# Recovery

My body knows — has always known — what I want. The feeling of ease and sinking into, yes. This. This feels right.

In sobriety, I am recalling what my body wants.

What I have to tease out in sobriety is what is a nervous feeling for good reason, and what is a nervous feeling from trauma.

The body knows, my favorite Boundaries Coach Molly Davis... See more

Drinking did for me what I couldn’t do for myself: it hid my insides from the outside world. It concealed the parts of me that I deemed unacceptable and unlovable.

my ideal self doesn’t exist.

the fundamental work of the Steps, understanding ourselves and accepting ourselves in an honest and authentic way.

the opposite of faith isn’t doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.

Because I can't change a tire. I can't do my taxes. I can't light a grill. I usually can't hang a picture without creating holes the size of silver dollars in the drywall. (But the few times I have done it successfully, man, oh, man, did I feel like I could save us all.) I can't camp. Or ski. Or climb up ladders higher than six feet. I speak no... See more

Perfectionism is a mindset that demands we perform as superbly as possible to be sufficient as a person. We conflate our goodness as a person with our performance in areas we care about—academics, our job, our social behavior, fitness, appearance, parenting, home organization, the list goes on.

I believe the Steps are more like a spiritual initiation that works toward destroying our old, deluded, self-centered selves so that God and our Sober Elders can put the pieces of our lives back together in the form of a wholly new self.

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.