Today we’d like to introduce you to Lori Holleran Steiker.
Hi Lori, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for sharing your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
Let me start by saying that I am in love with my life and that I am more joyous than I have ever been. I believe this is not “despite” my challenges but, at least in large part, as a function of them. My mother’s alcohol use disorder and mental illness were a prominent part of my early childhood, and her recovery (which started when I was 10 years old and continued throughout her entire life) was a springboard to our family’s healing and growth and powerful love for each other and those around us. I swore that I would never misuse alcohol, as so many children of alcoholics do. By college, it was clear that I was genetically predisposed to the “disrupted pleasure pathway,” the brain disease of addiction. I experienced helplessness and hopelessness, self-loathing, fear, isolation (despite my constant need to surround myself with people), and despair accompanying the powerlessness of compulsion to use substances. Having witnessed my mother’s path to recovery and being surrounded by amazing people, I started my recovery on August 23, 1987. I have continued to grow and thrive in recovery since then. I do not attach a stigma to this part of my identity. My gratitude, openness, and self-efficacy allow me to share my experience, strength, and hope with others and serve the world and people in ways I never dreamt possible. My family fully celebrates and embraces my recovery, my husband, Jordan, also a UT Professor, has been supportive beyond description, and I cannot find words to describe my love for him.
I decided to pursue the social work discipline and became a clinician working with people with addictions/mental illness and those impacted by their illness. I was a social worker in psychiatric hospitals and addiction treatment centers for over a decade when I serendipitously stumbled into my doctoral program at ASU. I was looking for the right position to work with young people with substance use disorders, and what started as an inquiry resulted in my enrollment in the Ph.D. program. I studied and researched culturally grounded substance misuse prevention programming. As a new professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work, I received federal funding to continue my research in this area. From my prevention work, I was acutely aware of the young people with the highest risk factors, those for whom prevention programs tended not to reach.
In about 2012, I was introduced to the phenomenon of recovery high schools and immediately felt the need for one in Central Texas. I heard from parents, counselors, and social workers daily about kids who could not make their high schools work because of their substance use—being connected with multiple communities (i.e., the addictions clinicians in the area, the academicians and scholars, the recovery communities, and informal groups of parents that were trying to find the right solution for their kids, and even those that had lost a child(ren) to addiction). I spearheaded an information session that packed two rooms and drew a standing room only. We embarked on creating University High School, the first recovery high school to formally associate with a University to support the fact that the students in collegiate recovery in the CSR could serve as mentors for our youth. The creation and growth of associated alternative peer groups for our young people were ingredients that led to a powerful new solution. The students at UHS are amazing; keeping each other accountable, loving each other, being vulnerable, rekindling dreams and aspirations, achieving their goals, graduating, and going on to careers and college (some to UT, hook ’em!) has been nothing short of miraculous. See https://austinrecovery.org/
As a connector, I have helped cultivate collaborations across UT and in the community and beyond, across the state and at times nationally, because the problem of youth substance misuse and substance use disorders is so complex that it cannot be addressed without multiple disciplines and domains, both professional, scholarly, and mainly including those with “lived experience” who are uniquely qualified to reach out and connect with others in a way that transforms. I am proud to be a part of the SHIFT initiative, which started at UT with funding from the Hildebrand Foundation to boldly change the culture of drug and alcohol use on college campuses to that of safety, mindful choices, and wellness (see shift.utexas.edu). I am also proud to Chair the UTORC (UT Opioid Response Consortium), which is bringing together our experts for groundbreaking solutions to the Opioid Epidemic. I have recently become the Associate Director for Education and Instruction for the Addictions Research Institute at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, leveraging the best research and powerful collaborations to impact addictions education, the workforce, the community, the Opioid Epidemic, and related policy concerns. I have been appointed to the Texas Opioid Abatement Fund Council to strategically disseminate the funds to end the Opioid Crisis in Texas (see https://comptroller.texas.gov/programs/opioid-council/council.php or https://socialwork.utexas.edu/dr-lori-holleran-steiker-appointed-to-texas-opioid-abatement-council/).
