Soulshine

Many of us addicts carry around our mistakes. We wear them like the very chains that weighted down the ghost of Jacob Marley in The Christmas Carol .  We need to learn to place all of our past mistakes, no matter how serious they were, under our feet. Once we have acknowledged them, owned them and made amends for them, they are no longer mistakes. Recovery transforms mistakes into wisdom. The wisdom we gain from each mistake then becomes a stepping stone toward new, healthier behavior. When placed into proper perspective we learn from our mistakes and we are then able to better move forward into healthier, happier lives.  So stop punishing yourself with your mistakes. They are part of the past. The wisdom you gain from them ensures a better future.

      Throughout recovery, trust in love. Trust in your Higher Power. Trust means you don’t have to worry about what you are powerless over. Enjoy the good that you find in your new journey of recovery. Always look up and always move forward, just like time does. Only look back to gain wisdom. Seems much of life is filled with uncertainty. The only real certainty you can experience is in this present moment. If all is good in this moment—outside of your head—then all is good. Be certain of that. And be certain that all will be good in the bigger picture of the new life that is unfolding before you in recovery. 

“Something will grow from all of this… and it will be me.” Jodi Hills Bad things happen to everyone. No one on earth is exempt. The most popular and successful people across this world have all suffered at the hands of others and from their own mistakes. So why is it that some people who suffer terribly rise above their suffering while others wallow in their suffering forever? Well, those who rise above their suffering choose to grow from their suffering. They feel the pain, grieve their losses and then ask themselves “What wisdom can I gain from this? What can I learn from what has happened to me that will benefit me in the future?” They consciously sift-through all of the darkness that they have experienced until they find a golden nugget of wisdom and it becomes a guiding light for them to take back their personal power and to move forward in life. People who wallow endlessly in the muck of their suffering never think to ask themselves, or their Higher Power, “W...

“Misery is God’s way of telling you that this isn’t the path you should follow.” Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge Personal misery has much to tell and teach us. Yet, even in recovery, we sometimes don’t want to listen to our misery. We are so accustomed to wallowing in it. Misery is how many of us define ourselves. We wouldn’t know how to behave without feeling miserable in some way. And so if things start changing too much for the better during recovery, we may find ourselves engaged in a game of self-sabotage. Before recovery we didn’t understand that we were trapped in bad patterns of behavior. All of our attempts to manipulate and control others backfired and increased our misery, but we were blind to the fact that control wasn’t the solution to our problems. So we kept loading our pistols with control tactics and we kept having these tactics blow-up in our faces. Our misery intensified and yet we still weren’t willing to listen to it and ask it what it was trying to tell us...