Soulshine

“I've asked myself How much do you commit yourself? It's my life Don't you forget It's my life It never ends (It never ends)” It’s My Life by Talk Talk How much do we commit ourselves to our own lives is a good question for everyone to ask. After all, that’s what recovery is all about. Those of us recovering from codependency spent most of our lives committing ourselves to everyone else’s life. We grew-up with our eyes always focused outside of ourselves. We lived by “Who can I commit myself to today? Who can I take care of today? Whose problems can I try to solve today?” Our only interest was in “your” life. Then we get into recovery and we learned that “your” life isn’t “my” life. We learned that they were two separate and distinct entities. We then learned to untangle the two. And in doing so, we discovered that our lifeline isn’t inside of someone else; it’s inside of us. Suddenly, all of our focus shifted, and we began the process of looking...

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” Henry David Thoreau Yesterday I was in Fern’s Garden, a little shop on Second Street in Long Beach, when I came across a small journal with this quote from Henry David Thoreau. Seems we’ve had life-coaches around for a long, long time! I bought the journal because the quote resonated with me strongly. I feel very restless right now. I don’t really believe I’m living the life I have imagined for myself. In fact, I know I am not. Since I was a small child I’ve had one dream in my heart: to be loved by that certain special irreplaceable someone. That’s never happened, mostly because—as much as I have desperately wanted it—I’ve been too afraid to pursue it. This is one of the great pitfalls of codependency. We don’t feel worthy to pursue the dreams in our hearts. For some of us, we don’t even know what dreams our hearts hold because we have been so busy diminishing ourselves in order to...