Along with my work in addictions, I am profoundly committed to the best possible undergraduate experience for our students for equity and excellence in undergraduate education and support. And I have the pleasure of teaching my “Young People and Drugs” course every semester, engaging students in a new dialogue and research around their culture, experiences, curiosity, as well as ways to navigate the risks of this stage of their lives and infusing protective factors into their skills sets, awareness, and relationships for them to rise to the highest level of self, achievements, and contributions to the world.
I live with breast cancer, and while treatment can be a drag, this has helped me hone in on what is most important to me and helped me balance my work, my play, and my attention to my spiritual self. Cancer highlights my family, my magnificent husband and kids, my friends, my playfulness and pups, the richness of my life, and the beauty of each day. And as I said in my initial statement, I am in love with my life and more joyous than I have ever been. I am touched by the honors and awards I have received at UT, the state, and nationally for teaching, research, and recovery messaging. But as my wise, warm, and loving father maintained, even as he was dying, “peace is an inside job.” this was his way of saying that some of the truest and most important services are a quiet, persistent, and personal thing, most impactful in the world when the acts are not publicly celebrated. As a member of Alanon for 40+ years, he lived by the “Just for Today” pamphlet (used worldwide as a blueprint for a meaningful and peaceful life). He particularly loved one of the critical tenets: “I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out; if anybody knows of it, it will not count.” When I asked my father for examples, he laughed and repeated, “If I tell you, they will not count.” I watched my father anonymously pay the bill at a diner for a table of military troops who never knew who treated them. I watched him carry grocery bags to the car of folks who were having trouble doing so. I watched him answer phone calls in the middle of the night from family members of people with alcoholism. He modeled this way of life and was the happiest person I have ever known, and at the moment of his death, he had no fear. And I walk in his footsteps as a champion of difference and a challenge to stigma and the status quo.
Being a social worker and a person with a long history of mental health challenges, a person in long-term recovery from alcoholism and addiction since 1987, and a person living with terminal cancer, I live by the 12-Step philosophy, which embraces the treatise: “You cannot keep it if you do not give it away” and each morning I awaken and ask to be shown how I can be of maximum service to my Higher Power and my fellows. This powerful sense of purpose, love, hope, optimism, and truth is the foundation of my comfort in my skin, usefulness, serenity, and joy.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I have fully commented on this in my previous narrative, but one more thing growth is not linear. It needs to be metered or predictable. It can be painful, and I believe in tears, wailing, and acknowledging how messy grief and loss can be. And I also believe in napping, Zumba, long jogs, petting puppies, and Netflix when I am overwhelmed or need a distraction. But as I have said, the upheavals have enhanced my capacity for compassion, empathy, patience, hope, and the miracle of transformation. And the intimacy, comfort, and strength that come from carrying each other when we need to and loving each other through the inconceivable is what takes the fear out of my life and replaces it with faith.
We love to hear about your fond memories of growing up.
Both stories are about the beautiful legacy of my parents’ creativity, silliness, and expansive imagination. I have led with this my whole life, and it serves me well. In fact, at times, I consider myself a “pathological optimist” like my dad, who would say, if it started to rain while we headed to the beach, “Wow! We are going to have the whole beach to ourselves!” I remember when my father was driving my brother and me (about 10 years old at the time), and the song “Take the Long Way Home” came on. Each time the lyric repeated, he took a wrong turn taking us farther from our house. We were laughing so hard we were all holding our bellies and tearing up! My mother was creative and unpredictable, and one time, she suggested we make “A Lollipop Tree” for my dad for his birthday. We had a children’s book by this title, which was one of our faves. She had gone out either the night before or the morning of and strewn our path with lollipops at Herrontown Woods in Princeton, near where I grew up. We kept telling my Mom that there was no such thing as a real lollipop tree, and when we encountered the lollipops all over the trail, we ran around collecting them and taped them to a big branch to present to my dad. It was magical. I have so many fond memories in my life it’s hard to isolate just a few — here’s to many more!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://socialwork.utexas.edu/directory/lori-k-holleran-steiker/
- Instagram: @lorikaysteiker
- Facebook: Lori Kay
