What Recovery Looks Like For Me Today

Moments of peace and beauty kayaking off of Lopez Island. 
Photo by Molly

What Recovery Looks Like

For Me Today

This past week I attended the 42nd sobriety birthday for someone I dearly love. On June 19th I, too, will have 42 years of sobriety. I have known this friend, his wife, and his beloved family since we first entered the doors of AA over four decades ago. And now it was an honor and a joy to celebrate these 42 years of his sobriety and the profound changes that have evolved over all these years. 

The meeting hall was packed. So many had turned out who know and love and have been supported and inspired by our dear friend. The fellowship, love, and support in this AA meeting was palatable and an obvious deep gift. I was moved as I listened and witnessed the strengths of this home group and those benefitting from this community of deep caring and support — something that is such a strength and blessing to so many. As most of us know, we humans are relational beings and cannot heal in isolation.

During the meeting, and before he called on me to speak, my friend asked my permission to share about Jim, my former husband. He reflected about how years ago they had been best friends, had attended meetings together, had played on a softball team with others in recovery, and had shared so much of their lives. Then he shared how Jim has now been drinking again for years and how the only difference between himself and his old friend is that Jim picked up a drink again and he didn't.

Jim and our three sons many years ago in the Blue Mountains of Oregon

As I sat and reflected upon the enormity of changes in all of our lives, I was filled with both grief and gratitude. My heart ached as I thought of our sons' father and his 24 years now of slow suicide through drinking and smoking. And I ached for my dear old friends who lost their adult daughter to an accidental overdose two years ago. And I also felt the grief of losing my own twin brother who ended his life in 1978 by overdosing on vodka and Valium. John believed this to be the only way that would free him from the unbearable pain, depression and despair, and the untreated trauma that was at the root of his addictions, isolation, and endless suffering.

I also reflected on the profound gifts of my life today and how the peace and joy, beauty and blessings, connection and community, compassion and love was unimaginable when I got first got sober and, in sharing honestly, also for years into my sobriety. There were so many layers of pain and delusion and trauma that I was oblivious to, disassociated from, and had unknowingly absorbed into my deepest being. So many. These had been the internalized obstacles to the gratitude I know today.

That is when it came to me to share a quote that I first heard many years ago from Francis Weller: "The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them." So true, so true.

And there was one other related quote that spontaneously came to me to share in the meeting. I couldn't remember the title of the book that I'd read in the early years of sobriety. I just remembered that it had a light blue cover and that the word "serenity" was part of the title. This was when I read something that I have never forgotten since: "There will come a time when the pull of leading a rich and full life will grow stronger than any pull to go back."

I don't know how long ago that it's been since I first crossed over that line, but it has been many years. Unlike my former husband, I just know with the whole of my being that there is no chance that I will ever go back. None.

My family, December 1968

Underneath my smile were layers of untouched and unhealed trauma

My dear friend asked us in his sobriety birthday meeting this question: What does recovery look like today?

Initially, I spoke to how it was that I began smoking at 15, drinking at 16, and using drugs at 17. I also felt the need to clarify that I do not believe that I turned to substances because I had any "defects of character," as the 12 Steps speak to. I had pain. I had generations of ancestral and cultural trauma that I had absorbed and didn't know what to do with. And I had belief systems that told me that I was unworthy, incredibly flawed, and unlovable. I had a defended heart.

The biggest difference from where I am today and where I was for the first several  decades of my young life — and from the death spiral that our sons' father has now long been trapped in — is that I have been empowered to undefend my heart. 

It takes so much energy and effort to depress, suppress, and repress the deepest pain and loss and trauma that we carry in our bodies. Until we learn a way out of the prison that we are often unknowingly locked into, it is inevitable that we will turn to addictions of all kinds in our blind efforts to numb the pain that is too much to bear. Alone. We will only go as deep as the support that we perceive is available to us.

Recovery for me today is reflected in how I have learned to unburden the places of deep pain that I have carried, as did my ancestors before me, in an ongoing way. There are many layers rooted in shame, fear, delusion, untouched grief, and all of the symptoms of unaddressed trauma that we act out and act in. Jim tragically never got the deep, compassionate, and wise help and support that he needed to begin to free himself of the crippling trauma he was chronically plagued with. And nor did my brother. This is the biggest difference between us. I have been profoundly blessed with learning how to heal my heart and live open-heartedly. They never did. 

That is the wider view of the tragedy of countless human beings who never find their way out of their suffering. And this is also the wider view of how so many of us are freed from our addictions, delusions, and trauma and able to lead the rich and full lives that bring us over that line where we can never ever go back.

Today I know joy.

Returning to the question of what recovery looks like for me today, I did not share everything in the AA meeting that I am sharing here. It is very important to me to be respectful of the diversity of paths that we humans find which lead us into a fuller life and greater wholeness. There are many.

