Rural Recovery Rally receives large turnout, community partnership opportunities

PERRY, Ga. — The third annual Rural Recovery Rally took place at the Miller-Murphy-Howard building on Georgia National Fairgrounds this past Saturday and had its biggest turnout yet. This type of event hosts many recovery community organizations that are run in the state of Georgia.

The main goal of the event was to bring people together and celebrate their fight toward recovery in rural Georgia. The rally featured many speakers, such as author Arch Kennedy, Fort Valley Mayor Jeff Lundy, and Peach County Commissioner Wade Yoder. 

Founder of the Rural Recovery Rally, Michael Karns spoke on how this event came to be. 

“Jeff Breedlove asked me, ‘If you could do one thing in the state of the recovery community, what would it be?’ I said, ‘I’d like to see a rally in the rural part of Georgia that brought awareness to the different needs to grow in Middle Georgia,’” Karns said. 

With Karns sending a few emails to multiple people working in the recovery community and with their support, the Rural Recovery Rally was born and is still going strong.

Karns then spoke about public opinion, which varies on who you talk to.

“There are those who think we are marginalized citizens or that we’ve made bad choices and that we don’t have a medical condition that needs to be treated. Then there’s the camp that supports us wholeheartedly and wants to see us thrive and survive and do well,” Karns said. 

Karns believes this event will be one to look forward to for many years to come. 

“This particular event, people will look forward to it already and we’re only three years in. If we keep getting good sponsors and keep growing we can turn this into an all-day event and maybe get musical guests,” Karns said. 

Catherine Tootle is the Executive Director at Freedom Through Recovery, a recovery community organization based in Statesboro, Georgia. She shared her thoughts on this event. 

“We needed a way to show our policymakers and legislatures that recovery is real in rural areas. We really needed to raise awareness for more funding to come down for housing and transportation,” Tootle said. 

The Rural Recovery Rally is made for all of the statewide recovery community organizations to come together. 

“We know that the more we do this, the more it becomes like a regular part of the year. We just formed a little coalition and here we are,” Tootle said. 

Normally, the stages of recovery are done anonymously. With the nature of this event, things are done somewhat differently.

“Here in the public view, we speak in a different language that is palatable for their community. For people in long term recovery, we don’t use the language of alcoholic or addict because that brings a lot of stigma to the person,” Tootle said. 

Tootle emphasized the stigma around the word recovery and that it does not mean what the general consensus thinks it means. 

“When people hear recovery, they think of addiction, and that’s a whole different beast. Recovery happens after we have been removed from all that and we have created a new life,” Tootle said.

This year’s Rural Recovery Rally is currently the best it has ever been, but there is still more room to improve. In years past, there were more speakers than usual. This year’s event was shortened in that department for a good reason.

“We were beating people to death with words, so we shortened the time frame a good bit. We have picked different speakers that are not representing the recovery community,” Tootle said.

Author Arch Kennedy, who is in recovery, was highlighted by Tootle as one of the big names they had gotten to speak at this event. 

“He has a big following. It makes a big difference when someone like him comes down to speak about his lived experience and his crazy life. It shows that it can just happen to anybody,” Tootle said. 

Tootle also mentioned that one of the speakers at the rally is trying to fight with his county to open up a sober living house. 

“We really want to bring more voices to our barrier that we have. Having those kinds of speakers come and share their story and how it affected people in their community is important,” Tootle said. 

Tootle is hopeful events like the Rural Recovery Rally will inspire the community to help those in recovery. 

“Things like this will break down walls and show that it is happening in our communities and that we need help to fight this thing,” Tootle said.  

The third annual Rural Recovery Rally was a huge success and there was no doubt that this event will continue to improve and help those that are in recovery.

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