The caption to this cartoon is "Dancing on thin ice"....lol
I was blessed to be in a meeting today where there was the gamut of life in recovery. A picture of humility. A surly long timer. Several scared shitless newcomers. 2 supposedly sobers that smelled like booze. A biker. A soccer mom. A chronic relapser. An art professor. A used car salesman. An arrogant and unconvinced factory worker, sent here by EAP. An angry person. And me, who laughed too much and said too much and made a couple of people mad and a couple of people happy. All in all, a good use of my time. I always said, I'd rather give a resentment than get a resentment, any day! lol
I was especially blessed to be in a room with all of the examples of drunkeness and recovery, each teaching me some important and valuable stuff. I want to live a life where everyone I meet teaches me something. What TO do, what NOT to do...something. And I feel rooted in my own recovery. I feel an unending gratitude for the old timers in my first homegroup (that place where I learned that you have to crawl before you walk, that time takes time, that I will never be perfect, so I may as well get over THAT. Where I learned that there is nothing so bad in my sober life, that a drink will make better. Where I learned that relapse is NOT a necessary part of recovery).
I looked around that room at all those blessed folks who may never get what I have. The odds for us are not particularly good... I look at my own family...generations of people who drank until they died, because they never got the gift of sobriety. I think of my own child, my precious baby boy...of his struggles and his triumphs and the miracle that he is today at 9 years sober. I think of The Universe, conspiring to give us the lives we want, if we can only get open and willing to get out of the way.
And I think of kittens, and daffodils and the blooming quince trees at the end of my driveway. And the bright yellow forsythias, whose branches are dotted with the brilliant red of cardinals, swaying, swaying in the breeze.
And all is right with the world, for now. For me.
Namaste.
