Unalienable Rights & Reintegration
What 2025 asked of me — and what it gave in return.
2025 was a year.
I retired my podcast No Thanks But Yes after three strong seasons. Letting it go wasn’t an ending so much as a clearing. In the space it left, I picked up the guitar I dropped when I was twelve and returned to an old friend — writing — with renewed intention. Those reflective essays eventually found a home in Human Parts — reminding me that my creative impulses don’t disintegrate when a format ends. They evolve.
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Professionally, the year carried me all over this great country — onto national stages and keynote platforms shaping policy and practice. At the Rx Summit and the AATOD Conference, the conversation centered on humanizing systems and individualizing practice. Keynote addresses across the Southeast and Midwest — from Alabama and Kentucky to Michigan and Southwest Virginia — carried messages of collective responsibility and individual power.
At the same time, much of the work lived in quieter rooms — focused on strengthening and sustaining the workforce itself. In Upstate New York and rural Texas, conversations centered on peer professional boundaries, ethics, and the human weight of this role. New work also emerged dedicated to expanding and strengthening the family-centered peer recovery coaching workforce, innovating alongside teams in Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Virginia as they build support for families — not just individuals.
Alongside all of this, 2025 required greater intention in how I live the work I talk about. Travel clarified what home means rather than pulling me from it. Creative practice became less about production and more about mindful focus. Time with my family — threaded through a demanding year — grounded the rest. Much of the year’s learning came through connection across the country with colleagues and communities, but some of the more consequential growth happened in conversation with my wife Jill and our family, where ideas are challenged, values are named, and integrity is kept.
Looking back, 2025 feels integrated. Creative work, professional responsibility, and personal life began reinforcing one another rather than competing for attention — a form of remembering how the pieces fit together. What carries forward is not momentum, but meaning — rooted in ethics, shaped by family, and guided by a simple, enduring question: how can we come together to help one another find life, liberty, and our own paths toward happiness?
Donald McDonald, 2026
