As the co-founder of Avalon Recovery Society, Helen Burnham knows all too well the unique challenges women face when battling drug and alcohol addiction. In 1990, Helen and her co-founder opened the first Avalon Women’s Centre in Vancouver. For over 30 years, It continues to be a warm, inviting space for women to share their stories, free of judgment, and with others who had been there before. 

Val is a woman, mother, and grandmother to five grandchildren in long time recovery. She is celebrating 29 years of sobriety. She is a nurse and has worked in a variety of roles within the addiction field for over 27 years. 

She is a sober and life coach, founder of Westcoast soul food society and an executive business consultant, and most importantly a woman in recovery with 14.5 years clean and sober, my date is March 25, 2007.

Brooke is the co-host of Seek Purpose Now Podcast, a sober content creator who designs at Sober Lifestyle clothing, a published author, and a mom of three that is in recovery. She shares her story of recovery and how she tragically lost her brother to an overdose earlier this year. 

Jennifer M is a Gitxsan person, a wife, a mother, and a teacher. 

Lena is a 63-year-old woman living in S Surrey and retired from a career as a Special Education Assistant. Born in Finland her family immigrated to New Westminster where she attended school there and then moved to South Surrey in 1980. She was married and had 2 daughters. Alcoholism brought her down in 1998 and she finally surrendered and went to AA. After a divorce and going back to school she has continued to attend meetings and raise her daughters in a sober home. 

Mari was born and raised in Vancouver residing in the Kitsilano/ Kerrisdale area. She is a Registered Psychiatric Nurse (Graduated in 1988) and her primary Nursing career is serving the Geriatric community focusing on Dementia/Alzheimers and Palliative care. She absolutely loves working for the Elderly community. She retired early in Feb. 2020 from my 27-year full-time nursing career and now works casually in the elder community. She has raised her daughter on her own and She is the bright light of her life. She will have 5 years of sobriety as of Sept 6th, 2021.

Janice entered into Recovery in Winnipeg in 1970 after a disastrous series of events which brought her to the “jumping off” point. She’s been successful in Recovery for 48 years; and in that time time enjoyed an amazing career, a lovely marriage, extensive travel and an ever increasing sense of joy about life in/ after Recovery. She moved to BC with her husband and became painfully aware of the barriers to Recovery for young women .. especially if they had young dependant children. One evening at a retirement party a woman asked “do you think there are enough Recovered women in WR to sustain an Avalon Center”. That question became the formative moment for the White Rock Avalon centre. The project has given meaning and purpose to her life... which turns out to be what she had been searching for all along.

Olga started her recovery journey in 2002. She grew up in Russia and felt isolated in Canada and in the recovery community. She met a lot of obstacles before she was able to gain lasting sobriety in 2008. Today Olga facilities Avalon’s first Russian-speaking AA meeting.

Guylaine is a woman of a trans experience and an alcoholic. By the age of five, she knew she was inwardly a girl. When she entered the school system in grade 1, she was placed over with the boys she didn’t know. The expectations of these times were if you are born with anatomy, and then you are that anatomy in the culture. She struggled to fit in, had an ongoing trauma in my childhood home, and became very confused about how to fit in anywhere. She suffered from anxiety and found alcohol in her teen years. She used this to treat her gender dysphoria, trauma, and life. It would continue for 30 plus years as a poisonous tool of survival. Eventually, there was a pivotal moment that led her to recovery. She was able to address the dysphoria when she became sober and started a spiritual way of life. The path to recovery enabled a lifelong dream of actually being one authentic, true person to the world. This is a journey she is so grateful she has been given a chance to walk.