It is not true that everyone is special. It is true that everyone was once special and still possesses the ability to recover it.

To be free to roam our own consciousness and be responsible for ourselves, a letting go process is required. We have to let go of how others define us; what damaging messages remain from childhood;...

Wounded parents often unintentionally inflict pain and suffering on their children and these childhood wounds causes a laundry list of maladaptive behaviors commonly called codependency. These habits restrict people to love-limiting relationships causing much unhappiness...

She went weak in the knees and could barely walk as she followed him, trembling with fear. Her hopes for a happy future with Jordan came crashing down. Whoever had told Jordan she was free...

Move on.” But it’s usually simply not that easy.

In the past, I was a perpetual victim; how I was doing in any given moment depended on what happened to me. Today I do my best to avoid this kind of ‘victim thinking.’ Instead,...

Who am I? What am I doing here? Who are these others? This trilogy of spiritual conundrums is as practical as it is philosophical. Mindful inquiry devoted to these three questions is as spiritual as...

For anyone who wonders what it’s like to have a tragedy shatter your existence, this is what I would tell them: it’s like going through the motions of everyday life in a zombified state. It’s...

I swear, with Chloe Bear once again as my witness…That my problems and failures will not stop me, nor will they dictate who I am.That I will continue to be my own person.That life is...

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.