# Recovery

Today I pray that money comes to me with ease and clarity. I pray to spend and save within my value system. I remember that debt doesn’t make me bad or unworthy. My money business is my business, not anyone else’s. God as my employer, I surrender to spirit’s will for me.

I got the help I needed. Medication helped turn down the volume on my feelings enough that I could hear my thoughts over them, and made them small enough to get my arms around. I ask myself questions like, “Is this true, and how do I know it?” and say things like, “The problem will be there tomorrow.”

I did not drink, I came to meetings, I sought God during moments I once did not.

I’m not fatalistic, I just believe that life is about being open to whatever comes next. I also know that when I haven’t learned what I need to, well, the Universe has the tendency to keep throwing me that same pitch until I learn what to do with it.

the emotional literacy section of the manhood handbook was ripped out somewhere around second grade and replaced with “just walk it off.”

the challenge for Anders is to reinsert himself in the quotidian flow of life

I am willing to not know, look stupid, make an ass of myself, get it wrong, be awkward, be uncomfortable.

I am willing to do all that so I CAN BE FREE.

I was a shy and anxious kid, consumed by big feelings and perfectionism, neither of which I understood.

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