to create a healing space for everyone, especially addicts and their loved ones, including people in the LGBTQ+ community.
“It’s really important for us to welcome our LGBTQ community in here too because they would be some of our spiritual refugees; they’ve been to religious environments where they’ve been told you need to change or else or if you want to be one of us you need to give this up and here we say you’re welcomed and affirmed exactly as you are,” Canaday said.
For Alix Glasgow, one of the most important parts of her recovery journey is community, being around other people living similar lifestyles with similar goals and outlooks.
“When you’re struggling or need a hand to reach out to you, that’s what this community gives you," she said. "It’s so cool to give back to the community that gave me my life back, first and foremost!”
Canaday’s message will always be the same for those who need to hear it: reach out, ask for help, then put in the work. And no one is ever alone.
“We do this journey of recovery together,” he said.
Dana Knowles is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS and can be reached at danaknowles@rmpbs.org.
Brian Willie is the content production manager at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can contact him at brianwillie@rmpbs.org.
Community Circle: Recovery
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