My personal experience is that there are aspects of the traditional 12 Steps which do not work for me. I recently wrote this related piece here: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2026/04/moving-beyond-12-steps-empowering.html. And although I introduced myself in the meeting this past week by saying, "I'm Molly and an alcoholic," what I didn't say is that I no longer actually identify myself by this one part of myself that was once addicted to alcohol and many other things. This is just one part and far from the whole of who I experience myself to be today.

* * *

In the meeting on Wednesday evening, I reflected on remembrance of walking into my early AA meetings and hearing words read about having "defects of character." And, of course, that is absolutely part of the delusions which I had come to internalize and believe to be true about myself. I had defects. I also heard how the capacity for rigorous honesty was essential to sustaining sobriety. And what I also heard read at the start of meetings was how there are some who are incapable of honestly, they are not to be blamed, and they seem "to have been born that way." At that time, I had no idea how I was not able to risk the vulnerability, the shame, and the unbearable depths of buried pain to be deeply honest with myself or anyone else. What I did internalize as I heard those words in AA meetings was the fear that maybe I was among those who were incapable and had been born that way.

Unknown to me at the time, these narratives served to maintain the fears, shame, separateness, and walls that I had long ago built around my defended heart. For years into sobriety, I kept unconsciously acting out of the abandoned parts of what I had exiled into the recesses of my being. I was sober. And at the same time I often remained stuck in nonsubstance addictions, in disassociation and delusions, in harmful beliefs and actions and perceptions, and in other symptoms of untreated trauma. 

My diagnosis is PTSD and complex trauma. This is what was at the root of my alcoholism and my suffering. Not defects of character, not having a disease, not having been born incapable of honesty, not having a chronic condition called alcoholism, not being disconnected from any god that is believed to be separate from our sacred selves or belonging to any one religion.

* * *

Over the decades which first began in 1983, I attended and participated in different 12 Step programs and a whole range of other resources of support. I experienced many rabbit holes, different spiritual belief systems and practices, and counselors and therapists who sometimes helped, but who also caused harm to myself, my former husband, and our children. I had been instinct injured and for years did not recognize what was empowering and rooted in compassion, wisdom, and love and what was not. There were many hard and painful lessons to be experienced and learned from. And I learned.

While 12 Step programs proclaim that enduring sobriety can happen for anyone who consistently practices "these simple steps," my heart aches for all those who tried to do so but relapsed. Again and again. Many also died. But they had tried. Or, gratefully, they found different paths and practices and communities of support which have truly and deeply worked for them.

Today I can much more readily discern the difference between red flags and green lights. And I am profoundly grateful for discovering those many resources and supports which have deeply empowered and truly supported me in my awakening.

Beginning in 2007, 27 years into my sobriety, I have been incredibly blessed to find and connect with several supports which have empowered me to go deeper than I ever had before and to unburden layers of the generational and cultural trauma that had been blindly passed on to me. It is an ongoing and lifelong sacred journey. 

I also recognize that not everyone can afford the skilled and wise therapy that has been one aspect of making all the difference for me. That said, there are many sources of deep, wise, and loving supports which are becoming increasingly available. Whatever resources that we find will hopefully also be with those who have done their own deep healing work related to trauma. No one can assist us on our journeys to go any deeper than they have first gone themselves.

* * *

What recovery looks like today is that I know joy. I can hold and experience grief. I have a daily practice of gratitude. I know that I do not have a chronic disease called alcoholism. I have experienced pain and trauma which absolutely can be healed, unburdened, and transformed. And because I know that I do not have a disease to fear and to stay on constant guard of it propelling me into relapse, I am free. 

I am free to understand and hold with compassion and love all of my many parts. My wise Self wraps loving arms around my old wounds when they are triggered and arise — which occurs so much less frequently than ever before. I am free to love all of my many parts. I recognize that my addictions were once a desperately sought solution that ultimately became a problem. And I understand with the deepest compassion that this only occurred because I did not know how to embrace, heal, and undefend my hurting heart. 

* * *

What I did share in the meeting is that today I can love myself. And I can hold with understanding and compassion the many forms that our human suffering takes on and that there are paths which can free us from the roots of our pain and trauma. We can grow into the truth of who we truly are as sacred beings. We can remember what we have forgotten. We can awaken from our delusions and harmful beliefs and actions and increasingly be a growing part of the healing in our world.

And this is what recovery looks like for me today. Freedom to increasingly be who I am. Greater and greater freedom from judgment and othering and my once powerful inner critic. Deepening freedom from shame and triggers and old coping skills that never served me. Freedom to be vulnerable. Freedom to recognize the sacred in myself and you and all of life. Freedom to love and be loved. 

Of course, we do not arrive at a place somewhere in the future where we're sliding under the rainbow into forever-happily-ever-after land. That said, the journey of awakening is ongoing. If we are alive and breathing, there is another vista, another doorway, another letting go of the old and embracing the new. Always. And on and on. And how blessed we are when we find the inspiration, the support, the spiritual grounding, and the Grace that we need to root into this amazing journey of wise view, of ever expanding connection, and of compassion and love.

