We Do Recover

[MajestyJo]

DAILT OM

Power, Beauty, And Warmth
Keeping The Sun Inside

Anyone who has endured a long, dark winter can attest to the power the sun has to both invigorate and relax body, mind, and soul. It can be daunting to begin the months of fall and winter, knowing that we may not see as much of the beautiful sun for quite some time. But it is important to remember that even during the darker days of fall and winter, the sun is still there shining, as beautiful as ever. Just because it is hidden behind clouds or setting early in our part of the world, does not mean that we cannot access its power, beauty, and warmth.

One way to do this is to find a warm spot in our house where we can sit or lie down in peace. Closing our eyes, we allow our breath to come and go easily, progressively lengthening each inhale and exhale until we feel very relaxed, peaceful, and warm. We imagine that it is a very warm summer day and that the sun is shining on us, allowing it to warm our body. In particular, we may feel as if a small sun has taken up residence in the area of our solar plexus or our heart. We do not need to think about which one too much and can simply trust our body to let us know where it is. Spend some time just experiencing this sensation, allowing the heat to radiate from inside your body.

If you live in a part of the world that loses a lot of light in the winter, you might want to do this exercise each night before retiring. You could also do it at the beginning of each day, giving yourself a chance to plug into that great source of energy. Keeping the sun inside of you when you are missing it on the outside is a way to say hello to the sun and let it warm your soul.

What do you think?

I call this centering. I do it before I go to bed at night. A form of meditaiton, letting go of all the stress, aches, pain, negativity, and balancing my chakras. Ask for what I need in healing and to be open to the good of what was sent to me in prayer. Asking for what is good for me, and to take away what is not. Asking for protection from anything that is harmful to my health and well being.

For me the Sun is healing. Light is all powerful. When I meditate and ask for the White Light to surround me and permeate my Soul and cleaning of all darkness.

May the White Light of Love and the Spirit of the Universe be with you and grant you the healing that has been given to me.

posted on another site in 2007

[MajestyJo]

On gray days, I turn all the lights on in my apartment. My friend use to call me a sunshine girl. I had to smile, because a Toronto paper featured a Sunshine Girl in their Saturday addition. I wasn't sure if his idea and mine came from the same place.

For me, the sun is healing and I need to get out in it. If I don't I have to get out the Vitamins "C" and "D." I also take Vitamin B compound.

[MajestyJo]

Reflections for Beginners
from
'Hour To Hour - The First 30 Days'
- by Shelly Marshall
the author of 'Day By Day' & other Meditation Books


We can never get enough of what we really do not want. We don't really want drugs, we want what we hope they'll bring us, wholeness, satisfaction, escape from pain.

God, as I understand You, let me see what I really want

We used for many reasons. I know that when something stopped working for me, I went looking for something else and it always seemed to take more, to briing me to a plac where I was comfortable, only to not be able to stop there and having to have more. Always search, always needy, and as I often say, "When I get needy, I get greedy." I want more of what I am having, I want what you are having and what I can talk you out of, and more of anything else that comes my way.

[MajestyJo]

A.A. Thought for the Day

Having gotten over drinking, we have only just begun to enjoy the benefits of A.A. We find new friends, so that we are no longer lonely. We find new relationships with our families, so that we are happy at home. We find release from our troubles and worries through a new way of looking at things. We find an outlet for our energies in helping other people. Am I enjoying these benefits of A.A.?

Meditation for the Day

The kingdom of heaven is within you. God sees, as no one can see, what is within you. He sees you growing more and more like Himself. That is your reason for existence, to grow more and more like God, to develop more and more the spirit of God within you. You can often see in others those qualities and aspirations that you yourself possess. So also can God recognize His own spirit in you. Your motives and aspirations can only be understood by those who have attained the same spiritual level as you have.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may not expect complete understanding from others. I pray that I may only expect this from God, as I try to grow more like Him.

© 1975 by Hazelden Foundation.

I was told, if you aren't enjoying recovery, what are you doing wrong?

When I put some one or thing between me and my God, I make them the 'god' of the day. My sponsor told me to examine my motive and intent and it will keep me honest.

[MajestyJo]

Had a friend ask me about grieving this week. My friend is planning to move and I didn't realize how much grieving is attached to such a big change in your life. She is moving to a positive situation and yet to be able to accept and enjoy the new, you need to grieve the old.

This was posted to help another friend. I was never sexually abused until I was an adult.

Grief is anything that is a loss in your life. Every time I go through change in my routine, in my circumstances, in my day to day living, I need to go through the grieving process. Grief is not a straight forward process, you can jump from one feeling to another and back again and it takes time.

Realized that I have been going through a grieving process with regards to my son. It is so easy to see it in others but when you are in it, it isn't always easy to recognize. I think I have finally come to the acceptance part and there will be no more of the other up and down emotions.

