Life as I know it.....

Hello! I hope you are all doing well. I have been to say the least busy. May was a blurr of activity and June has been humming right along. Some days it crosses my mind that I ever had time to drink. Seriously where did those hours come from because an ordinary day is working eight hours, guitar lessons for my daughter, haircuts for my two youngest, new shoes for middle son, grocery shopping, dinner and before I know it its quarter to ten at night! Weekends are either spent at the cottage or cleaning and gardening. So I started to ponder this revelation and the answer came to me in an unsual way. Through a line I heard in a movie.

Who better to deliver this line than Morgan Freeman. As I found a few minutes to sit down one afternoon I clicked on the TV and right into the last hour of the "Shawshanke Redemption". The line that struck me is so well known, "get busy living, or get busy dying". How true that is. I was really rather unaware of the fact that I was slowly dying until I started living. Living has a speed all unto itself. Some days are full throttle and others are like a soft breeze. All are wonderful in their own way.

I was working with my sponsee one afternoon and I was able to get the opportunity to see what I looked at just three months in. She's been dealing with life sober and it shows. Big black circles, darting scared eyes, high pitched voice. Hands nervously moving back and forth. I had a mirror image for about an hour. I used to look the same way. She was very frustrated this particular afternoon because she is coming to the realization that she has little control over anything. At one very frustrated point she yelled, "What the hell is the secret to sobriety!" to which I replied, "there is no secret, there is no magic cure. You simply have to want sobriety more than you want alcohol". She looked at me like I was nuts. But it has taken me a few 24 hours to figure this out. So when I got home I peeked in the mirror. No black circles, no pinched face. Just someone who now likes the person she is becoming.

So to share a "living" moment with you picture this: A warm spring evening in May, a small pretty art gallery, beautiful art on display, a soft breeze coming through the entrance. I stood up to read two poems of mine that had been selected, inspired two awesome pieces of art, and were now published. I gazed out accross a sea of smiling faces (one of which was my dad) and I thought," how lucky I am to be in this moment, to see how my life has changed, to be humbled by the fact that life is so good, and that I get the honor of experiencing it.

You simply have to want sobriety more than you want alcohol. No big grand explosion of knowledge. Just a simple fact. And once you realize this you can get "busy living" and then you will see just how great life can be.....