Sunnie Herold : Recovery in Ordinary Time
I grew up in Redding, Connecticut, and these days call Seymour home. If you know me, you know fun is basically a value of mine. I chase it on purpose, because I've learned how easy it is to let life pass by without it. Give me a good belly laugh, a kitchen to cook in, a reason to dance, sunshine, and a body of water to swim in, and I'm a happy woman. I love adventure and travel just as much as I love slowing down with a good book or simply resting. Animals have my whole heart, especially dogs. I'm married, a stepmom to two kids, 16 and 10, and I count some of my closest friendships as family too.
My own life brought me through hopelessness, addiction, and trauma. Once I began to experience real healing and freedom, I knew it wasn't meant to stay just mine. There was a bigger story unfolding, and I was meant to carry it forward, to help others with what had been healed in me. I have a deep passion for seeing people set free, whole, and living the life they were made for. For so long, I lived lost, not knowing who I was or why I was here. Now I do, and it isn't about me. It's about carrying that forward for someone else. My qualifications are not just professional; they are personal. Every credential I've earned has been shaped by my own healing journey and my deep commitment to doing this work with excellence and care.
A typical week for me includes a few one-on-one client sessions, and sometimes a facilitated group as well. I also lead retreats, which I love. There's something about pulling people out of their everyday routine, even for a day or a weekend, that opens up a different kind of work than a regular session can.
My path to recovery began about seventeen years ago, at a point of full and complete surrender, though that moment came only after many years of hitting bottom in different ways. From the time I was 13, I carried suicidal thoughts, self-harm, alcohol and drug use, disordered eating, codependency in relationships, shopping, and performing for approval: anything to fill a void inside me that nothing ever could. I was deeply lost, with no real sense of who I was. I lived that way until I was 30, and by then, so much destruction had piled up. It was a genuinely dark season, and I had run out of options. Then, a divine kind of timing brought a friend into my life, someone a few years into her own recovery, who invited me to a meeting. That invitation became the beginning of an entirely new life.