Always thought grief had five stages, this site lists seven.

http://www.recover-from-grief.com/7-...-of-grief.html

These could be repeats, found them on another site.

Always good to remember that grief isn't just about a loss of a friend and a death of a loved one. We have a lot to grieve in early recovery.

Be kind to yourself. Find things that soothe your soul.

[MajestyJo]

Your expectations

Your expectations can make things more difficult than they would otherwise be. Or they can make things go better than they would otherwise go.

Much depends on what you expect. Positive expectations often pave the way for positive experiences.

Other people pick up on your expectations and, more often than not, will act in accordance with them. So it pays to expect the best of others.

The person most influenced by your expectations is you. When you genuinely expect the best of yourself, something inside you will do everything possible to deliver.

The great thing is, your expectations are yours to decide.

No complex skills or scarce resources are needed in order for you to expect the best of yourself, of others, of this day and this moment.

Your expectations set the range within which your reality operates. Expect the best, and you greatly increase your chances of getting it.

Ralph Marston

Like this, it is generally my expectations that take me from sobriety to being just sober. My sponsor told me sobriety meant soundness of mind.

Living with my dysfunctional family growing up, didn't make for much soundness of mind. With all the fear, insecurities, and discontent, I didn't expect much good, in fact as my life progressed, and I was married, I expected the worse. There didn't seem to be any good. If it was there, I didn't see it or chose not to see it, incase it ruined my pity party.

I had no thought of lowering my expectations, didn't know there was such an animal. I wasn't taught a lot of living skills, didn't have much interaction with the world at large and found it to be a big scary place when I emerged out of my box, only to move into another one. A guy who heard me speak said, "Jo you are the only person I know that would refer to a 200 acre farm as a box." I later saw the box, in the institution of marriage (twice), but the truth of the matter was, I was a prisoner of my own mind. I didn't need bars or walls to keep me in, my mind told me that I dare not venture out, I would only get hurt or hurt more. I wasn't willing to take that risk.

Risk and stretching our boundaries are part of our recovery. The readings have been sharing on allowing ourselves to become vulnerable. The scariest thing I had to do in recovery.

Thanks for letting me share.

This was something I shared on another site in January of 2013.

When I have expectations, I don't have much acceptance. Some people are just not capable of meeting our expectations and we set ourselves up for hurt and disappointment.

I have always put a lot of expectations on myself. I have had to learn to lower them and not be so hard on myself.

[MajestyJo]

Begetting Change

Same Choices, Same Results

Repeated bouts of adversity are an unavoidable aspect of human existence. We battle against our inner struggles or outer world forces, and in many cases, we emerge on the opposite side of struggle stronger and better equipped to cope with the challenges yet to come. However, we can occasionally encounter trials that seem utterly hopeless. We strike at them with all of our creativity and perseverance, hoping desperately to bring about change, only to meet with the same results as always. Our first instinct in such situations is often to push harder against the seemingly immovable obstruction before us, assuming that this time we will be met with a different outcome. But staying power and stamina net us little when the same choices consistently garner the same results. A change in perspective, behavior, or response can do so much more to help us move past points where no amount of effort seems sufficient to overcome the difficulties before us.

Whether our intention is to change ourselves or some element of the world around us, we cannot simply wish for transformation or hope that our lives will be altered through circumstance. If our patterns of thought and behavior remain unchanged, our lives will continue to unfold much as they have previously. Patterns in which fruitless efforts prevail can be overcome with self examination and courage. It is our bravery that allows us to question the choices we have made thus far and to channel our effort into innovation. Asking questions and making small adjustments to your thought processes and behaviors will help you discover what works, so you can leave that which does not work behind you. To break free from those unconscious patterns that have long held sway over your actions and reactions, you will likely have to challenge your assumptions on a most basic level. You must accept once and for all that your beliefs with regard to cause and effect may no longer be in accorda! nce with your needs.

Stagnation is often a sign that great changes are on the horizon. Courting the change you wish to see in yourself and in the world around you is a matter of acknowledging that only change begets change. The results you so ardently want to realize are well within the realm of possibility, and you need only step away from the well-worn circular path to explore the untried paths that lie beyond it.

What do you think?

Some people say, if nothing changes, nothing changes. Many do not like change in any way, shape, or form.

For me, I embraced change. Going back to where I came from was not an option. I didn't want to stay where I was at and continue in old patterns and behaviours. To do this, mean I left myself open for relapse.

Whether it is a lapse in judgment, a lapse back into an old way of handling and doing things, they are all detrimental to my sobriety (soundness of mind), I didn't want to be that old me, and even in today, I am still a work in progress. It is a one day at a time program.

