The Fulton County Recovery Cafe is offering two new free classes to the public, an adult childhood abuse group and a mindfulness and meditation group. Shown are Cafe Executive Director of Therapeutic Services August Cox, left, and Cafe Manager Katie Painter with some of the paperwork for the classes. InkFreeNews photo by Leah Sander.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

ROCHESTER — The Fulton County Recovery Cafe is offering several free new classes and anyone is welcome to participate in them.

Cafe Executive Director of Therapeutic Services August Cox is leading the classes on Mondays at the cafe at 715 Main St., Rochester, with one being an adult childhood abuse group at 2 p.m. and the other a mindfulness and meditation group at 4 p.m.

Cox noted the former is for adults who were abused as children.

“A lot of times when we’re looking at the reason people succumb to a life of addiction, crime, homelessness, poverty, things of that nature is because they’ve had traumatic events happen in their life, and there’s a cycle,” she said. “Often we find that cycle starts with child abuse or neglect, so when you’re looking at that, parents who are very domineering or controlling and parents who neglect, parents who abuse, parents who demean, parents who are in their own cycle of substance use, domestic violence.”

“All of these scenarios play a part in how you grow up and how you behave as an adult, and so when we’re looking at trying to solve some of the recidivism for incarceration or substance use, we have to really look at your childhood to start to not only cope with those things but process them and let them go,” Cox added.

As for the second class, Cox said it’s meant to help with “processing” things.

“When we do the mindfulness and meditation, these are actually processing skills that we use, so it’s being able to learn how to observe, how to accept, how to tolerate, how to minimize judgment. It’s learning how to be in the moment and be able to experience things as if they’re new,” she said.

“We can retrain our brain because we normally focus on a lot of negatives in life, but if we really start to train our brain because it’s a muscle and we can train it to focus on the positives even if a negative is present, then we can start having a better way of living our lives,” Cox said. “It’s not just a well, we’re just going to cope with it, it’s there, and we know it’s there and there are barriers we have to deal with to get to these positives.”

Cox noted everything said in the classes is protected by privacy rules.

She also works to make sure her classes are “trauma-informed.”

“I’m not going to make them relive those experiences,” she said. “I’m going to make sure all of my curriculum is sensitive enough that they can get the skills that they need without me having to push them into a dark space.”

She hoped people take away from the classes “the ability to not only just cope with their life situation, but be able to process and understand why or how it happened in order to be able to stop living a reactionary life and be able to start living their own life.”

“They’ve been in fight or flight their entire life and they’re just reacting to every situation because they don’t know their own personality because when were they ever able to sit down and be safe and learn it,” Cox explained.

To sign up for the classes, people may call the cafe at (574) 223-2233 or Cox at (219) 386-0489 or stop by the cafe.

People don’t have to be members of the cafe to take part in classes, but are encouraged to.

Cafe Manager Katie Painter said members must come for a weekly check-in, with them also getting to have a free meal afterward.

The cafe also has a book club at 10 a.m. Mondays, with community service time on Tuesdays and anger management and stress management classes on Wednesdays.

It also offers several women-only classes like coding and vision boards and journaling. The cafe also offers a number of other services, including Narcan and training on it and hygiene items.

To sign up for free membership, people may stop by or call one of the above phone numbers.