John and Elaine Leadem 2013 Mental Health Hero Cartoon-A-Thon
Drawing by Chato Stewart
John & Elaine Leadem are trailblazers in the field of couples counseling. Having entered the 12-step communities at a relatively young age they originally incorporated into their marriage a traditional 12-step philosophy that taught them to “stay out of each others program.” In this model they continued to hide behind personal recovery in ways that undermined intimacy and eventually led to more heartache and betrayal.
Having recognized the inherent flaws in working “parallel” or separate programs of recovery, John and Elaine took their collective success at using 12 step principles and began to apply these principles into their own relationship. Thus began their journey of working recovery and intimacy with each other as a team and the results were more powerful than anything they could have predicted. Their relationship was elevated to a new level of intimacy based on shared vulnerability, a level of love that others in recovery had said was not possible. It was indeed possible.
So John and Elaine took their success and introduced to their clients what has endearingly become referred to by those clients as working a “Shared Program of Recovery”. Not worrying about challenging a tradition that did not work for them, John & Elaine continue to bring hope and strength to the multitudes of couples they see and help daily.
Together they have authored a meditation book for recovering couples, “One in the Spirit”, which is based on the couples work they have developed as a therapeutic model for increasing emotional intimacy in relationships. Since then they have also published “Surveying the Wreckage” which is a comprehensive guide to the Fourth Step of the 12 steps and “Clearing Away the Wreckage of the Past” which is a task oriented step guide for completing Steps Four through Seven of the 12 steps.
In addition, John and Elaine are in the final stages of publishing their latest two masterpieces: “Raising the Bottoms” which is a new breakthrough guide to training professional family interventionists, and …
For me, Chato Stewart and Joan Winifred and family, we were able to have two tables set up to do something that has NEVER been done at any of the past 27 years in the DBSA conference history. No, it was not having me set up to draw caricatures of the guests and peers at the conference…but you would be close. Rather it was having 3 young girls ages 8,10 and 12 draw caricatures of the attendees. Yes, Chato’s girls were drawing their little fannies off. Every one they drew were happy and full of joy when they got their drawings.
