If you’ve been anywhere near TikTok this summer, you already know something strange and wonderful is happening. A podcast called Dominican Sisters Open Mic, run by the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, has gone completely, gloriously viral. Millions of views. Hundreds of thousands of followers. A host, Sister Miriam, whose catchphrases “Sister, yessss!” and “Sister, you are so good at that!” have become the internet’s new favorite affirmations. There’s a clip about sisters playing ultimate frisbee. There’s a clip about the art of cooking. There’s an entire hashtag, #NunTok, and it is not slowing down.

People cannot get enough. The comments are full of women saying things like “wait, the idea of living with your girlies” and “I’m one situationship away from this.” And underneath all the jokes, something real is happening. People are watching a group of women live inside real structure, real community, real quiet, and real joy, and they are hungry for it.

I could have told you all this years ago.

I Was Doing This Before It Was Cool

Before I built anything called Thirsty for Wonder, I lived with a community of sisters. The Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco, Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. Say that ten times fast. I was an aspirant for six months, which meant I was learning and living the life without yet making any vows. A kind of long, earnest trial run at a completely different way of being.

I was ready to give up everything the sisters gave up. Everything except my shoes. I brought every single pair I owned.

My first night there, someone handed me a mop and pointed me toward the kitchen floor. I had never mopped an industrial size floor in my life. Picture it: me, brand new, absolutely no idea what I was doing, mopping myself directly into a corner with nowhere left to go. A sister found me stuck there a few minutes later, and we both lost it laughing.

That’s the whole thing, really. Earnest effort, zero idea what I was doing, and a world with an actual way of doing everything, including the mopping. It turns out that’s also a pretty accurate description of walking into recovery.

One quick clarification, since it trips people up: the women in that viral podcast are sisters, not nuns. Nuns are cloistered, their lives devoted entirely to prayer inside the walls of a convent. Sisters are out in the world. Teachers, therapists, administrators, nurses. Living the same rule, the same devotion, while still showing up to ordinary life every day. That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because it’s basically the whole thesis of this article. You don’t have to disappear from the world to be devoted to something that keeps you whole. You just have to keep showing up to it.

Here’s what six months of convent life taught me, and what I think it has to say about recovery.

1. Community Life

Sisters eat together, pray together, work together. But the part nobody expects is how much they play together. The convent I lived in, in New Jersey, ran a summer camp. There was a pool. A pond with paddle boats. And a trampoline that if you jumped high enough on you could see the New York City skyline from it.

One of my fondest memories from that whole season of my life is gathering in the community room after dinner with 30 rocking chairs in a circle. Sisters chatting,crocheting, knitting. A card game going in the corner. Scrabble at a table. Playing together, laughing together, just being together, is healing in a way that’s hard to explain until you’ve felt it. Recovery works the same way. We know we get better together, not alone in a room white-knuckling it. The trampoline, the meeting, the group chat, they’re doing the same job.

2. Silence

Most convents build silence into the day on purpose. Some observe it during meals. My community kept what’s called Grand Silence, no talking from around nine at night until after Mass the next morning.

I hated it at first. I wanted to talk about my dreams, my coffee, anything. But somewhere in that quiet, I started hearing myself instead of just filling the space around me.

Recovery asks the same thing, eventually. So much of what kept me drinking was exactly that, the noise, the constant filling of every quiet moment so I never had to sit with what was underneath it. Learning to actually tolerate silence, to be alone with yourself without needing to escape it, is some of the realest work either life requires.

3. The Habit

I never wore one myself. I was an aspirant, not yet a sister. But I watched what it meant every day. The habit is a walking sign. Anyone who sees a sister on the street knows exactly who she is and what she’s given her life to. There’s no hiding, no blending in, no quietly deciding today isn’t the day.

Sobriety asks something similar even without a uniform. You become visible. People know. And there’s a stage further down the road, one that doesn’t happen right away, where you have enough of your own healing behind you that you actually have something to offer the people around you. You go from being someone who needed care to someone with the capacity to pour it back out. That’s its own kind of habit. You just can’t see it from the outside.

4. Detachment

Back to the shoes. I brought every pair I owned into that convent because I wasn’t ready to let go of everything yet, and honestly, that’s a pretty honest place to start. Convent life is built around owning less, needing less, proving nothing with what you have.

Recovery does its own quiet version of this. You start shedding things that used to feel essential, and it turns out you didn’t need most of them. I wasn’t ready to give up my shoes on day one. Nobody’s ready for all of it on day one. That’s fine. You let go of what you can, when you can.

5. Feast Days and Small Joys

Convent life is not all silence and mop buckets. Feast days were genuinely big parties. Music, singing, and dancing. Special meals, company, and real joy, all celebrated on purpose. Nobody apologized for how good the food was or how much fun everyone was having.

Recovery gives you that back too. The capacity to actually enjoy something simple without needing it to be bigger than it is. A good dessert. A normal Tuesday. The trampoline, again, if you’re lucky.

The Sisters Are Just Getting Started

While the internet is busy falling in love with Sister Miriam, there’s a whole world of joyful, strange, wonderful religious communities worth knowing about.

There’s my own community, the Salesian Sisters, still out there living exactly the life I got a six month taste of.

There are the Franciscan sisters at a convent in central Spain who have spent decades raising an endangered breed of giant rabbit, some of which weigh up to twenty pounds, because the breed once helped feed families during hard times and they decided someone should make sure it survives.

And there are three Augustinian nuns in Austria, all in their eighties, who were moved into a nursing home against their will when their convent closed. They didn’t accept it. Local parishioners rented a U-Haul, brought in a locksmith, and helped them break back into their old convent and turn the lights back on. One of the sisters said it best: she thinks it’s wonderful that social media brings people to them.

Rebellious, joyful, devoted, and completely unwilling to disappear quietly. Honestly, it sounds like recovery to me.

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Dominican Sisters Open Mic

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THIRSTY FOR WONDER: Does the Church Have a Drinking Problem? Faith, Alcohol, and Sobriety in Sacred Spaces

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THIRSTY FOR WONDER: at The Sober Curator, led by Anne Marie Cribben—a passionate recovery coach and spiritual companion based in Washington, DC—offers 1:1 coaching, spiritual guidance, and recovery support rooted in compassion and empowerment. As the creator of The Wellspring: A Celtic Recovery Journey, Anne Marie blends the Celtic calendar with sobriety, connecting participants to ancient wisdom and the rhythms of nature.

A fierce advocate for sobriety as liberation and self-love, she challenges the targeted marketing of alcohol to women and champions authentic, joyful living. Her work goes beyond addiction recovery, fostering a life of vibrancy, purpose, and connection.

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SPIRITUAL GANGSTER: at The Sober Curator is a haven for those embracing sobriety with a healthy dose of spiritual sass. This space invites you to dive into meditation, astrology, intentional living, philosophy, and personal reflection—all while keeping your feet (and your sobriety) firmly on the ground. Whether you’re exploring new spiritual practices or deepening an existing one, Spiritual Gangster offers inspiration, insight, and a community that blends mindful living with alcohol-free fun.

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