Cummins Values: How Our Providers Inspire the Hope of Recovery

Sept. 3, 2021

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Take a moment to think about the importance that hope plays in your day-to-day life.

When you find that your current life circumstances don’t live up to your expectations, does hope for a better future help to improve your outlook? When you are faced with adversity, does hope help you push through the obstacles in front of you?

Or even worse, have you ever felt hopeless about some situation? If you have, then you surely know how demoralizing it can be. When we feel hopeless, we have no motivation to strive for something better, and we may also be vulnerable to experiencing mental health problems like distress, depression and anxiety.

Just as hope is important in life, it is also essential in recovery from a mental health challenge. Recovery from mental illness and addiction is not only possible—it is a journey of healing and transformation that enables individuals to live meaningful lives and to achieve their full potential. At Cummins, we believe in everyone’s potential for growth, change, and recovery, and we recognize that one of our primary roles is to help instill the hope of recovery in the people we serve.

In fact, hope of recovery is one of the core values that guides our organization and the work we do each day. To better understand how we inspire hope for our consumers, we spoke with four members of our staff who embody this value: Molly Pennell, Wraparound Facilitator and Master-level intern; Jenna Batta, Wraparound Facilitator; Christine Watson, Intake Specialist; and MeLinda Frazee, Licensed Mental Health Counselor.

In this post, they explain what hope of recovery means, why it matters, and how they strive to inspire hope for the individuals they serve.

What Does Hope of Recovery Mean?

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Molly Pennell (left); Christine Watson, LCSW (middle); and MeLinda Frazee, LMHC (right). Not pictured: Jenna Batta, BS.

When discussing the hope of recovery, it’s important to first explain what this concept means. We all know what it’s like to feel hopeful about something, but what exactly does it mean to have hope of recovery?

In its simplest sense, hope of recovery is the belief that we can get better from whatever challenges we face and live happy, healthy lives. However, our providers offered some additional definitions that expand and enrich this meaning.

For example, Jenna believes that hope is about focusing on progress toward our goal rather than any setbacks that arise. “Hope of recovery means keeping your eye on the big picture so that you can remind families when the difficult days are becoming less and less and that their overall mental health is getting closer to their goals,” she says.

Molly points out that hope of recovery is also about how care providers interact with the individuals they serve. “For me, hope of recovery means showing encouragement, a positive attitude, and kindness to every person who enters our doors regardless of their situation or their current stage of change,” she says.

Christine agrees, noting her important role as one of the first individuals a consumer will interact with when entering services: “For me, the hope of recovery means that when people get started in services, they know that they will have someone who is going to be there with them as they walk through their journey—someone who will encourage and support them.”

Finally, MeLinda likes to focus on the transformative effects that hope can have for someone in recovery. She explains, “For me, hope is about supporting a client’s desire to live an authentic life.”

Why Hope Matters for the Recovery Process

Above, we illustrated the difference that hope can make when we are faced with a difficult or discouraging situation. The truth is that entering mental health services can be quite difficult for many people. Suddenly, we have a problem we need to address and much work to do before we might feel well again. So how exactly can hope helps us throughout our recovery process?

For starters, hope is one of those forces that helps us keep going when the going gets tough. Jenna explains, “Hope is like an urge or an internal motivator. If we are having a hard day, we need something within us to remind us to move forward every moment, and recover from the bad days, whether that means owning up to our mistakes or simply trying again.”

As we mentioned, the recovery process can often be a difficult one, so hope is necessary to help us keep pushing forward. “I believe that hope is important in the recovery process because going through it can be scary, unfamiliar and uncomfortable,” Christine says. “It takes a lot for people to come in and start in services. It is important to instill hope in them throughout.”

Importantly, Molly points out that hope works because it focuses our attention away from negative present circumstances and toward positive circumstances we hope to achieve in the future. “Hope is essential to the recovery process because people need to know that things can get better, people can make positive change, circumstances do change, and there is hope for a more positive future. Hope can set a person up for success,” she says.

And again, MeLinda connects hope to authenticity, suggesting that hope helps us achieve the life we truly want for ourselves. “Much of the time, individuals start to work with me and don’t believe that the life they desire is possible,” she says. “I help them see that there is hope that they can have a successful job, positive relationships, increased self-worth, maintain their sobriety, etc. So many times people have been told they are not worthy, and I, like many other treatment providers, am here to tell them that they are worthy.”

How Our Providers Inspire Hope

Given the importance of hope during recovery, part of our job as care providers is to inspire this hope when our consumers may be struggling to find it on their own. The process of inspiring hope may look different from provider to provider and consumer to consumer, but generally speaking, it involves a combination of validation and encouragement.

“My work helps consumers believe they can get better because throughout the intake process, I validate the person and their experiences while also providing encouragement to them that things can get better and that they deserve good things in life,” Christine explains. She also offers an example of one time she did this for a consumer:

“One time when I helped a consumer find hope of recovery was when I was doing an intake with someone who was struggling with depression, anxiety, severe trauma, and substance use. She cried so much, as telling her story was very hard. She told me that she had put off the intake for a while. I was able to remind her of her incredible strengths as well as how excited I was for her to be getting into services. She told me how much she appreciated being heard and was now eager to start in services.”

Molly also focuses on praising consumers for their personal strengths. “I help them see the strengths they already possess to help them continue to fight for recovery,” she says. “I like to highlight that they are the experts in their own life and they have the ability to fight for an improved quality of life.” Molly also shares a story about how she has accomplished this:

“Before becoming a wraparound facilitator and intern, I worked as a DCS life skills specialist and provided skills training and supervised visitation for families. I always tried to help my families feel empowered and capable of making the positive changes needed to reunite with their children. I always felt like they needed someone to believe in them as a person and a parent to help them overcome their obstacles in life.”

When providers are able to help their consumers find hope, the results can be remarkable, as MeLinda shares through another story: “I remember a client who came to work with me and was so used to others not believing in them that they attended our first few sessions without speaking more than a few words, their head dropped, and very little eye contact. Their world had become so small and their hope had become invisible,” she says. “During our time together, this person was able to have stronger relationships with their children, increased desire to pursue their passions, and would come to my office open and excited to set goals. Hope is hard to define, but you know it when you see it and when you feel it.”

Jenna shares the following perspective in summary: “Every day and every conversation I’m having with the consumers and families I work with is planting seeds, and watering and caring for those seeds after they’ve been planted. That’s all I think any of us in the helping field are doing. I’ve had lots of consumers find hope for recovery, but often when they are telling me about it, I can think of many other people that have been lifting that person up at the same time.”


Hope is a powerful force. It gives us motivation when we are feeling defeated. It presents us with an image of what our lives could look like in the future. And it pushes us to become our best and most authentic selves. Hope is absolutely essential for any person in recovery from a behavioral health challenge, which is why we strive to nurture it in every individual we work with.

Thank you to Jenna Batta, Molly Pennell, Christine Watson and MeLinda Frazee for sharing their beliefs and insights about the hope of recovery. It’s because of your passion and commitment that we can bring new hope to the people we serve!

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If you enjoyed this blog post about the hope of recovery at Cummins, then you might enjoy reading about our other organizational values below!