by Sally Rosa | Feb 5, 2015 | Addiction Articles, Recovery
A Poem For Those Struggling
I found this wonderful poem floating around the internet the other day. I wanted to share it with all you amazing women recovering from a hopeless state of mind and body.
Together, we are enough. Together, I am enough.
I Am Enough
I am enough to make it
Through the night. I am enough
To make it through the day.
No matter my struggles
And I have many struggles
I know I’ll be OK.
I don’t give in, I believe and have faith.
I am enough.
You are enough to make it
Through anything. You are enough
To live through anything.
You don’t have to be perfect
And it doesn’t matter if you are smart
Just open your eyes and open your heart.
Find the strength and peace
That we have inside our chests.
Believe that it will stay there
Until your very last breath.
You are enough.
We are enough to make it
Through the highs and make it
Through the lows. We are enough
To make it through the dark sky
And the nights when tears fly.
Don’t give up I promise you
It gets better
and our dreams come true.
We are enough.
I am enough to make it
Through drugs, heartbreak and pain.
I am enough to make it
Through the cold and pouring rain.
I am enough to make it
Through anything with you my friend.
I am enough to make it
Because this is only the beginning it isn’t the end.
–Author Unknown
by A Women in Sobriety | Jul 9, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Sobriety For Women
Written By: Katie Schipper
Giving Back Is Whats It’s All About
You Get What You Give
There’s a saying in recovery that gets repeated so often it sometimes loses its power. It goes a little something like – you’ll get from your sobriety exactly what you put into it.
This initially sounds like another annoying cliché that at some point had meaning, but it’s much more than that. The truth is, recovery can be viewed as a metaphor for the rest of your life. What you put in, you’ll get back (and usually, you get back a little more than expected).
Giving Back and Learning to Try
The early stages of recovery are usually very uncertain territory. Even if you’ve tried to get sober before, or gone for periods of time without drinking or using, the time it sticks is usually a particularly desperate time. Now, this isn’t always true, but seems to happen a lot. Desperation is one of the best gifts an addict or an alcoholic can receive, but with desperation comes fear and uncertainty about what to do next.
That’s why a drug rehab for women, an IOP therapy group, counselors, and people in meetings suggest the freshly sober woman doesn’t wait to focusing on her recovery.
There’s a window within this desperation that’s opened by pain. Once that pain begins to subside, the window starts to close. At some point, if work on your recovery hasn’t begun, the initial pain and desperation will have subsided enough that reasons for staying sober magically disappear. At this point, drinking and getting high seem totally reasonable. However, if you start making changes while this window is open, there are some pretty immediate benefits.
It’s in this space that newly sober women discover the value of trying. Many of us feel like we’ve been trying desperately for months, years, and lifetimes to effect a change, yet nothing’s happened. Most opportunities come up as dead ends in active addiction. Even for those women who managed to maintain a home, or hold onto a job or relationship, there’s usually a pervasive feeling of emptiness and self-doubt. Those feelings make the idea of trying for anything sound overwhelming. On a personal and individual level, you have to be fed up with yourself to the point that change and effort seem the better option.
One of the beautiful truths of recovery is that from that place of desperation often comes a wellspring of hope. Still, the only way to get there is to try, in spite of past experiences that taught you trying’s fruitless.
This is the “giving” portion of getting back what you give. You have to try. You have to show up in spite of changing moods and circumstances. You have to put forth an effort regardless of how you feel.
Read more about becoming grateful through giving! It’s so easy!
Getting Back What You Give
The flip side of giving back and trying and working and consistently showing up is what you get in return. The reality of giving is that it has very little to do with what your actions. It has more to do with the willingness to try giving.
The idea isn’t to reach a certain step, or a certain life goal, or a certain benchmark by a certain time. The idea is to move through recovery with your eyes ever on willingness, honesty, faith, and other ideals of spiritual growth. With those concepts as your focus, the universe (God, your Higher Power, who or however you conceive of a loving consciousness) gives back to you endlessly. Of course, there are material gifts for hard work (if you get a job and save money, you can move into an apartment and buy a car, etc.), the real reward take the form of what we sought in the bottle, the pill, and the powder. The real reward is peace. Peace of mind, body, and soul.
What you find when you give yourselves to recovery is that within you there’s a treasure you can access at any time. It’s always been and will always be there. That is what makes the work, the seeking, and the effort so worthwhile.
Read about the blessing you get in sobriety from giving
by Fiona Stockard | Feb 19, 2013 | Addiction Treatment, Drug Addiction
I Will Wait…
I will wait. I will wait for you. These are the words taunting me. Why? Waiting. Hoping. Praying. Healing. Addicts like me don’t easily possess these qualities.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve waited for something. I’ve waited for someone, something, anything to make me better. If I only had this one person, this one thing, this one place, I’d be whole. I’d be complete. I just have to wait. Sometimes, rarely, I’d get what I wanted. I’d be happy for a few minutes. That’s life. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. What if the only thing you want in life, what if the only thing you were waiting for…was someone else’s life?
