I walked through a pine wood and up a birch hill and down the bluff to where the creek bed chatters, wild plum nodding. Then I cross black fields. It is spring, but cold spring, the part in which the possibility of birth is impossibly tied up with the bitterness and sting of death. The …
Honesty, when I got to it, hurt. As an active alcoholic, I lost most of my capacity to respond to others, and to know my own heart. In doing ruthless and thorough self-inventories, I laid it out. I saw where I have been cruel, selfish, where envy and conceit cloud my vision, how laziness and …
Acceptance, they say, is where you begin. I may be more stubborn than most, but I find myself moving in and out of acceptance. I find much in the world baldly wrong – poverty, graft, ridiculous wealth, violence – and it’s difficult for me to know how ‘acceptance’ isn’t just a weak way of saying …
The changes that come with recovery are both personal, as in emotional or psychological, and physical. We know now that we are both physical and psychological beings; the two ‘separate’ parts of ourselves may influence one another, overlap, converse. Know that and you can use it: if you are physically uncomfortable, use your thoughts and …
