In Know Who I Am And I Like What Recovery Is Teaching Me About Myself



Growing up, I attended Catholic grade school and high schools. In those schools I was verbally taught the words of Jesus Christ, "Turn the other cheek;" meaning when someone is cruel to you, return their cruelness with kindness. These were the words I was taught, but this was NOT the behavior that I witnessed.

The behavior I witnessed from adult Catholics/Christians was "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." I witnessed those same people who were saying "turn the other cheek" choosing instead to return evil for evil when push came to shove-- to seek revenge instead of reconciliation.

For many years, I followed their example because their words were worthless. Recovery has taught me that my word and my behavior must parallel each other. As a Christian, I now choose to "turn the other cheek" when people are cruel or unkind to me. Why? Because I know who I am now. And being cruel in return is not the real me. An eye for an eye is not who I am. 

Recovery has taught me that when people are cruel or unkind, it's not about me: It's about them. It's about the bad space they are in, or about the person that they have chosen to be. If someone has chosen to be bitter, verbally ugly and abusive, I don't have to choose to be like them. I can choose to return kindness for their cruelty. It's who I choose to be.

This doesn't mean that I allow people to abuse me. I can be assertive with the other person and demand to be treated with proper respect. That's called setting a boundary. And if they refuse to honor the boundary, I can walk away, remove myself from harms path, and yet choose to do so with kindness and integrity by refusing to be insulting or belittling toward that person.

I now know who I am and I choose to be a kind person. I choose to behave with integrity and to be honorable in the face of evil. I refuse to react from an angry place inside of me anymore, and I refuse to lower myself to the level of someone who refuses to act with integrity, or basic human dignity.

I allow my words and my actions to reflect who I truly am, because every day I know more and more about who I truly am through working my recovery program.


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