by Beth Elliott

Dear Lord make me know

That life is an ebb and flow

And, it is okay

To feel the anxiety, fear and loss

When the wave retreats and I wonder

If I can live with just my bare feet on damp sand

And, it is okay

To feel expectant, exuberant and joyful

As the wave returns and licks my feet

Like the happy, unconditional love of puppy kisses

Dear Lord make me know

That I can live with this ebb and flow

And breathe into this rhythm

Just as I accept the beating of my heart

…

It rained all this morning, and on into the afternoon.

I was home by myself, a rare treat, lying in bed reading. The storm outside grew more intense, the sound of the rain on the roof rising from the background into consciousness. I set the book down beside me, shut my eyes and just listened.

The sound of the rain overhead moved through my body like a feeling, relaxation spreading to the tips of my fingers and toes. The room was cool but I was warm under the blankets. I felt like I could stay there forever. I let go of all…

Spirituality is a difficult subject for many people in early recovery. There are a variety of reasons, but what they usually boil down to is a bad experience with religion.

Forgetting, for the moment, that religion and spirituality are not the same thing, we need to help newcomers reach some sort of accommodation with their possible misgivings about all the discussions of higher powers, God as we understood him, spiritual awakenings and all the other recovery jargon that flies around the rooms.

This is sometimes an awkward situation, and one that needs to be dealt with gently — perhaps passed over altogether…

I have heard the expression “Fake It Til You Make It” at several meetings. I never really understood how it would help me. I’ve never been comfortable with the “faking it” part, although I have done it a lot during my life.

I think that it’s better to just walk the walk and work the program, keeping honesty in mind, rather than having the “liar” alarm go off in my head.

Nonetheless, I felt like a fake at a meeting on Friday. I didn’t want to go to the meeting, instead I wanted to go home, make it an early evening, and…

I have felt on edge recently. A lot of my edginess started with hurricane prep around here. I worked in a cave while the shutters were up. That started the edginess.

There was the hype about Hannah and then there was the reality of Ike. I watched the news coming in from a station in Texas like I was transfixed. It felt like watching a train wreck–I wanted to look away but couldn’t.

Then there is my edginess over the political process and the bad economic news that keeps coming in waves: Freddy Mac, Fannie May, banks folding, jobs folding, the market…

from DailyOM.com

September 18, 2008
Exploring the Soul
Living a Spiritual Life

Throughout the journey from birth to death, many people choose to question life, strive for improvement, seek out knowledge, and search for the divine. Simply put, this is the essence of spirituality. One’s spiritual practice can take on many forms, because embracing the spiritual is a very personal pursuit. While many people do relate their spirituality to a God or Goddess, this quest for the divine, or oneness with the universe, always springs from within. It doesn’t matter where you find your spiritual path. We are all fundamentally spiritual beings and the…

I read this last night:

Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW…so you stop asking.

                                                   -Ram Dass, Be Here Now

I feel like I’m somewhere in between these two points with my recovery. Some days I long for the time when I will be “better”, when this tapering off Suboxone will be done, when I’ll be healthy and strong, finished with school, working as a therapist, have money in the bank, a clean…

Uncle Iroh by *Purple-Twilek on deviantART

One of the highlights of my recent depressive episode was time spent watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with my daughter. Sure, it’s a kid’s show, but it’s better than 95% of the crap on the telly these days. We’re all addicted to it here at Casa del Quitter, and we whiled away more than a few rainy days watching Avatar marathons.

The man pictured above is one of my favorite characters, Uncle Iroh. Fallen from power and deprived of his birthright by a conniving brother, he is a fearsome fighter and also a wise and kind man. And from…

It was a beautiful weekend, one that held that promise of fall being just around the corner. I took advantage of the weather to take my sail boat to one of the deserted islands along the coast. Besides walking on the beach and having a great campfire on Saturday night and morning, there isn’t much else to do but sleep, eat and read. For the latter, I took along Robert Sutton’s book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.

It’s an interesting read. I think that I found it particularly enlightening because Sutton comes from…

I was on the treadmill this morning running my morning mile when my parents woke up and came downstairs to join me. I felt good, having run a good mile in a decent time and decided to join them outside. They were in town for a night on their way home from Baltimore. I was doing my little dumbbell routine that I do every morning on the deck while they were sitting and pulling on their morning cigarette.

