The Origins of LAVA

LAVA: From a Fun Idea to a Powerful Program of Healing
By Alicia A.

When I arrived on the SLAA doorstep after more than three decades of diligently working the 12 Steps in Overeaters Anonymous, I was stunned. I had sponsored and been sponsored, started meetings, done service for years, and built a deep relationship with the God of my understanding. I could not fathom how I could possibly be a sex and love addict. Like so many of us, I kept asking, “Why? How can this be?”

I was repeatedly told not to focus on the “Why?” Just stay sober and do the Steps. If I was ever supposed to understand “Why?” the answer would eventually reveal itself.

As shocked as I was, I also knew enough about recovery to recognize the truth when I saw it. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, it’s a duck. I am a sex and love addict through and through. 

I immediately surrendered and showed up to SLAA as a newcomer, despite having decades of recovery experience behind me. I knew the credits didn’t transfer. I set my bottomlines on March 20, 2012, and I’ve remained sober and committed to my SLAA recovery ever since.

A couple of years later, something happened that would completely change the course of my life.

One spring afternoon in 2014, I was sitting on my garden patio in Irvine, California, doing step work with one of my sponsees. Week after week, the same themes kept surfacing in her writing. She was looking for love, attention, validation, and approval from other people, especially men.  

And of course, I totally related. The big “Why?” buzzer went off in my head! Eureka! That is clearly the “Why?” I’ve been looking for all of these years! 

Finally, it all made perfect sense. I had been searching for the exact same things, love, attention, validation, and approval, especially from men. Suddenly, it felt like a giant knot inside me began to unravel.

A few months later, after those same four words surfaced again and again, she looked up at me and laughed and said, “You know the acronym for those four words is LAVA.”

A few weeks later she showed up with a lovely gift in hand, a black baseball cap professionally embroidered in white with the words “LAVA Queen.” I wore it with pride! 

At the time, it was just a fun little inside joke between us. But the conversations kept growing, especially with the women I sponsored. We talked about LAVA informally in meetings, but nothing had been written yet. There was no structure, no framework, and no real understanding of how transformative those four qualities actually were when we stopped outsourcing them and began giving them generously to ourselves.

As LAVA continued to evolve over the years, something important became clear to me. The last "A" eventually shifted from Approval to Acceptance when we are giving it to ourselves. That shift turned out to be far more profound than I could have imagined. Acceptance and approval are not the same thing. Approval easily becomes another form of perfectionism because approval depends on performing well and measured up to standards we didn’t invent and cannot in reality ever live up to. For many of us, approval can feel like just another test we are destined to fail. 

Acceptance is different. Acceptance does not grade us, fix us, or require us to earn it. It embraces our humanity just as we are today. It does not mean we approve of every choice or behavior. I came to realize that as a gift we give ourselves, acceptance creates safety, and safety creates lasting change. That realization transformed LAVA from a meaningful idea into something even deeper and far more healing.

Fast forward a few years when the pandemic hit. Life as we all knew it completely unraveled. I lost it all. 

I sank into a deep depression during that first year and eventually decided to move to Bali to lead women’s retreats and start over. I was carrying a tremendous amount of trauma by then, and Bali represented hope on a small island on the other side of the world.

All alone I went and I absolutely loved it there.

But shortly after I arrived, the quarantine requirements kept escalating from three days, to five, to seven, and eventually ten. The island was eerily empty. In many ways it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

While I was there, I slowly began trying to heal from the trauma that had piled up inside me. And in that process of healing, for the first time in my life, I started saying something to myself I had never truly said before:

“I love you, Alicia.”

Repeatedly saying those four words alone felt miraculous.

I had never spoken to myself that way. And something inside me responded to it immediately.

Then, in April of 2022, I went through a terrifying deportation experience after the visa agency I had paid to help me completely mishandled my visa renewal paperwork.

The Indonesian authorities interrogated me multiple times. They took my fingerprints, facial scans, iris scans, and biometrics. Immigration officers showed up at my bungalow. I heard horrifying rumors about people being detained indefinitely or losing all of their belongings. I was terrified.

Thankfully, I was not fined or detained, but I was forced to leave Indonesia and return to the United States with no home, no car, and no plan whatsoever.

I eventually went to stay with my brother and his family in Oklahoma. Unfortunately, that situation became another painful chapter in an already difficult season. I could feel myself emotionally deteriorating again, so I reached out for help. I’m American Indian and I went to the Native American Indian clinic and asked to see a psychiatrist for antidepressants. I also began seeing a therapist there.

By that point, I felt emotionally shattered beyond anything I could ever fathom.

Then by accident, I discovered pet sitting. Looking back, I genuinely believe my Higher Power guided me to it because it gave me stability when I desperately needed it.

In July of 2023, while staying at a month-long pet sit, I finally decided it was time to seriously address the trauma I had accumulated over the previous three years.

That was when the deep, daily LAVA work for me began as a framework for healing.

I beat pillows. I journaled. I cried, and cried, and cried. I’d spent years trying to be tough as a single parent slowly losing everything. If I wanted to heal this massive accumulation of feelings I had to face them. And I had no idea it was going to be then that LAVA was going to save me! 

