06/24/2026
Four years ago, I quietly disappeared from public life.
I thought I was taking a break from social media.
The deeper truth?
I was tired in a way I did not yet know how to name.
After years of keynotes, trainings, and workshops on interpersonal violence prevention, trauma, vicarious trauma, resilience, and wellbeingโฆ
after years of holding space for hard stories while watching more trauma unfold in the world around usโฆ
I had grown restless.
Uninspired.
Quietly burned out.
I did not fully understand it then.
I only knew I was slowly disappearing from the public life I had built.
So I stepped back.
For what turned out to be a long while.
Some of you know me through the Self-Care, Resilience, or Self-Love Wheelยฎ frameworks.
Others know me through trauma-informed trainings, vicarious trauma prevention work, and keynotes for people doing hard things.
For years, I taught care, resilience, and healing.
And eventually, I had to return to those truths myself.
Because I did not come to this work from the outside.
I know something about surviving.
I know what it means to spend years trying to outrun what has not yet been healed.
I know what it means to slowly build a life from the wreckage of what came before.
Recovery gave me my life back.
Therapy helped me understand what I had carried.
Service gave me purpose.
And over time, I learned that healing is not one dramatic breakthrough.
It is a thousand returns:
A return to the body.
A return to truth.
A return to self-respect.
A return to rest.
A return to hope.
A return to the life survival once convinced you was no longer available.
Three years ago, I came to Thailand looking for peace, quiet, and a little soul-searching.
And I never left.
I began building a life in Southeast Asia.
And because recovery community here is small, I found myself helping create the spaces I needed, too โ especially spaces for sober women.
That is where a new chapter began.
That new chapter is called Sober Worthy Free.
This emerging movement is for women in recovery who have gotten sober, kept going, done so much of the work, and still quietly wonder:
Why do I still feel like I am fighting for my life inside?
Why is it so hard to rest, receive, trust myself, or feel worthy of the life I built?
Is survival really all sobriety was supposed to give me?
My answer is no.
Sobriety is not the finish line. Freedom is.
Today, I am 19 years, 11 months, and 14 days sober.
And this is the work lighting me up now. It is the most personal thing I have created.
We recently rebuilt Olga Phoenix International website to tell the fuller story: the work, the life beneath it, and what is coming next.
The link is in the first comment.
I am grateful to be back.
And if you are a woman in recovery, work with women in recovery, support trauma-exposed professionals, lead a recovery community, or simply feel something stir when you hear the words Sober Worthy Free โ I would truly love to (re)connect.