That’s what I wait for. I wait for the day you get sober. I wait for the day when the lies, the deception, the hurt stops. I wait for the day when I don’t have to stay up, worry, panic. I wait for the day when something more than love binds us together. I wait for the day when our passion for life binds us together.
Addiction brought us together in a different way. We bonded. We nodded. We laughed. Those days are over. Those days have been over for years. Now I wait. I wait for you. I wait for the day when you decide that being happy is more important than being high. I wait for you to live alongside me again.
I wait for the day you call and say “I’m done.” I wait for the day when ask for help. I wait for the day when you scream for help because simply asking doesn’t work. I wait for the day when you wave your white flag so high and so quick that it can’t be mistaken for anything other than a sign of defeat.
I wait and I wait. It’s hard for an addict like me. I have God to guide me through. I have a thousand other distractions. Nothing takes me away from the longest line I’ve ever been in. Waiting.
I will wait…for you.
(Shout out to Mumford and Sons)
by Fiona Stockard | Jan 28, 2013 | Addiction Treatment, Benefits of Sobriety
Take a walk across the country and you’ll find your share of the beaten, the weathered, the splintered souls left tattered, staggered and tattooed by addiction. See, addiction’s become the new apple pie, the new baseball, the new Coca-Cola. These ravaged, misguided figures haunt the alleys and streets of America. They moan in the houses where the middle-class once lived. Take a look and you’ll see them, you’ll find them, you’ll step over them.
You may have stepped over her. You may have walked right by. You may have laughed at her one night in a bar. You may have crossed to the other side of the street and avoided eye contact. You may have bought weed from her. You may have bought beer from her.
Why not? She’s pretty, right? No, she’s not pretty. Saying she’s pretty is like saying Shakespeare was a writer or Keith Moon was a drummer. She looks like heaven walking towards you with legs that go all the way up. She smiles the way you wish they all smiled. She doesn’t walk, she floats. Maybe you could find a better looking woman. Maybe you could also find a better writer, a better drummer. The only problem? They haven’t made one yet. See, the good news has always been that she’s beautiful on the outside.
But what if the Mona Lisa was made of shit? What if a sunset signaled the end of the world? If she, or he, or it, or anything looks beautiful but brings only destruction and chaos, well, that beauty isn’t anything at all. That beauty’s a mask.
You were probably fooled by the mask. She wasn’t. She knew the fire was rising. She knew the fire would consume her. She welcomed it. The needles in her arm, the nights in ICU, the crying parents, the angry friends, the beatings, the abuse, the screams. The nights sleeping in the rain. The nights that sleeping in the rain can’t and won’t wash away. The psych-wards, the rehabs, the boyfriends, the husbands, you, me, anyone. We can’t do s**t.
We can’t do s**t. So, what can we besides walk over this zombie of self-destruction? We wait. We wait for good news. Good news rarely comes. The good news isn’t breaking news, it isn’t splattered across the front page, it isn’t tweeted, it isn’t googled, it isn’t Facebooked. The good news is slow. The good news is humble. The good news is quiet. It’s real, raw, rare. The good news is here and it’s her.
She walked from a cave of needles, of alcohol, of men, of pain. She walked into a world that’s frightening and unknown. She held her head high. She pushed past temptation. She fought though all the s**t, fixing, polishing, remembering every mistake. Never blaming, always owning up and always moving on. This is the good news you’ll never hear. This is the good news that’s not published.
You just have to see it. It can’t be explained. It’s too real for that. It’s too different. It’s too new.
To explain what she looks like, what she feels like, what she is when she’s hunched over, in an alley, talking to a woman she used to be – well, to explain that wouldn’t do her justice. She was emotionally beaten, knocked to the floor, destroyed.
This time she rose with class, with dignity, with love. I could tell you what that looks like but you wouldn’t believe me. You wouldn’t believe that what used to send her to the needle, the bottle, the powder, well, that now makes her to rise even higher. The people she talks to today don’t buy drugs or booze or sex. The people she talks to today give her hope, spirit, and strength. What does she give them? Everything. She gives them everything.
She helps more women stay sober each day than most rehabs do in a year. How? She tells the truth. She talks without shame, without guilt, without hesitation. She talks with love, with the knowledge that she’s been there and gotten better.
What does this woman, this insane woman, this confused woman, this disaster of a woman, this heart-aching woman, this pained woman, this anguished woman, this light woman, this redeemed woman, this loving woman, this miracle woman, what does she look like? Well, I can’t tell you. You’ll have to see for yourself.
I can tell you this, she’s beautiful. She’s beautiful through her scars, through her track-marks, through her pain, through her struggle, through her everything. How? How can she be this beautiful? Because finally, for the first time, she’s beautiful on the inside.