[MajestyJo]

WE CAN HANDLE ALL THAT COMES TO US

We are never divorced from our past - we are in company with it forever, and it acquaints us with the present. Our responses today reflect our experiences yesterday. And these roots lie in the past. We look at the past, check that which appears to be negative and mentally correct it by handling it in our mind as we would now. Then release it and begin again fresh and new. Everyday is offering us preparation for the future, for lessons to come, without which we'd not offer our full measures to the design which contains the development of all of us. Our experiences, past and present are not coincidental. We will be introduced to those experiences that are consistent with our talents and the right lessons designated for the part we are requested to play in life. We can remember that no experiences will attract us that are beyond our capabilities to handle.

PEARL S. BUCK wrote, "One faces the future with one's past."

Are you able to recognize situations in your past and mentally correct them now?

- Antestian Newsletter

Recognizing old pattern and behaviors which no longer serve me in today were hared to identify. They were comfortable. I didn't like change. I liked the familiar. I didn't want to take risks. I didn't want to allow myself to become vulnerable.

I often wondered why I went through the experiences that I did. I came to believe and realize that I had to go through them to become the person I am today. I am able to share with others and hopefully find some compassion and understanding about where they are coming from. I had to learn this for myself. I can't give away what I don't have.

"If my God brings me to it, He will see me through it." Even if I go there in my own willfulness, He will bring me back to where I need to be if and when I ask for His help. Often He has made me revisit situations until I got the message and was willing to make them right.

PEARL S. BUCK wrote, "One faces the future with one's past."


Hopefully, we have learned from our past and are better equipped to handle things in our present, so we don't make the same mistakes that we made in our past. I found myself often in the same situations, but I was able to identify them, and thanks to the program, take the steps to get out, change direction, or not go there if I found myself heading on the wrong path.

It is whatever works for us. We hear many things in the rooms of recovery, some work for others but not for me and things that I do, doesn't work for someone else. It is about finding our program.

It is a 'we' program, and by listening and sharing (we can hear out own thoughts when we speak them and can see where we are at in today), we learn and hopefully grow, one day at a time.

If you keep coming back, this angel will change every day as long as the site is operating.

[MajestyJo]

The Twelve Rewards Of Sobriety undefined
These are twelve attributes of personal character that continued practice of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and our continued Spiritual Fitness will bring to us, the "Recovered" Alcoholic.

1. Faith instead of despair.
2. Courage instead of fear.
3. Hope instead of desperation.
4. Peace of mind instead of confusion.
5. Real friendships instead of loneliness.
6. Self-respect instead of self-contempt.
7. Self-confidence instead of helplessness.
8. A clean conscience instead of a sense of guilt.
9. The respect of others instead of their pity and contempt.
10. A clean pattern of living instead of a hopeless existence.
11. The love and understanding of our families instead of their doubts and fears.
12. The freedom of a happy life instead of the bondage of an alcoholic obsession.

Originally by Ann C. (sober April 1, 1948) of Niles, Ohio and presented at
the 1985 International Convention in Montreal, Canada

This is a post that BW made on another site. Not sure if she posted it here or not, but I found it today and it spoke to me, so I thought I would share it with you.

[MajestyJo]

It says in the Big Book of AA, we do recover. I will always be an addict! It is up to me to work my program to the best of my ability each day, and I will not have to live in that hopeless state of mind and body.

It says that it could restore us to sanity, and as a friend of mine says, `It doesn`t say it would.`

That insanity can creep back into our lives given the first opportunity. It is up to me to recognize it and do what it takes to stop my dis-ease, and pick upp the tools of recovery, and take me out of that place.

I no longer want to act out in my disease. I have to change the old behaviours, habits, and old ways of thinking, to have a better tomorrow. Tomorrows never come, but I can hope for one and there is a good chance I will make it, if I live my program, one day at a time.

I can`t allow my fear and my past stand in my way of today.

[MajestyJo]

"Blaming others for the pain we feel each time someone fails to live up to our expectations is no different than burning our tongue on coffee that's too hot to swallow, and then calling our cup an idiot".

- - Guy Finley

The only way I can handle expectations is to lower them so that they are attainable or not set myself up and don't place them at all.

I expect myself to do well. Doing less than, has always been a problem with me. In today, I allow for the fact that I am human although in the past that seemed like an excuse.

I have heard people say, "Well I am only human;" or "I am an addict;" or "I am an alcoholic; or "I am married to an ..., what do you expect." and excuse themselves from change and trying to better themselves.

I think they can be a trust issue. I expect my Higher Power to be there for me and yet, if I am not where He wants me to be and I forgot to take Him with me, then there is a good chance that He is looking the other way.

