INDIANAPOLIS, IN, UNITED STATES, September 4, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Chastidy and Ryan Mader are a couple linked in many ways, for instance their difficult pasts and their current wellness and writing pursuits. Chastidy says her story is really about what can happen after you think your life is over.
Twelve years ago, she and Ryan met in the middle of opioid addiction. Neither was living a life they were proud of, and neither of them could have imagined where they would eventually end up. They went separate ways, found recovery independently, rebuilt their lives separately, and years later somehow found the way back to each other. Eventually, they got married.
But as powerful as that part of the story is, she doesn’t want addiction to be the biggest thing people remember about her. Addiction is part of Chastidy’s story. It isn’t the whole story. What matters most to her is what happened afterward.
Chastidy says she rebuilt relationships with her children. She went back to school. She earned her master’s degree and became a family nurse practitioner. Chastidy eventually opened her own medical practice, Havens Holistic Healing. She also became an author and returned to the nursing school she once attended, this time as an instructor.
Those are things the woman she was twelve years ago could not have imagined. She notes that her book, Heroine: Decide & Conquer, isn’t simply a story about getting clean. It’s about rebuilding. It’s about identity. It’s about deciding that the worst things you’ve done, the worst things you’ve survived, and the worst season of one’s life don’t write the rest of their story.
“There are also pieces of my personal history that I think are important to describe accurately. My first marriage was not abusive. The primary issue that ultimately damaged that marriage was my husband’s infidelity. Later in my life, I entered a second marriage that did become abusive. Those were two very different relationships and two very different chapters of my life. Today, I own Havens Holistic Healing, a primary care medical practice with a particular focus on medication-assisted treatment for people struggling with addiction, as well as mental-health care. My lived experience absolutely influences the way I connect with people, but Haven’s is first and foremost a professional medical practice.”
Chastidy and Ryan are working toward something much bigger: developing Haven’s into a more comprehensive addiction and mental-health treatment program that incorporates behavioral health, counseling, peer support, recovery support, and coordinated care. Separately, these two winners are developing a nonprofit focused on community outreach.
Ryan has his own remarkable recovery story. He went from decades of addiction and incarceration to recovery, education, writing, housing and reentry work, and ultimately serving on the board of an organization that once helped him get back on his feet. When they were apart, each built completely different lives. That is a part of what makes finding each other again so meaningful.
Writing has become part of both of their lives as well. Chastidy wrote Heroin(e): Decide & Conquer, and Ryan is a featured author in the anthology Stories of Transgression and Recovery and is working on his own memoir. On September 23, the Maders are holding their first book event at Redbud Books in Bloomington, with proceeds supporting New Leaf New Life.
Chastidy is also preparing to launch her own podcast, Heroin with an E. The name is intentional. She aims to take the conversations that began with the book even further—addiction and recovery, certainly, but also trauma, relationships, reinvention, ambition, motherhood, medicine, and what it actually looks like to build a life after surviving one you never thought you’d escape. And that is ultimately what Chastidy wants people to take from her story. For a lot of people struggling with addiction, getting clean feels like the mountain. She understands that because she has stood at the bottom of that mountain.
Still, recovery wasn’t the end of the story, it was the beginning. The most extraordinary part isn’t simply that she survived addiction. It’s the life she was able to build afterward—a life she genuinely could not have imagined when she was in the middle of it. If someone hears this story and is currently sitting in their own darkest chapter, she wants them to understand that they don’t have to know exactly what the rest of their life is going to look like yet. They just have to believe that this chapter doesn’t have to be the last one.
Chastidy and Ryan will reveal more of their personal stories and professional triumphs in two podcasts this September.
Close Up Radio recently featured Chastidy & Ryan Mader in a two-part interview with Jim Masters on Wednesday September 2nd at 1pm Eastern, and with Doug Llewelyn on Wednesday September 9th at 3pm Eastern
Listen to the Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-1-close-up-radio-spotlights-chastidy-and-ryan/id1785721253?i=1000787549546
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-close-up-radio-242020413/episode/part-1-close-up-radio-spotlights-chastidy-and-ryan-mader-of-havens-holistic-healing-343022931
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2UJgN7TDPBU0xZ6zZ0BBfL
For more information on this amazing couple visit www.havensholistichealing.com
Lou Ceparano
Close Up Television & Radio
+1 631-850-3314
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