Pursuit of Recovery

02/26/2026

In active addiction, many of us became experts at fault-finding. We blamed circumstances, other people, our past, our pain — sometimes even ourselves in ways that kept us stuck in shame. Complaining can feel temporarily relieving, but it rarely moves us forward.

Recovery invites us into a higher level of responsibility and empowerment.

Instead of asking:
• Who’s to blame?
we begin asking:
• What can I do differently today?
• What is the next right step?
• Where is the solution?

This is where honesty, willingness, and open-mindedness come alive.
• Honesty helps us see the situation clearly.
• Willingness opens us to trying a new approach.
• Open-mindedness allows solutions we couldn’t see before.

In ACTIVE RECOVERY we learn that while we may not be responsible for everything that has happened to us, we are responsible for our recovery. Growth begins the moment we shift from complaint to constructive action.

Complaining keeps us in the problem.
Recovery keeps us in the solution.

Today in recovery, we don’t have to be perfect — we just have to be willing to look for the remedy.

02/24/2026

Mom’s Monday📝 Notes

On September 23, 2004 my mother wrote:
“By abandoning God’s purpose for our life, we also abandoned His help.”

In active addiction, many of us unknowingly step outside the life we were created to live. We drift from our values, our integrity, our calling — and in that drift, we often feel profoundly alone. Not because God moved, but because our choices placed distance between us and the help that was always available.

Recovery is, in many ways, the journey back.

When we begin to align again — with honesty, with humility, with willingness — something powerful happens. Support shows up. Clarity returns. Strength we didn’t think we had begins to rise. In recovery language, we might say we are “turning our will and our lives over.” In faith language, we are stepping back into God’s purpose for us.

Your mom’s insight reminds us:
• When we live outside our purpose, life feels harder and heavier.
• When we realign with truth and willingness, help begins to flow again.
• God’s help was never withdrawn — but our openness to receive it may have been.

For many in recovery, this looks like:

✨ showing up to meetings when we don’t feel like it
✨ telling the truth when hiding would be easier
✨ making the next right decision instead of the familiar wrong one
✨ asking for help instead of insisting we’re fine

Each of these small acts is a step back toward purpose… and back toward help.

02/23/2026

We always have choices
Decision Making

Self-pity is often rooted in the strong feeling that people or conditions have victimized us. “I never had a chance” and “You deceived me!” are common complaints that reveal self-pity.

It is astonishing and humbling to learn that we always have choices, even when other people or bad conditions are grinding us down. One of the great discoveries of the Twelve Step movement is that alcoholics could begin to recover no matter how helpless they had become, no matter how far they had slid into defeat and despair. Once a decision was made to seek sobriety as a primary goal, other choices and decisions became possible.

We choose our attitudes and responses. We have neither the power nor the right to control others, but we can choose to soften our attitudes toward them, and we can forgive and release people we don’t like.

We can always choose how we want to think and feel. It may take effort to break the habit of feeling victimized and sorry for ourselves, but our higher power will show us the way if we decide that is what we really want.

-Walk in Dry Places

02/18/2026

In recovery, we learn the difference between love and control.

Love gives space.
Love encourages growth.
Love respects boundaries.

Control brings fear, pressure, and guilt.

Sometimes the hardest truth to accept is that what we thought was love… was actually someone trying to manage us, shape us, or keep us small.

Healing means learning to choose relationships that feel safe, supportive, and freeing.

You are allowed to grow.
You are allowed to change.
You are allowed to say no.

That’s not selfish. That’s recovery. 💕💕

02/17/2026

Recovery teaches us that humility
— not ego —
is the key 🔑 that unlocks peace and serenity.😇

Thank you for Reading🤓

In recovery, we often hear that our greatest obstacle isn’t always the substance, the behavior, or even our circumstances — it’s our ego. Ego shows up quietly, convincingly, and often disguised as self-protection. It tells us we know better. It tells us we don’t need help. It whispers that w...

02/16/2026

Mom’s Monday 📝Notes

On 12/22/02 my mother wrote:
“In our enthusiasm, It is easy to make promises, but God knows the extent of our commitment”.

