Getting High on Recovery

You are beyond time. Who you are is both the person you are right now and who you will be/come.

___

Can you feel time moving?

It’s a strange question. Usually we keep time or we watch it pass… but feel it? Time is little more than a measurement, a way to track how many days pass in front of us.

Your lunch hour. Your height. Your weight. Your bank account. 

Measurements allow us to feel that life is ours to own, to possess, to control?

◊♦◊

Recovery defies measurement. It is both in time and it is also beyond time. Recovery happens today but at the same time it stretches into the unknown. Recovery is about who we are and who we will be/come.

Recovery is making room. It happens as we embrace and welcome parts of ourselves that once were and want to be.

◊♦◊

As we recover, we glimpse. We see glimpses of what we will become if we continue using, drinking or become lost in our experience of our mental health. We also learn to glimpse what we will become if we learn to accept, to embrace, to love, to trust, to risk.

Recovery is a way of seeing where our choices will take us. It is waking up to ourselves. Waking to our present and to our presence. Waking to who we are and who we can be/come.

◊♦◊

“Knowledge is important, but only if we’re being kind and gentle with ourselves as we work to discover who we are. Wholeheartedness is as much about embracing our tenderness and vulnerability as it is about developing knowledge and claiming power.” Brene Brown

◊♦◊

You are beyond time. Who you are is both the person you are right now and who you will be/come. No one else carries your story. You have before you the choices that only you can make.

You may not feel it today, but you are worthy. Of your time. Of your body. Of your recovery.

The essence of recovery is waking up and learning to be awake.

◊♦◊

Two years ago, I wrote: “Right now, my brokenness is very real. Part of me wants a quick fix to cover the brokenness and get on with my life. I know that the quick fix will only lead to more shame and it will not last. It is possible to turn our wounds into gold. Healing requires a generous amount of love, honesty and a willingness to be the art.”

You are more than the choices you have made, the things that have happened to you, the memories in your head. You are more.

Today is all that you have. Your recovery is waiting, asking you to be awake.

◊♦◊

If you enjoyed this piece, I invite you to check out some of my other writing:

To Heal, You Must Become The Art

Addiction: A Simple Path

What Gets You Through the Hard Times?

I write articles that talk about the kind of changes I am trying to make in my own life. I hope that my writing also helps you. My topics include addiction and mental health recovery, relationships, and personal growth. I work as an Addiction Therapist, an Editor for the Good Men Project and freelance writer, and Adjunct Professor at City University, Edmonton. But what is most important is that I have a family and I am in recovery from depression and anxiety. My mental health experiences are part of my personal University degree, but they do not define me.

I hope to inspire you, to inform you and on occasion to entertain you. But most of all, I want to connect with you. Sign up for my blog if you want to receive the latest and best of my writing. If you like what I have to say, please share my work with your friends.

Lastly, if you like my writing, you can click here to vote for my page on Psych Central’s list of mental health blogs.

Keep it Real

Photo by Håkan Dahlström