Volunteer & facilitator meeting to replace December 23 Saturday Morning Meeting

Since the Wilson branch of the New Haven Free Public Library will be closed on December 23 and December 30, 2017, we will not be able to hold our regular Saturday morning face-to-face SMART Recovery meeting. (We haven’t found changing meeting locations for one or two weeks to work well.)

As it’s a while since we last held a volunteer meeting, we decided to hold one in the freed-up Saturday morning time slot. So, we will be holding a meeting for facilitators and other volunteers in the Cafe at IKEA, 450 Sargent Drive, New Haven, starting at 10:15 AM on Saturday, December 23.

Besides talking about starting new meetings, publicizing meetings, running more effective meetings, we will discuss holding regular volunteer meetings during 2018.

New Friday evening meeting in Southbury, Connecticut, starts December 15

SMART Recovery is expanding to the other end of New Haven County. After holding meetings in the New Haven area since March, 2014, we are starting our first meeting on the I-84 corridor in Southbury, Connecticut.

Meetings will be held on Friday evenings from 7:00 to 8:30 PM in the parlor of the United Church of Christ (UCC) at 283 Main Street North in Southbury. (UCC hosts several other recovery meetings.) Main Street North is also Rt. 6 and Rt. 67. UCC is just north of the Southbury Plaza, off exit 15 of I-84. It’s an easy drive from Danbury or Waterbury and a slew of other towns.

There’s free parking in the UCC lot. Enter the building via the left of the two ground level doors accessible from the lot, then go up the stairs to the top level and head around to the left to find the parlor.

(There will be no meeting on March 23 or April 16 due to other events happening at UCC.)

Friday afternoon meeting in East Haven suspended until facilitator recovers

Joe, the facilitator for our East Haven meeting at the Hagaman Memorial Library on Friday afternoons, has been suffering from a severe health problem since April. He has reluctantly decided to suspend the Friday afternoon meeting until he’s well enough to facilitate again.

Fortunately, we have many other meetings in the New Haven area.

Best wishes to Joe for a speedy recovery, and thanks again to the Hagaman for providing the space and supporting the meeting.

East Haven – Help Needed

Hi there we are looking for host/facilitator coverage for the month of August for the Friday afternoon meeting in East Haven.  If you are able to assist, please let me know: joe@smartrecoveryct.org (I’m having some health issues which are expected to continue a little longer than expected which is why I am asking for help. Thanks!)

A visit to the new Thursday night meeting in Hartford

A new meeting on Thursday nights in Hartford started in mid-May, and Carol and I went up to say hello last Thursday. It’s in the Mt. Sinai rehabilitation hospital at 500 Blue Hills Avenue in the north end of Hartford. There’s free parking in the visitor lot across Blue Hills Avenue from the hospital, and a crosswalk to get to the main entrance. The security desk can direct you to the meeting. It will probably be downstairs in Pulmonary Conference Room A. This was a little hard to find as there were notices taped up over room names. There was a busy civic association meeting going on in the main auditorium just down the hall.

We had a very nice, brightly lit, private room, and a motivated meeting host. Thanks to the hospital for providing the space. We should see the meeting grow as we get the word out.

There’s also a Tuesday night meeting at CCAR.

First snow cancellation of the season

We decided to cancel our Saturday morning meeting at the Wilson Branch Library as it looks dangerous for the facilitators to try to drive to the library. We expect that most of the attendees will have more sense than to try to get to the meeting anyway, and there’s a chance that the New Haven Free Public Library system will decide to open late.

The library will be closed for the next two Saturdays, so the next Saturday morning meeting will be on January 7. The Hagaman Public Library in East Haven will also be closing for the holidays, so our Friday morning meetings on 12/23 and 12/30 are cancelled. Our other four weekly meetings in the New Haven area will be operating as usual.