A post I made in 2009

A good one, for me in today. As it says in the Big Book, I need to raise the level of my acceptance and lower my expectations.

Not only of myself but of others too. Some people are just not capable of meeting our expectations that WE project onto them. Most times, it isn't there job anyway.

[MajestyJo]

"Blaming others for the pain we feel each time someone fails to live up to our expectations is no different than burning our tongue on coffee that's too hot to swallow, and then calling our cup an idiot".

- - Guy Finley

The only way I can handle expectations is to lower them so that they are attainable or not set myself up and don't place them at all.

I expect myself to do well. Doing less than, has always been a problem with me. In today, I allow for the fact that I am human although in the past that seemed like an excuse.

I have heard people say, "Well I am only human;" or "I am an addict;" or "I am an alcoholic; or "I am married to an ..., what do you expect." and excuse themselves from change and trying to better themselves.

I think they can be a trust issue. I expect my Higher Power to be there for me and yet, if I am not where He wants me to be and I forgot to take Him with me, then there is a good chance that He is looking the other way.

A post I made in 2009

A good one, for me in today. As it says in the Big Book, I need to raise the level of my acceptance and lower my expectations.

Not only of myself but of others too. Some people are just not capable of meeting our expectations that WE project onto them. Most times, it isn't there job anyway.

[MajestyJo]

"Blaming others for the pain we feel each time someone fails to live up to our expectations is no different than burning our tongue on coffee that's too hot to swallow, and then calling our cup an idiot".

- - Guy Finley

The only way I can handle expectations is to lower them so that they are attainable or not set myself up and don't place them at all.

I expect myself to do well. Doing less than, has always been a problem with me. In today, I allow for the fact that I am human although in the past that seemed like an excuse.

I have heard people say, "Well I am only human;" or "I am an addict;" or "I am an alcoholic; or "I am married to an ..., what do you expect." and excuse themselves from change and trying to better themselves.

I think they can be a trust issue. I expect my Higher Power to be there for me and yet, if I am not where He wants me to be and I forgot to take Him with me, then there is a good chance that He is looking the other way.

A post I made in 2009

A good one, for me in today. As it says in the Big Book, I need to raise the level of my acceptance and lower my expectations.

Not only of myself but of others too. Some people are just not capable of meeting our expectations that WE project onto them. Most times, it isn't there job anyway.

[MajestyJo]

Quote of the Week

"My definition of balance is being able to obsess equally in all areas of my life!"

As an alcoholic I completely understand all or nothing thinking. When I was in my disease, I used to obsessively plan out my drinking and using, always making sure I had the right amount of drugs on me, and I would even drink before meeting friends at the bar just so I could pretend to drink like them. In the end, my obsession consumed me and drove me into the rooms.

Once I started working the steps, I began obsessing on other things. For a while I was consumed with dying, sure I had done irreparable damage to myself during my years of using. Next I became obsessed with the fear of financial insecurity, this time convinced I had ruined my professional future. And then I got into a relationship and that obsession nearly drove me to drink. During my sixth step I realized that I had to surrender my obsessive thinking if I wanted to stay sober.

For me surrendering my obsessive thinking came down to a question of faith - did I or didn't I trust that my Higher Power would take care of me? As I began to obsess on that, my sponsor told me that faith wasn't a thought but rather an action. He suggested I begin letting go and letting God, and each time I did my life got a little better.

Today I know that obsessing isn't the answer, turning it over is.

Wisdom of the Rooms

Surrender is not giving up, it is giving over to our Higher Power.

[MajestyJo]

In living with the disease of alcoholism, I became a very fearful person who dreaded change. Although my life was full of chaos., it was familiar chaos, which gave me the feeling that I had some control over it. This was an illusion. I have learned in Al-Anon that I am powerless over alcoholism and many other things. I've also learned that chante is inevitable.

I no longer have to assume that change is bad because I can look back at changes that have had a very positive effect on me, such as coming to Al-Anon.

I still have many fears, but the Al-Anon program has shown me that my Higher Power willhelp me walk through them. I believe that there is a Power greater than myself, and I choose to trust this Power to know exactly what I need and when I need it.

Today's Reminder

Today I can accept the changes occurring in my life and live more comfortably with them. I will trust in the God of my understanding, and my fears will diminish. I relax in this knowledge, knowing that I am always taken care of when I listen to my inner voice.

"We may wonder how we are going to get through all the stages and phases, the levels of growth and recovery.... Knowing we are not alone often quiets our fears and helps us gain perspective."

- Living with Sobriety

We are not alone. I need to reach out and ask for help. My God will put the people in my life that I need to show me a better way of life.

That courage doesn't come from me. The knowing is given to me by my Higher Power. All things come through Him and it has been my goal for the last 25 years, to be a channel, so that I may help others.