# Recovery

W e, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have re-covered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.

"I was always loved, but I always wondered, also, what that love depended on." (Leslie Jamison, The Recovering)

Christianity is not about changing other people—it isn’t! It’s nice if people do change, but that’s God’s work. It’s about changing ourselves, and that never stops.

“Dear Frau V.,

Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits in with... See more

I shared at that meeting about how I have always felt like I have to prove to someone that I’m worthy of love, how it has sabotaged my love relationships, and how it all began with my mother, who left my dad and me when I was three

I tell them that the Big Book isn’t about getting religion or worshipping anything—it’s simply about recognizing where you really stand in the Universe and answering some very personal questions about how you got here, where you’d like to go and the things that would need to change, to make that possible.

“Spiritual bypassing is a term I coined to describe a process I saw happening in the Buddhist community I was in, and also in myself. Although most of us were sincerely trying to work on ourselves, I noticed a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and... See more