I won’t be mad at you because you gave me something no one else has: the ability to live even when I thought I was dead.

Being broken isn’t the worst thing. We can be mended and put together again. We don’t have to be ashamed of our past. We can embrace the history that gives us value, and see our...

Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn’t matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.

A lot of things are inherent in life -change, birth, death, aging, illness, accidents, calamities, and losses of all kinds- but these events don’t have to be the cause of ongoing suffering. Yes, these events...

The truth is, we tend to train people how we want to be treated. If others know you have wishy-washy boundaries then they are free to walk all over you; the results…you become a doormat....

I made a mistake.

Love is a lot like bowling, I thought as I drove by a boarded up and abandoned bowling alley. Like the economy, I’ve made a full recovery since we broke up.

Getting sober is a radically creative act.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.

One of the most challenging aspects for those who are seeking to find the God of their understanding for the first time is His formlessness. It can be difficult to believe in, and connect with,...

Dimitri moved closer to me, his eyes sparkling with a secret. “It gets better:you’re Lissa’s guardian.””What?” I almost pulled away. “That’s impossible. They’d never…””They did. She’ll have others, so they probably figured it was okay...

stars are the scars of the universe

You cannot make yourself have a flashback, nor will you have one unless you are emotionally ready to remember something. Once remembered, the memory can help you to face more of the truth. You can...

Everything is, the way it is, for a reason. Or it isn’t. Or neither. Or both. It’s so hard to tell. It’s so hard to tell you’re a mile away by the Luke in your...

…patriarchy, hierarchy, and capitalism create, encourage, maintain, and perpetuate addiction and dependency. Patriarchy and hierarchy are based on domination and subordination, which result in fear. This fear is expressed by the dominators through control and...

Like an empty bucket, my soul rings hollow when empty vibrates with emptiness … hollow sound of loneliness. Every cell in my body does not want to be alone.My loneliness is frightening …an all consuming...

No,” is a necessary ingredient in a healthy lifestyle.

That night, when the creature sleeps, when he sleeps, the mother escapes into her daughters’ room. She tells her daughter that the creature’s afraid of her having too much love, too much heart. She takes...

This will sound strange, and yet I’m sure it was the point: it was a bit like being high. That, for me, anyway, had always been the attraction of drugs, to stop the brutal round...

Underlying the attack on psychotherapy, I believe, is a recognition of the potential power of any relationship of witnessing. The consulting room is a privileged space dedicated to memory. Within that space, survivors gain the...

So at family gatherings… I try to stick to the acceptable script. Indeed, I discover that the less I say, the happier everyone seems to be with me. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t have...

If you desire healing,let yourself fall illlet yourself fall ill.

Slowly, inch by inch, I felt myself recovering. After a few weeks, the darkness began to recede; my appetite for life returned. Haven was wonderful; she understood and nursed me through these weeks until I...

When you have spent long years in the dark, there is joy in seeing the light and pleasure, above all, in the ordinary.

I believe in recovery, and as a role model I have the responsibility to let young people know that you can make a mistake and come back from it.

Overcoming abuse doesn’t just happen, It takes positive steps everyday. Let today be the day you start to move forward.

Issues are like tissues. You pull one out and another appears!

God’s will” these events happen? On the other hand, do tragic events happen because of laws of nature or the law of averages?

This imbalance causes resentments within the over-responsible and dependency with the irresponsible person and this dynamic becomes the destructive life-pattern not conducive to happy families.

Some things you jes’ know Doll, and that’s one I’d bet the farm on.

Waiting to be ‘better’ is the wrong approach. It’s learning to live with it.

When we feel like giving up, like we are beyond help, we must remember that we are never beyond hope. Holding on to hope has always motivated me to keep trying. I have found this...

Vulnerability scares most of us because we’ve been taught that FEELING our feelings is a sign of “over-sensitivity and weakness”. We’ve taught ourselves to “numb” our feelings because they are too painful.We arrive at vulnerability...

Never congratulate a doctor for the fast recovery of a patient.

Maybe you’ve gotten through something and when you did you thought, I am leaving that behind and will never return. And that’s a great way of thinking…for selfish jerks.If we actually care about people other...

The dancing vortex of a sacred metaphor clashes horns and halos to make wounded music set to the tempo of a new era in brilliant labor.

I’m broken, but I have to learn how to live. I feel stuck together with scotch tape, like after any breath everything could come apart. If it does, if it all comes undone, I think...

The shame, embarrassment, feeling of low self-worth, and scores of “labels” we give ourselves are not fitting. I am beginning to see how I had no control over the situation. He was a big man,...

Some flowers need flames to find their way into this world.

Others hide from being real by filling the air with words; the more words they throw out, the less actual communication happens and they are left with only an illusion of connection. This is the...

This woman’s size protected herfrom the hurts of the worldbut it also imprisoned her soul. As the merry-go-round revolved, she ate another French fry,as a silent scream frozen on her face.

We judge ourselves by our intentions; the world judges us by our actions

The healing process is best described as a spiral. Survivors go through the stages once, sometimes many times; sometimes in one order, sometimes in another. Each time they hit a stage again, they move up...

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.

We don’t necessarily need to know each other’s name, age, profession, drug of choice, childhood trauma or recent tragedy to understand what pain feels like and offer comfort. We are strangers drawn together by a...

If you’re Strigoi,” the boy interrupted loudly, “then why don’t you have horns? My friend Jeffrey said Strigoi have horns.”Dimitri’s eyes fell not on the boy but on me for a moment. Again, that spark...

Every morning, whether I’ve slept or not, whether I’ve made it through the day without crying or given in and sobbed in the shower, where no one can hear me― the sun comes up, and...

In addition to reaching out for help, you will also need to reach within yourself. Your biggest ally will be your emotions. Through them, you will learn more about what really happened to you, how...

You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the...

I wanted to say all these things about how you just have to hold on to the things you love and let go of all the rest.