Warm embraces, wacky fabrics: An unexpected connection
Published Dec. 12, 2025
I’m Kristen, Face It TOGETHER’s Senior Evaluation Scientist.
I love to quilt in my spare time. Lately, I’ve been thinking about my data work as a kind of quilt making.
My favorite kind of quilts are the scrappy ones my grandma made. She’d use every fabric under the sun: materials she had used to make clothing for us growing up, leftover scraps, whatever she could find.
On its own, that piece of threadbare flannel or burnt orange fabric with purple flowers might not look great. You wouldn’t make your whole quilt with it. But when you put everything together, it’s beautiful. It’s a symbol of someone’s love and the warmth that it gives you.
The same is true with our data. If you look at one data point in isolation, it may not tell us much or even be very pretty.
You probably couldn’t grab one off the shelf and point to it as the definition of recovery or the moment of “being healed."
For example, let’s say someone’s nutrition improves by 32%. Maybe their family relationships improve after 60 days but dip again at 90 days. Maybe they’re in a better place financially than they were six months ago.
Putting all of that together, over time, becomes the story of a person. When everything is assembled, it’s useful, it’s beautiful, it’s comforting. It evokes emotion. Every little piece isn’t perfect, but that’s part of the magic.
That’s exactly why we don’t use a single data point as our success metric. Each person’s addiction wellness journey and goals are completely unique.
It’s why we don’t believe sobriety is the only change we should measure. In fact, the Recovery Capital Index doesn’t even include a single question about alcohol or other drug use.
Taking all those pieces of fabric, even the unattractive ones, paints a full, nuanced picture of an individual’s life.
I’m so glad I’m part of a team that gets to see this happen in the months and years that people trust us to walk alongside them.
I recently was gifted a box of my grandma’s old fabrics and unfinished quilts. Just holding the pieces and imagining what she had in mind makes me smile.
I hope your holiday season is full of warm embraces, beautiful stories and those little wacky pieces of fabric that make us who we are.