The hardest part of changing or leaving the system is getting it to leave you.
The overwork. The performing. The low hum that something isn't right but you’re stuck. You can leave it, build past it, or stay and try to change it — and still operate exactly as it taught you.
The Recovering Human offers a three-month coaching engagement and a guided practice to actually make the transition into a new way of living and working.
Where You Might BeThree different moments, the same recognition: the system is still running you.
Still Inside, On Your Way Out
You're disillusioned and quietly planning your exit — and you can already feel yourself running the same patterns that wore you down.
Already Out
You left or were pushed out, and you're building something of your own — frustrated to find you've rebuilt the same way of operating.
Staying to Change It
You recognize that business as usual is not working. You're committed to changing the system from within — but you can't do that well while it's still running you.
The Work
Name
1
Name what's underneath the overwhelm and stuckness — unfulfilled promises, workplace trauma, lingering post-pandemic disruption, non-stop change, uncertainty in and outside of work — without rushing to fix it.
Notice
2
Observe how you're operating now, how your environment reinforces it, and what it's costing you and those around you.
Rebuild
3
Build a toolkit of new ways to respond — grounded in recovery, in your own context. The practice you can keep coming back to.
Act
4
Get clear on what you want, and take meaningful action toward it — with humanity at the center.
Who you’ll be working with
I spent the better part of two decades inside the system — journalism, communications, and leading social-impact work at an executive level. I believed in it. I climbed, I took on more, and I gave it everything I had.
I'm also an alcoholic. It's a disease I carry — not something corporate America handed me — but the systems I came up in never gave me real tools for being human, so when life and work got hard I didn't have much to reach for. When COVID hit, it broke all of that wide open, and I got sober.
That's where this work actually started — not in a framework I read, but in the slow, unglamorous practice of getting honest about how I was operating and why. I won't pretend I've arrived. This is recovery: progress, not perfection, and I'm still in it. But it gave me back something performing for systems had buried: clarity and agency.
It didn't arrive as one clean epiphany. It came through a practice and in a series of choices. Recovery transformed my life and how I showed up at work. I left a role when I saw it pulling me back toward old ways of coping. I left another when it stopped aligning with my values. And eventually I left altogether to build something new. Each time, the same thing held: I could see clearly and take intentional action instead of unconsciously reacting the way I had before.
It's a common discussion in recovery circles that the practices should be shared with everyone, not just addicts. So that's what The Recovering Human aims to do. I've seen and heard from many leaders who are really struggling now with how our systems — including corporate America — are breaking under the pressure of post-pandemic disruption, sociopolitical dynamics, economic uncertainty, and a shifting AI landscape. They feel overwhelmed, pulled away from their humanity, stuck in survival mode and confused on what to do next. Some are frustrated with how they've been coping and know something needs to change — within themselves and within the system.
This work offers a way forward. A way to let go of old ways of coping, find clarity, and take meaningful action toward a vision you create, with humanity at the center.
Rebecca Grey — Founder, The Recovering Human