In recovery, enthusiasm often comes first. We feel the spark of hope, the relief of surrender, the desire to make things right. In those moments, it’s easy to promise:
“I’ll never drink again.”
“I’ll call every day.”
“I’ll make amends to everyone.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes.”

And many of those promises come from a sincere place.

But recovery teaches us that commitment is not proven in what we say when we feel inspired — it’s revealed in what we do when things are hard, boring, slow, or uncomfortable.

Mom’s words remind us that God sees beyond our excitement. He sees our follow-through. He sees our willingness. He sees the quiet, daily choices no one else notices:
• Getting up and going to a meeting when we don’t feel like it
• Telling the truth when it would be easier to hide
• Making the next right decision instead of the dramatic one
• Showing up consistently rather than making big declarations

In early recovery especially, there can be a rush of motivation. We want to fix everything at once. We promise our families change, we promise ourselves perfection, we promise God we’ll never fall again. But recovery isn’t built on grand promises — it’s built on daily practice.

This quote gently reminds us:
Commitment is not measured by emotion. It’s measured by endurance.

God understands our human nature. He knows our hearts want to do well, even when we fall short. What matters most is not the intensity of our enthusiasm, but the sincerity of our willingness to keep trying.

In recovery, this can look like:
• Turning promises into small, consistent actions
• Letting our behavior speak louder than our words
• Trusting that change happens one day at a time
• Staying humble enough to admit when we overpromised

It also ties beautifully into Step One, Step Three, and Step Nine. We stop trying to prove our commitment with words and start living it through surrender, honesty, and repair.

02/14/2026

Valentine’s Day💕💕

For children, Valentine’s Day means candy hearts, silly cards, and excitement in the air.

How different Valentine’s Day can be for us as adults. The Love Day can be a symbol that we have not yet gotten love to work for us as we would like.

Or it can be a symbol of something different, something better. We are in recovery now. We have begun the healing process. Our most painful relationships, we have learned, have assisted us on the journey to healing, even if they did little more than point out our own issues or show us what we don’t want in our life.

We have started the journey of learning to love ourselves. We have started the process of opening our heart to love, real love that flows from us, to others, and back again. Do something loving for yourself. Do something loving and fun for your friends, for your children, or for anyone you choose.

It is the Love Day. Wherever we are in our healing process, we can have as much fun with it as we choose. Whatever our circumstances, we can be grateful that our heart is opening to love.

I will open myself to the love available to me from people, the Universe, and my Higher Power today. I will allow myself to give and receive the love I want today. I am grateful that my heart is healing, that I am learning to love.

-Language of Letting Go🎈🎈

02/13/2026

Galentine’s Day in Recovery 💗

Today we celebrate the women who show up, speak truth, hold space, and remind each other that healing is possible.

Recovery is hard… but it’s softer when we walk it together.
It’s the friend who answers the late-night call.
The woman who says, “Me too.”
The one who holds your hand when you’re finding your way back to yourself.

To the women choosing growth over comfort, honesty over hiding, and connection over isolation — I see you. I celebrate you. I’m grateful for you.

Here’s to the soul sisters, the sponsors, the friends, the daughters, the mothers, and the women who refuse to give up.
Your courage is someone else’s hope.

02/10/2026

Letting Go of Sadness

A block to joy and love can be unresolved sadness from the past.

In the past, we told ourselves many things to deny the pain: It doesn’t hurt that much … Maybe if I just wait, things will change … It’s no big deal. I can get through this … Maybe if I try to change the other person, I won’t have to change myself.

We denied that it hurt because we didn’t want to feel the pain.

Unfinished business doesn’t go away. It keeps repeating itself, until it gets our attention, until we feel it, deal with it, and heal. That’s one lesson we are learning in recovery from codependency and adult children issues.

Many of us didn’t have the tools, support, or safety we needed to acknowledge and accept pain in our past. It’s okay. We’re safe now. Slowly, carefully, we can begin to open ourselves up to our feelings. We can begin the process of feeling what we have denied so long – not to blame, not to shame, but to heal ourselves in preparation for a better life.

