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if someone had told me years ago, that my only path to finding some sort of balance and serenity in my life, was to relive all the feelings i ever felt from day one, i might have walked away and eliminated the opportunity for me to feel anything else. yesterday, enjoying a cigar on my patio with one of the men who call me their sponsor, celebrating the third anniversary of hiss clean date, we spoke of how to rectify the pain he experienced during his family vacation. whether or not he returns to the “pen to paper” part of his program or not, is not my stuff. my stuff was to assure him, that he could choose a path out of his misery and that path might just be painful. that pain, however, would be temporary and fleeting.

Rebecca Q
Congrats on THIRTEEN (13) years clean

that of course, begs the question of how can i be so certain of that outcome. in reality, ever one of us, is different and in general i am not one to generalize by putting all of my peers in the same bucket. in this case however, it has been my experience that the gift of STEP FOUR, is the release of all the pain and trauma i have been carrying. the only caveat, as i found out a year ago is, that sometimes one is unwilling to look deep enough or that it takes time to finally get through the midden pile, to find the “real” issue. as surprised as i was to trip over one of the basic facts of my life and how that event shaped who i was and how i saw myself for decades on end, the release was not without its own sort of pain and suffering. i am still dealing with the consequences of that release as i figure out who i am and where i am going. what i do know, is that i am grateful for a process that allows this sort of stuff to happen. it may not have been pretty, and it certainly was not, BUT on this side of that FIFTH STEP, my life is a whole lot more serene and i am not getting angry at all the wrong things. most of the time. decades of being pissed off and in hiding, have certainly taken their toll on my life, but because i do not recover overnight, i know i still have work to do, to put together the man i am today.

∞ DT ∞