Clearview Counseling

07/30/2025

07/25/2025

07/20/2025

Stoic thought of the day:

“However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act upon them?”- Dhammapada

“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”- Seneca

“No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.”- Seneca

“To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.”- Seneca

I used to believe healing would feel like light breaking through darkness. That it would be clean. Beautiful. Instant. But healing has been a slow crawl through ash and mud, clawing my way through shame, regret, and memory.

No one warned me of the brutality that freedom requires.

I begged for a miracle. What I got was a mirror. And in it, I saw the wreckage of who I had become- and also the glimpse of who I still could be. That glimpse kept me alive. That glimpse, that spark of hope held the line when I couldn’t.

The battle didn’t end when I got sober—it began. Sobriety didn’t fix the pain. It forced me to finally face it. To feel what I had spent years numbing. To grieve. To rage. To forgive. Myself. Others. Life itself.

Growth is not polite. It does not ask for permission. It demands a price. And that price is everything false within you.

I’ve learned this: discipline is a form of love. The highest kind. The kind that says, “You deserve more. So I will fight for you, even when you won’t.”

Pain has not been my enemy. It has been my teacher. And if you listen—truly listen—it doesn’t say “give up.” It says: “Get up.”

“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it.” – Epicurus

Today I rise.
Not because I am strong.
But because I refuse to stay down.

Hold the line.

07/19/2025

Only few days left to vote.

07/09/2025

Stoic thought of the day:

“He picked up the blade. It was heavier than he remembered. Or maybe he was just weaker.”- Author unknown

“Better to fight and fall than to live without hope.” - Volsunga

“I rise from the ashes, bold and unafraid. The fire did not kill me—it baptized me.”
— Unknown

“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.” - Elizabeth Edwards

With excutiating clarity I remember sitting in the wreckage of my own doing, certain that nothing of value remained. Reputation gone. Trust eroded. Relationships fully wounded. I remember asking, “What is left?”

But the better question, the truer question, was: What remains?

In the debris I found not nothing but the beginnings of something unbreakable. A steadfast partner. Daughters’ undying resilience and faith. A friend who stood still when everyone else walked. And somewhere beneath the pain, the trembling voice of conscience I thought I had sacrificed—whispering, “Begin again.”

It’s easy to mourn what’s lost. But mourning can blind us to what remains and what remains is often more honest, more resilient, more worthy. Life, in its brutal mercy, strips away what is false. What addiction claimed, what ego inflated, what fear distorted—these things needed to burn. And in their place, something sturdier is being built.

What stands after the fire is who you really are.
What remains is enough.
And what begins from that place is sacred.

Hold the line.

06/28/2025

Stoic thought of the day:

“Despise not death, but welcome it, since nature wills it like all else.”- Marcus Aurelius

“Death is the ultimate test of the authenticity of a life.”- Simone de Beauvoir

“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life — and only then will I be free to become myself.”- Martin Heidegger

I lived much of my life as if I had time to waste — as if the days were infinite, as if second chances were owed to me. But time is no debtor. It owes nothing. It only passes. And one day, I will breathe for the last time, and everything I could have done will freeze into what I actually did.

Death is not the enemy. Forgetting that death is coming — that is the enemy. Let it sharpen you. Let it strip away the trivial. Let it push you toward what matters most.

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” – Psalm 90:12

06/26/2025

Stoic Thought of the Day:

“He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior.” – Confucius

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” – Marcus Aurelius

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” – Seneca

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” – Epictetus

There are days I wake up feeling like a shadow of the person I strive to become. Doubt creeps in quietly, whispering that I’m falling short, that the weight is too much, that I’ve missed my moment. But the truth is: strength is not found in ease. Strength is forged in the fire of daily resistance — against complacency, against fear, against excuses.

Discipline is love in action. It is how we honor our potential. The goal is not perfection, but integrity — doing the hard thing when it’s the right thing. Not just once, but again. And again. And again.

You don’t become who you were meant to be by thinking about it. You become it by showing up. Today. Tired. Uncertain. But unwavering.

“Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” – Galatians 6:9

Stand firm. Stay in the fight. You’re not alone on this path.

Hold the Line