It’s okay to cry when we need to cry and feel the sadness many of us have stored within for so long. We can feel and release these feelings.

Grief is a cleansing process. It’s an acceptance process. It moves us from our past, into today, and into a better future – a future free of sabotaging behaviors, a future that holds more options than our past.

God, as I move through this day, let me be open to my feelings Today, help me know that I don’t have to either force or repress the healing available to me in recovery. Help me trust that if I am open and available, the healing will happen naturally, in a manageable way.

-Language of Letting Go🎈🎈🎈

02/09/2026

Mom’s Monday Notes – Recovery Reflection
From Mom’s journal, March 8, 2002:
“The challenge to conflict or criticism is not learning how to avoid it, but how to deal with it.”

In recovery, this truth hits home in a powerful way. So many of us spent years avoiding conflict, numbing criticism, or running from discomfort. We escaped through substances, people-pleasing, anger, isolation, or denial. Avoidance felt safer. It felt easier. But it kept us stuck.

Recovery teaches us something different.

Conflict is not the enemy. Criticism is not always an attack. Both can be invitations to grow — if we are willing to face them with humility and emotional sobriety.

Learning to deal with conflict in recovery looks like:
• Pausing before reacting
• Listening without becoming defensive
• Taking what is helpful and leaving what is not
• Owning our part when necessary
• Setting boundaries when needed

Not every criticism is true. But not every criticism is wrong, either. Early in recovery, feedback can feel painful because we’re already tender, already working hard, already learning who we are without the mask. But this is where real growth happens.

When we stop running from conflict, we begin to build strength.
When we learn to sit with discomfort, we build resilience.
When we respond instead of react, we build character.

Avoidance kept many of us sick.
Learning to face hard conversations helps keep us well.

In families, in meetings, in friendships, and in our own self-talk, conflict will come. The goal is not to eliminate it — the goal is to walk through it with grace.

Recovery invites us to ask:
• What can I learn from this moment?
• Is there truth here I need to see?
• Can I stay grounded instead of shutting down or lashing out?

Dealing with conflict in a healthy way is a sign of growth. It means we are no longer hiding. It means we are learning to live life on life’s terms.

02/06/2026

Stopping Victimization

Before recovery, many of us lacked a frame of reference with which to name the victimization and abuse in our life. We may have thought it was normal that people mistreated us. We may have believed we deserved mistreatment; we may have been attracted to people who mistreated us.

We need to let go, on a deep level, of our need to be victimized and to be victims. We need to let go of our need to be in dysfunctional relationships and systems at work, in love, in family relationships, in friendships. We deserve better. We deserve much better. It is our right. When we believe in our right to happiness, we will have happiness.

We will fight for that right, and the fight will emerge from our souls. Break free from oppression and victimization.

Today, I will liberate myself by letting go of my need to be a victim, and I’ll explore my freedom to take care of myself. That liberation will not take me further away from people I love. It will bring me closer to people and more in harmony with God’s plan for my life.

-Language of Letting Go🎈🎈

02/05/2026

Stare in the face of your fears

Examine your fears.

Sometimes we’re afraid of specific things. Sometimes we fear the unknown. And sometimes we’re just afraid, because that’s the way we usually feel.

Are you nervous, anxious,upset? What’s scaring you right now?

Have a little talk with yourself. Take a look at what you fear. Are you starting a new relationship or job? What are the risks? What’s the worse that could possibly happen? Sometimes it helps to go through our fears, one by one. We don’t need to dwell on the negative, but we need to be certain that we’re willing to take responsibility for the risks involved.

Then look in the other direction, and see the entire positive potential there. What can you gain by taking that risk? Does the thrill of victory outweigh the potential loss?

We may emerge from the list saying, No, I choose not to risk that. Or, we may look at the risks and say, Yes, I’ve been through worse. I can handle this,too.

Someone once told me many years ago that fear was a good thing. “If you’re not feeling afraid, it means you’re not doing anything differently. You’re just repeating the same old thing.” If fear is haunting you, stare it in the face. See what’s making you feel afraid. Then either back off, or stare that fear down.

-Language of Letting Go🎈🎈