Michelle Lewis, Advanced CRE
Wellness & Recovery Consultants
Promoting Recovery Education
Copeland Center Certified Advanced Level Wrap Facilitator

I graduated with Cum Laude honors from Texas Tech University in 1991. I have a B.S. Degree in Home Economics, Clothing, Textiles, and Merchandising. I have experience in business management and merchandising. I have lived in Butte, MT for 17 years. My life partner, Mike Smith, and I have shared over16 years together and have a beautiful teenage daughter. I have had a long recovery journey as I was hospitalized over twenty times in the first thirteen years and placed on over 30 medications following my diagnosis. My struggle with my mental illness and subsequent loss of my identity, to the illness, eroded my career, family life, and dreams. Deep depression coupled with periods of agitated high levels of energy dominated my life.

I began my recovery journey as an active mental health consumer advocate at the local, regional and state level approximately ten years ago. I now serve on many boards and committees concerned with promoting mental health system transformation, including testifying at state legislative committee hearings, I am a founding member of Consumers Asserting Leadership in Montana (Montana Peer Network).

Participating in Wellness Recovery Action Planning in 2005 transformed my life. I attended WRAP Facilitator Training in San Francisco in 2006 where I earned my WRAP Facilitator certification from Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery. Shortly thereafter, I established Wellness & Recovery Consultants with my partner, Mike Smith. This enterprise is designed to promote Mary Ellen Copeland’s Wellness Recovery Action Planning™ (WRAP).

In December of 2008, I was chosen, by audition, to attend Advanced WRAP Facilitator Training in Spokane, Washington with my fellow peers and was certified by the Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery as an Advanced Level WRAP Facilitator capable of training fellow WRAP facilitators to facilitate Mary Ellen Copeland’s “Introduction to Recovery” including WRAP. I am currently contracted through our business, Wellness & Recovery Consultants, as the state-wide WRAP Coordinator for Consumers Asserting Leadership in Montana (Montana Peer Network).

I have facilitated WRAP in a variety of venues such as Community Mental Health Centers, Advocacy organizations, the Home-Based Community Services Waiver-SDMI and recently ventured into facilitating WRAP for veterans. I am excited to have the opportunity to work with peers, inspire hope in others by shining a light on them and validating the human experience as I am finding my vision of recovery fulfilled, in part, by working with others who are also on their recovery journey.