“One Day At a Time” used to be the way I got through the week, hand over hand, from one drunken stupor to hangover to the next. I would cry in the shower, twisting the true intention of the phrase to fit my need for inebriation. “Just let me get away with using for one…
I love language. I love words and their use. Sometimes my brain, however, takes the written word and weaves new application; both reading and misreading a phrase. I recently enjoyed a mystery: “Still Life” by Louise Penny. In this book takes place in a small village in Canada. In it she used a phrase, “Tiffany tunnel”,…
It was probably something someone said.. or it was my own thoughts bouncing around – but I started thinking about my desire to control (people, places, things, outcomes – you name it.) I usually talk myself away from that cliff; I have been “in the rooms” for a while now and I know that down…
Ok -I admit it. I have feelings of vanity. I struggle with letting go of the image of my physical self. I say this not to get the response of “you have nothing to worry about”, “you look GREAT for your age” or any other response of re-assurance. I say this as an observation: something…
Yes – you read that right. One week after teaching a yoga class at Elmwood Correctional Facility I hear “M” advise other women in the class to “Just f*&@%ing breathe!” There had been a frustrating situation going on in the jail. A change in snack offerings had caused the women to become upset and a…
I love vegetables. There are times when just standing at the counter with a pile of freshly rinsed vegis and my favorite knife can be bliss. I look at their color, smell the bright splash of scent when I put in the first cut and a bit later I have piles of of chopped bits…
It starts off small, a little WANTING, a little attraction, then desire just this side of obsession. That is how it began for me. My watchband lost its loops and the end of the strap kept flapping. It still functioned but was annoying. Then it got a little tear. I was relieved. That meant the…
My heart is tender yet greedy; she is sensitive but grips tightly to what she desires. So strange to take captive what my heart admires as free. What am I doing? Why do I grip? I admire all that grows, and growth requires change. Pining a person or an event in a static position in my…
That’s right – come to a rest, put your pencil (keyboard, tablet, device, list, or other “have to do”) down and breathe. Going going going, doing doing doing getting getting getting. I suffer from the disease of “more”. I know I am in “trouble” when I reach for “just one more” cookie, spoonful of something,…
Mark Twain said that “Humor is tragedy plus time.” And I say “THANK GOD!” Looking back at my life before recovery and my life early in recovery I see what I huge part my guilt and shame played in my selection of jobs, how I handled requests and requirements, and how I responded to requests…