Beverly Aikins on faith, recovery and the next right thing

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

Hillbilly Elegy made her a character in her son's book. Ten years into recovery, the nurse and grandmother is telling it herself—and bringing it to the RMV Freedom Fest on June 26.

Last Christmas, everyone in Beverly Aikins’ family opened a gift she had made by hand. She had not sewn in years.

The machine had been quiet a long time. Somewhere in a decade of getting well, it started running again.

She counts that as recovery. Not the headlines. The sewing.

Most people who know Aikins know her secondhand. Her son wrote about her addiction in his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. He talked about it again at the 2024 Republican convention, where the cameras found her in the crowd.

This time the questions are hers to answer.

Aikins, the mother of Vice President J.D. Vance, will speak June 26 at the RMV Freedom Fest in Castle Rock, the two-day celebration of America’s 250th birthday and Colorado’s 150th. A decade sober and back at work as a nurse, Aikins talks about recovery as a list of things returned to her.

The hard years are on the record. Aikins was a nurse who lost her license. For a stretch she lost her family too. Her parents, in the book’s telling, paid to put her through nursing school once and helped her toward recovery later. That is the part most people know.

What recovery gave back

“It gave me peace of mind, my family, whom we have real conversations with now, my faith, a recovery family that have become like my birth family,” Aikins told RMV.

“I never imagined getting clean and sober would give me so much.”

She lost her nursing license to addiction and spent years earning it back. At 65 she is in school again, working toward her bachelor’s.

“I was meant to be a nurse,” she said. “Next to my recovery and my family, it was the most important thing to me. I never thought of giving up. I knew it would happen in God’s time.”

The night in Milwaukee

The country met her on a Wednesday night in 2024. Near the end of his convention speech, Vance talked about single moms like his, the ones “who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up.” Then the cameras found her. “I’m proud to say that tonight my mom is here, 10 years clean and sober,” he said. 

Beside her, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson rose and applauded. Attendees started chanting “J.D.’s mom! J.D.’s mom!”—and she blew kisses to the crowd. As the applause built, the camera caught her mouthing “I love you, J.D.” back to her son.

It was a lot to be on the receiving end of.

“I was thrilled,” Aikins said. “I felt like a movie star having all those people chant ‘JD’s Mom.'”

Vance made a promise from the stage: if the president was good with it, they would hold her 10-year celebration at the White House. They did. On April 4, 2025, in the Roosevelt Room, she got the celebration he’d promised. Vance slipped a coin into her hand—one of the president’s, he said, that Trump had asked him to pass along.

‘In God’s time’

Asked what she would tell families still in the hard part of addiction, Aikins answered in three sentences.

“Continue to reach out and pray,” she said. “Remember that reconciliation happens in God’s time, not ours. But you keep doing the next right thing.”

When her son first told her he had written a book, she asked one thing: would it help him heal. She later told the New York Times the book was hard in places but had opened a line in the family that was never open before. Addiction, she said, had been “like the elephant in the room.” Nobody named it then.

“I lost my faith in addiction. Recovery gave it back to me,” Aikins said. “Faith is a huge part of my recovery. I want to shout the name of the savior from the rooftops.”

Then there are the grandchildren.

“Each one of them has a part of him that he had as a child. Ewan is very smart and competitive. Vivek is very funny and soft hearted. Mira is sweet and loves animals. These are all qualities JD possessed as a child and still does,” she said.

The spoiling has a limit, one the family set.

“Yes, I’m forbidden from buying anymore Pokémon cards.”

‘Do the right thing‘

Her son now runs the federal Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, the job President Donald Trump gave him to hunt waste in programs like Medicaid and food assistance. Asked what she recognizes in him from childhood, Aikins did not talk policy.

“I recognize that he is fair and just wants to do the right thing,” she said.

She raised her children through Middletown’s hard years. Now she thinks about the grandchildren, and the country they’re inheriting.

“Our country is getting greater, because of our current administration,” she said. “I want all my grandchildren to know to believe in themselves, chase their dreams, and anything is possible because we live in the greatest country in the world.”

She’ll bring her story to RMV Freedom Fest on June 26 at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.

The chants are over. The work is not. Aikins went back to the recovery center and her patients. For anyone still in the dark of it, her advice: “you keep doing the next right thing.”