close
close
cegivel

Delaware now has 2 Recovery Cafés with a third coming in 2025

Monicel
Delaware now has 2 Recovery Cafés with a third coming in 2025

to play

For 80 years, families gathered at 810 N. Union St. of Wilmington to mourn the loss of their loved ones, some of whom had succumbed to drug or alcohol addiction.

The somber gatherings were held at the Corleto Latina Funeral Home, tucked away in the city’s Little Italy neighborhood, a building that played host to heartbreaking scenes as families gathered to say goodbye too soon.

But after eight decades of anguish within those walls, pain has been replaced by hope.

Instead of a place of mourning for those who have died from addiction, it has been transformed into a residence of rebirth and renewal, dedicated to helping those struggling with addiction and building a new life.

The former funeral home has been sold and is now home to the non-profit Recovery Cafe, a peer-led community-based recovery meeting place that offers a wide variety of services and support to people in recovery.

It is there that Domenica Personti, CEO of Impact Life, who runs the cafe, takes note of the irony.

“It’s kind of weird and wild that we end up here in a place that was usually very sad in its past,” Personti says in an interview in the cafe’s main room, surrounded by Halloween decorations, including six headstones.

“And now with us, how many people will come here and find life, right?” she says “They’re going to come here broken, traumatized, sad, lonely, isolated, hurt and bad. But then they’re going to move with this staff and find life again.”

Dedicated to helping others

Personti knows all about these feelings.

Like Recovery Cafe director Michael Kalmbach, founder of the Creative Vision Factory, an arts-focused peer-led program in downtown Wilmington for people on the behavioral health spectrum, which closed earlier this year year after a 13-year execution.

And so does everyone who works at the Recovery Cafe, built to be a safe space for people to build community as they heal and recover.

Everyone who works there is also in various stages of recovery; now sober after being trapped by addiction and dedicated to helping others build a new life free of drugs and alcohol.

In fact, Salvatore Latina, director of the Corleto Latina Funeral Home, which now operates from a larger space just across the street, has also been in recovery for years.

He says Recovery Cafe’s mission made the transition from leaving the building much easier. After all, it’s where he spent much of his childhood, watching his father Anthony run the funeral home before becoming a director himself.

Latina knows all about addiction and its impact not only on the person struggling, but also on their family and the community at large. He has seen firsthand how the number of funerals for overdose deaths has steadily increased.

“I know from personal experience that it is preventable. With the right program, help and motivation, you can do it,” says Latina. “I couldn’t have handpicked a better company or people to take over this space. I’ve seen the community around us deteriorate due to addiction and mental illness.

“This area has needed something like the Recovery Cafe for a long time. We are very excited to do our small part to make it happen.”

Recovery centers throughout Delaware

Wilmington’s Recovery Cafe is Impact Life’s newest venture, which was formed in 2021 by Personti, who has nearly 25 years of experience working in behavioral health and harm reduction, including stints with the Recovery Center of America and Brandywine Counseling & Community Services.

Impact Life, which is funded largely by grants, individual donors and foundation money, has seen its annual budget expand from $182,000 when it started to $6.2 million next year.

Recovery Cafe joins Impact Life’s growing ecosystem of recovery centers throughout Delaware, which includes community and resource centers in Georgetown, Glasgow, Seaford and Elsmere.

They also run the 17-acre sanctuary at Impact Life Farm in Seaford, Delaware’s first recovery farm, which opened last year. The agriculture-based recovery program includes permanent housing and workforce development combined with case management, spiritual support, therapeutic arts and more.

In addition, Impact Live owns and operates 16 residential homes across the state for people in recovery.

The Wilmington Recovery Cafe location, which cost $520,000, is their first cafe. A second should be online in Georgetown next year, Personti says.

Recovery Cafes are accredited members of the Recovery Cafe Network, a national chain of about 70 locations across the country. Through their model, they create sober spaces to build a community surrounded by healing and nurturing, emphasizing responsibility, empowerment, and accountability.

Staff at each cafe go through training and are provided with mentoring, materials and expertise to create their own Recovery Cafe community, following the national model.

There is currently another Recovery Cafe operating in Delaware. It opened last summer in Dover and is run by Network Connect, a nonprofit community organization based in Wilmington.

What you need to know about Recovery Cafe programs

At Wilmington’s Recovery Cafe, the doors are open Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for anyone who considers themselves in recovery from almost anything from drugs and alcohol to homelessness and domestic violence.

If they come more than a few times, they must become members and comply with the same rules as the rest of the network’s cafes.

Members must be drug and alcohol free upon arrival. If they are not and need help, they will be transported to Impact Life’s Elsmere Resource Center, which provides food, shelter, health care and other forms of support in partnership with the Elsmere Police Department. Members must also participate in weekly peer support groups called “recovery circles” and contribute to the cafe or community in some way.

The Wilmington location is about to begin a winter renovation project to help transform the former funeral home into a coffee shop, complete with a coffee counter and seating, a front porch and larger windows. Eventually, they hope to renovate the pair of upstairs rooms into a teen-only Recovery Cafe space.

“With this Recovery Cafe model, there’s a ton of room to create all kinds of different support groups. It’s a big tent,” says Kalmbach, who has brought some of her Creative Vision Factory arts support programs to Recovery Cafe, which already has a dedicated art room.

At the Recovery Cafe, she runs a couple of guided meditation “recovery circles” each day, and each week the cafe offers blocks of time for everything from yoga and crafts to garden walks and workplace development .

For Personti, this project is very special as a native of Little Italy, who grew up just a few blocks from her Recovery Cafe. She remembers regularly walking the neighborhood with her grandmother, stopping everywhere from the dime store and DiFonzo’s Bakery to a family friend’s shoe store and Sansone’s Seafood Market, where her grandma bought rabbit meat for rabbit soup.

DELAWARE OWN A Philadelphia Eagles podcaster and Miss Delaware USA. They are a baby-faced power couple

SURPRISE Smile! This state agent surprises people, pays for their groceries and puts it on Instagram

“My whole life was here, so this has been pretty powerful and special to me,” he says.

After years of managing funerals where the Recovery Cafe is now located and in recovery himself, Latina says he knows a new support center like the Recovery Cafe can help save lives and build a community where there was once decay .

“Dying from addiction is different than, say, cancer. With cancer, all the effort in the world can end with you in the same place,” he says. “But with addiction, if you get the right resources, you can overcome it and live a successful, healthy life.”

Got a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at [email protected] or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier).

Related Posts