On This Day of Thanksgiving, Let's Be Grateful for All That Has Helped us to Grow Over the Past Year; Both the Good and the Bad




In the United States, today is considered Thanksgiving Day. This day is set aside every year as a day to reflect on our lives and to realize all that we have to be grateful for, and then to offer thanksgiving to God, or our Higher Power, and to the people who have blessed our lives.

Often when we think about the people who have blessed our lives, we are only grateful for those people who have blessed us with enlightenment, happiness or genuine caring. On this Thanksgiving Day, I choose to also be grateful for the people who, over the past year, have taught me very difficult, pain-filled lessons. These lessons are sometimes our greatest blessings in disguise. 

This is especially true if we have hurt or been hurt by someone we truly love deeply. Over the course of the past year, I realize today that some of the people I have loved the most, and have dedicated the most attention and caring toward, have hurt me the most during 2017. But, I also acknowledge that every relationship is a two-way street, and that I have also failed and hurt them at times as well.

So, even though the pain has been unbearable at times, it has taught me great lessons and taken me to a higher spiritual level and emotional maturity, especially in my recovery. We only truly grow in Recovery when we learn the difficult lessons that our mistakes, the mistakes of others and the pain that results have to teach us. And we learn those lessons by facing our pain, instead of addictively running from it.

Certainly over the past year, I am grateful for the emotional pain that I have faced after my addictive personality overruled my natural (sane) personality and I took steps backwards in Recovery. I am especially grateful for the times when I allowed myself to face all of the dark, often devastating, emotional pain I experienced as a result of these relapses, and the fact that when my pain was the greatest, my Higher Power provided me with the strength to face the pain. Emotionally I have grown greatly through facing that pain, even though a deep part of me wanted to medicate it away by losing myself in another person, or by shopping or by overeating sugary/salty foods.

My prayer for today is that we may all be grateful for those people who have blessed our lives in loving and hurtful ways. We have been nurtured by the love, and we have grown by facing our hurt, regaining our personal power and becoming stronger people. And I also pray that we be grateful to our Higher Powers for guiding us through the good and the bad times, and to our various support groups who have challenged and nourished us in our self-discovery and our personal growth, mentally, emotionally, physically-- and most importantly-- spiritually.

Happy Thanksgiving. It’s better to feel blessed by growing from the painful experiences of our lives, than to feel bitter by playing the victim of life.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

Image
Ah, the codependent crazies. Those needy, needy feelings. I remember well the deep emotional pain in the pit of my stomach: The throbbing sting of shame, fear, loneliness and anxious desperation. Those feelings that are like fingernails on the blackboard of your soul. They eat you alive from within as they dig deeper and deeper into the black hole of your inner-emptiness. Yes, I remember them well. And I remember evenings of mental and emotional insanity-- squirming with a magazine, pacing back and forth, indulging in chocolate, chasing up and down the stairs hoping the doorbell would ring, and staring endlessly at the telephone for a sign of hope. All I needed was a call from my false higher power; a call that would help me to know that I was OK, that I was needed, that I was worth thinking about in some good way. I was dying to be emotionally caressed on the head like a poodle desperate for the attention of his master. And certainly I had made that other person into my mas
Read more

If The Eyes Had No Tears, The Soul Would Have No Rainbow

Image
I'm sitting in a Panera Bread in Los Angeles, eating my cinnamon scone and preparing to cut my trip here short. I'll have to return home tomorrow and then fly to Omaha, Nebraska for a funeral. A young father in his 30s died there last Friday, leaving behind a wife and three small children. There are always questions in these types of situations: Why? Why someone so young? Why someone who had a wife and kids? The "why" questions can be endless, and there's never a quantifiable answer.  I don't believe in "it was just his time" or that God called him home. There's too much cruelty to these pat answers and they make God seem like a beast. What purpose could there be behind such imagined acts of God? I see no redeeming purpose to seizing a young man from his young family. I do believe that life happens. When someone dies and there is no acceptable answer to "why," I believe it's simply the human condition. It's the way
Read more

Are We Projecting Our Insecurities Onto What Others Say or Do?

Image
During my Recovery, I’ve learned a great deal from Don Miguel Ruiz and his book “The Four Agreements.” Ruiz says, basically, if we live by these four standards, or agreements, we will be reasonably happy in this life: 1) Be impeccable or truthful with your words; 2) Never take anything personally. Other people’s behavior is about them, not you; 3) Never make assumptions (and I include expectations as well); and 4) Simply do your best. Learning to never take anything personally has been a life saver for me during Recovery. I used to make everything negative anyone else said or did about me. And, as a result, I made myself feel victimized or hurt, when the other person’s behavior had nothing to do with me. It was all about them and whatever difficulties they were poorly coping with at the moment. I don’t take things personally anymore. My behavior is about me and where I’m at mentally/emotionally/spiritually/physically, and other people’s behavior is theirs to own— not mine. Nev
Read more

Become the Person You Want to Spend Your Life With Everyday

Image
I really don’t have to say much about the above quote. It says it all and it’s so true. We are too often taught faulty ways of thinking as children. So many of us get the wrong message at very young ages: Love is about finding the right person to love you. Looking back I realize I wasted many years trying to find that “right” person— the one who could love me into loving myself— instead of trying to BE that “right” person myself. It never occurred to me that I needed to love myself, nurture myself and accept myself enough to become the right person— the person I really needed most in my life. After all, what is my life without me? Now I know that I’m what’s been missing from my own life for years. My life is empty without me and without my spiritual Higher Power. This is true for all of us.  Once We find ourselves, become the “right” person God intended us to be, and become the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with, then we attract others into our lives who can co
Read more