After these emotional sessions, I would sit quietly and repeat, “I love you, Alicia,” over and over again. I began writing self-love affirmations every day and placing sticky notes around the house. I wrote myself love letters and letters of self-forgiveness. With every word I could feel the restoration of my sanity, joy, and peace of mind. I went swimming daily, worked out consistently, and stayed connected with my therapist. I attended all of the 12 Step meetings that had returned to in-person at a nearby 12 Step clubhouse. Little by little, it felt like I was loving myself back to life.

More than anything, it felt like I had finally stopped running from all of the painful feelings and neglecting myself.

By the end of those thirty days, something profound had shifted inside me. LAVA no longer felt like a clever acronym. It has become a real framework for healing.

I knew I wanted to teach it someday, but I also wanted to be guided carefully. I prayed and asked my Higher Power to make the timing to teach it unmistakably clear.

Three months later, I got my answer.

I was walking around Lake Rancho Santa Margarita in Southern California with a fellow when she began telling me how much the Monday night SLAA women’s meeting was struggling. That was my home group where I’d attended a women’s meeting for years before the pandemic. Attendance was dwindling even on Zoom.

She asked, “Is there anything you could do to help bring more women back?”

Immediately, I knew.

I said, “Yes. I’d love to lead a 10-week LAVA workshop.”

So, on October 16, 2023, I led the first LAVA workshop in history.

The positive response was immediate and overwhelming in the best way possible!

Soon women in Europe began asking, “What about us?” So I launched a second 10-week LAVA workshop for women in the European time zones.

After that very first meeting, one woman boldly said, “This needs to become a weekly meeting.”

Before I could utter a word, everyone agreed.

That moment changed everything.

The Monday and Thursday SLAA LAVA meetings continued to grow, and additional meetings followed shortly afterward. We also created a women’s WhatsApp community so members could stay connected between meetings.

Then December arrived.

Anyone in recovery knows the holidays can bring enormous emotional pressure, loneliness, grief, and triggers galore. So I created the first 30-Day LAVA Challenge to help us stay grounded in unconditional self-love during one of the most difficult seasons of the year.

Every day I posted a prompt focused on self-forgiveness, living our optimal lives, healing shame, practicing positive self-talk, and creating new neural pathways through the repetition of The Daily Declaration of Unconditional Self-Love. The impact was extraordinary. Women began sharing openly about what they were learning, confronting, and healing.

When December ended, nobody wanted to stop.

The 30-Day LAVA Challenge simply continued and evolved with new themes, seasons, and deeper layers of growth. Over time, the LAVA WhatsApp community grew into something incredibly meaningful to us all. At this writing, there are nearly 600 women in the community, all connected through a shared commitment to healing and unconditional self-love.

Eventually, it became clear that LAVA was not just a women’s issue. It is a human issue.

So after a year of women-only meetings, I launched the first all-gender LAVA workshop in October of 2024. More than 100 people tried to attend the very first meeting, and we had to upgrade the Zoom room.

Today, there are two All-Gender LAVA meetings and they continue to grow as well. The All-Gender LAVA WhatsApp Group has almost 200 members. 

People often give me credit for creating LAVA, and while I deeply appreciate that acknowledgment, I honestly believe LAVA is a God thing.

Yes, I’m the one who sat down and wrote the literature. But so much of this has felt Divinely guided from the very beginning.

Some of the writings emerged almost effortlessly, as though they arrived fully formed. One example is a piece called “Self-Love vs. Self-Care,” which I wrote during a personal retreat at Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside, California. The entire thing poured out in about an hour with almost no editing.

I know I’m a good writer, but I also know when something greater than me has taken over.

That’s one of the greatest gifts recovery has given me. Had I remained trapped in addiction, I would not have been emotionally available enough for my Higher Power to work through me in this way.

What has impacted me most deeply, though, is not the natural, organic growth of LAVA itself. It’s witnessing people from all walks of life and levels of recovery learn how to truly love themselves deeply and unconditionally.

Every day I read messages from LAVA members who are slowly dismantling shame, self-abandonment, perfectionism, and self-criticism. I watch them begin speaking to themselves with kindness for the first time in their lives. I see them learning how to stop chasing externally what they were always meant to cultivate internally. I hear them activating the LAVA ripple effect and sharing the powerful message of unconditional self-love with other family members, co-workers and most of all their children. That makes me the happiest, that together we are breaking the chain of trauma, abuse and addiction. 

All of this gives me tremendous hope.

And that is the story of how God took a small idea that began on a garden patio and transformed it into a framework for healing trauma, abuse, addiction, and self-neglect through unconditional self-love.

If you are new to SLAA or new to LAVA, I hope you will approach this work wholeheartedly. Apply the principles, practice them consistently and let LAVA become part of your daily life.

After more than four decades in recovery, I can honestly say my recovery feels more alive and meaningful today than ever before. That matters to me deeply because I never want recovery to become something stale, lifeless, or mechanical.

One letter I received recently brought tears to my eyes. It was from a longtime member of AA who came into SLAA devastated because she could not stop cheating on her husband. Through SLAA and LAVA, she slowly rebuilt both her life and her marriage. She learned how to love herself in all the ways she once expected another person to do for her.

In her note she wrote something I will not forget:

“Bill W. and Dr. Bob said more would be revealed. I think they would be proud to see how LAVA has become such a meaningful support alongside the 12 Steps.”

I’ll close with one of my favorite passages from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous:

“Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us…”

And perhaps that is exactly what happened with LAVA.

More was revealed.