My father looks at me and said, “Ya know Jennifer, I don’t understand, you work out everyday and you don’t eat a…

September 1, 2008
Enduring Discomfort
Missing Our Old Habits

Whenever we make the effort to free ourselves of an addiction or a habit we no longer need, we are often surprised to find ourselves missing the old pattern as we would a familiar friend. This sounds counterintuitive, because we think we should instinctively gravitate toward that which is good for us. And yet, it makes a lot of sense when you consider that we humans are creatures of habit. This is why we gravitate to people and places—and patterns of behavior–that make us feel comfortable. Therefore, many of the habits we form are…

My mind races. Often it races at the same brick wall again and again.

I was sitting down at the computer earlier trying to compose a post about something I’m working through in my recovery. My mind was spinning and spinning on the topic, but the right words wouldn’t come. I have learned when that happens that I need to leave that topic and come back to it, but I was feeling like an animal trapped in a cage, desperate. “I have less than half an hour until I have to pick Baby Girl up from school. I have to write something today…

Last night, I listened to a parent talk about anxiety. This wasn’t your usual garden-variety form of hand wringing but a gut-wrenching anxiety that hits in the night and lasts until dawn. The question to the group was “What do you do to alleviate anxiety?” I thought back to those many nights that I would lie awake worrying about my work and the things that I had to do, worrying about my SO and what was going to happen to us, and worrying about my mother who had severe depression. Sometimes I would eventually fall asleep but mostly I would…

I ran a half-marathon today. What does that have to do with recovery? Well, drinking alcohol doesn’t mix well with running fast. Also, if I were still drinking, I wouldn’t give a crap about racing–(whiny voice) it’s tooooo hard! Racing is challenging, but not necessarily in the way you might think. Today, as in most other races, my biggest competitor was me. Actually, it was my insecure, fearful, negative brain. That’s the brain one is stuck with when depression brain and alcoholic brain combine. Yikes!
So, as usual, I spent most of my race in combat with my brain. It was…

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
~ Herbert Spencer

Frankly, I have no idea who he was. I stole that quote from page 570 of Alcoholics Anonymous (3rd edition,) known to drunks worldwide as “The Big Book.” Whoever or whatever ol’ Herb was, he was also a wise man.

I mostly ignored similar concepts for most of my life. I would have told you that I was a liberal, well-educated, philosophically-inclined, hyper-intelligent and…

These are lyrics to a song written by a friend.  I thought they were absolutely great and when I learn the technology to attach them to the music, I’ll put them both together so you can actually HEAR the song. In the meantime, enjoy the lyrics to this awesome message!

Till Next Time-

Your Humble Road Warrior

Bill Wilson is a mean mistreater and Dr. Bob is bad to the bone

Bill Wilson is a mean mistreater and Dr. Bob is bad to the bone

They’ve asked me to clean house. They’re trying to ruin my unhappy home

When I walked into the rooms, after a…

From today@dailyom.com

August 19, 2008

Rethinking Complaining

We all know someone who has elevated the process of complaining to a high art. Sometimes funny, sometimes exhausting, these people have the ability to find a problem just about anywhere. In its more evolved form, complaining is simply the ability to see what’s not working, in one’s own life or in the external world, and it can be quite useful if followed to its natural conclusion—finding a solution and applying it. However, many of us don’t get that far, and we find that complaining has become an end in itself. In small doses, this is…

For those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a recovering alcoholic and addict. Because this is the time of the year when I make a point of looking back at how things were, I offer the following story.

Twenty-odd years ago, when my life was remarkably different from the way it is today, I was handed an assignment by my boss, the Chief of Police. The job was to wade through a bunch of sworn affidavits that had been provided by the local hospital as fruits of a civil case, interview some folks, and find out if there…

This is a message from a website, www.today@dailyom.com that I receive every day. I’d like to share this with you.

Till Next Time -

Your Humble Road Warrior

Looking At What We Don’t Want To See

It is one of life’s great paradoxes that the things we don’t want to look at in ourselves are the very things we need to look at in order to know ourselves better and to become more fully who we are. The feelings that make us want to run away are buried treasure full of energy and inspiration if we are willing to look. These feelings come in many…