Blog entry for:

lessons to learn in recovery, are mine and mine alone, HOWEVER, that does not mean i can ignore my peers and their journeys through recovery.
wow, certainly a long way to get to my jumping off place, it happens, i want to write about something, find my seed and then need to twist and turn to get where i am going. not a bad metaphor for the whole of my recovery experience to date. more than once i believed i was unique and more than once, this snowflake melted into a puddle of gibbering jello, at the slightest suggestion that perhaps i was not seeing things as they really are and i was not all that different from my peers. i do not “old-fashioned,” or “modern” recovery, i just have recovery and i NEED the Experience, Strength and HOPE of my peers to guide me through the shoals of life on its own terms. i need not distinguish myself from my peers, and as i grow more comfortable with who i am, i can rely more and more on their guidance, even if they never say two words to me directly. for me, learning to listen, without running what they are saying through the filter of my bias and prejudice and what i mockingly call “discernment,” give me the freedom to stray from the fixed and often obsessive manner in which i live my life. i get to learn that no matter how hard i plan, manipulate, or whine, life works out they way it does and my job is to adapt to that flow and stop resisting it. the lessons that i learn, painful as well as joyful ones, only increase the value of my recovery, even when they seem to be big and fat FAILS! the truth is, as the reading states, when i listen to what my peers are actually saying, even if it is something i have heard many times before, or a slogan that they seemed married to, i CAN get something to assist with how i apply theses principles in my life.
there really is no more going on with me today. i am getting my weekly tasks accomplished, i have sprayed the weeds in my lawn, i have my work machine up and ready to roll and even though i am “stuck” at home, i feel serene and without guilt, remorse or shame, over how i have lived my day, up until this point. it is a good day to be more than just okay in my skin and i do not have to deal with the drama and trauma of a using addict, anywhere close by. of course all of that can change in an instant, but i will go with it for right here and right now. after all, that is what my peers keep suggesting that i do.

∞ DT ∞