# Recovery

It is so easy to look for answers outside of ourselves when the real work at hand is an inside job. God lives in and all around us, we are never not connected to spirit, even in our darkest moments.

what I value most in a relationship are, in ever-shifting order, humor, empathy, intelligence, understanding and surprise.

Once I started making a little more money and had no access to a till, I went further into debt, never denying myself a thing. I spent my money on clothes, CDs and musical instruments I couldn’t play very well. I was entitled to it all

Seeing self-criticism and self-doubt as things that play out naturally rather than fires to be immediately doused help me take them less seriously and less literally.

I think shame is completely and totally counterproductive when applied to alcoholics and addicts: It simply recreates one of the conditions that was a foundation for all of the drinking and using.

It takes time and patience and steady pressure to extract the weed, the negative traits, the damaging and self-destructive ways of thinking. That process, by itself, is a profound act of self-acceptance. The next profound act of self-acceptance is understanding that the job will never be completely done, some traits, some thinking patterns that ref... See more

True acceptance is very, very, very had; but true acceptance has been the key to my recovery, to my tranquility and happiness. I needed to accept that things, at this particular moment, are exactly as they should be—including me. I had to let go of the idea that it was up to me to traverse the chasm between what I was and what I should have been. M... See more

I needed to quiet the constant voice in my head wondering why we still didn’t measure up, why we hadn’t accomplished more, why more people didn’t like us, why were we always so alone?

my character defects — or defaults, as my sponsor likes to call them