We are all sacred and worthy of love.

With Metta,

💜

Molly

* * *

Suggested Resources

 I’m a Psychologist and Addiction Is Not a Disease: 

Here’s What It Actually Is 

(And Why That Matters)

https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2026/03/excellent-im-psychologist-and-addiction.html

_______________________

No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness

With the Internal Family Systems Model

https://ifs-institute.com/nobadparts

___________________________

Rethinking Addiction with Gabor Maté, 

Richard Schwartz, and Marc Lewis

____________________________

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness,

and Healing in a Toxic Culture

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Normal-Illness-Healing-Culture/dp/0593083881

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A Recent Piece that I wrote about what 

Sobriety Means to Be Today

https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2026/02/reflections-on-what-sobriety-means-to.html

EXCELLENT — Reflections on The Documentary "Steal the Story, Please", Which Is Playing NOW In Portland and Nationwide, and Our Collective Need to Embody a Profound Commitment To Truth

Amy Goodman was the first journalist at the Standing Rock protest in 2016

One of countless times that I have seen Amy Goodman 

The Documentary Steal the Story, Please is playing nationwide, including right now in Portland at Cinema 21. Please go here to see times/dates and to purchase tickets for Portland's showing and also to find times in your area: https://stealthisstoryplease.official.film/. 

I've known that Amy Goodman would be touring with the documentary and am deeply disappointed that I have missed the window to buy tickets to see her here in Portland today. I try to never miss Amy when she comes to town! That said, I am also so excited that Ron and I will be seeing this film Monday night. I know that it will be excellent!

I have been listening to, watching, and reading Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! for decades. Amy is a national and international treasure and is among those human beings who I most admire, respect, am grateful for, and love. I love her. I love the profound difference that Amy has made across our nation and world. I love her courage and integrity, her brilliance and wisdom, her utter and profound commitment to truth, her unrelenting commitment to going to where the silence is, and to exposing and holding the powerful accountable rather than being their voice pieces. Amy is not bought, not in the pockets of anyone, and is exemplary and not rivaled in the excellence of her independent journalism. Few people have inspired, informed, and empowered me more than Amy Goodman and the countless voices that she has brought forward on Democracy Now! — https://www.democracynow.org/.

This was also illuminated in the 30 year anniversary celebration of Democracy Now! that occurred on March 23rd. So incredibly inspiring! I wrote about and shared this amazing celebration of independent global news here: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2026/03/excellent-and-highly-recommended.html.

The contrast between independent global news and corporate funded mainstream American media is stark. I am aware that many believe that they are hearing everything that they need to know to be informed by listening to or watching NPR/OPB, MS Now, CNN, ABC, CBS, etc. However, what I have learned over time — and especially since the horrors of 9/11 threw me into my own profound search for truth —  is that any resource which is in any way connected to corporate funding is compromised and limited in bringing us the deeper truths and facts that are essential for us to know. 

We would not be experiencing endless wars, endless catastrophic climate crises, excruciating and ever growing poverty and wealth inequality, the dehumanization and brutal oppression directed at immigrants and other minorities, epidemics of houselessness and addictions and depression, and the many faces of suffering and trauma and violence that are so prolific in American culture and beyond had we been truly informed over the past many years. 

Instead we humans would have gathered together in powerful and fierce solidarity to say NO MORE! and act to stop the insane madness.

Just imagine how different our world would be today had we been empowered decades ago to recognize the links of so many resources of information — to Wall Street and the Big Banks, to the fossil fuel industry and the military industrial complex, to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, to the prison industrial complex and the animal agricultural industries, to AIPAC and Israel, to the politicians in both major political parties who are in the pockets of their wealthy donors, and on and on. Just imagine how we would be changed, transformed, gathered in solidarity rather than polarized if we actually recognized the forces that were screwing us over! Again and again and again!

Amy Goodman and the countless other people she has had on Democracy Now! have had a radical influence on my life. So many of those who she has profiled — like Jeremy Scahill, Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Jason Stanley, Timothy Snyder, George Monbiot, Norman Solomon, Ibram X Kendi, Henry Giroux, Angela Davis, countless worldwide indigenous voices, and on and on — are rarely and most often never heard or seen on corporate mainstream media because of their threat to the toxic status quo. 

Quotes to reflect on:

• Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. —Albert Einstein
• One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. — Carl Jung
• During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary. — George Orwell
• The most violent element in society is ignorance. — Emma Goldman
• Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. — Paulo Freire
• The day we see the truth and cease to speak it is the day we begin to die. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Radical simply means grasping things at the root. — Angela Davis

It is my ongoing hope and prayer that more and more of us will come to courageously embody a profound commitment to truth. This is what Amy Goodman and many other amazing human beings have inspired me to embrace for so many years now. And it is knowing these deeper truths that inspires me to do my part in exposing the forces of delusion, hatred, and greed that cause so much profound suffering in our world and to act to alleviate the suffering of our planetary sisters and brothers by how it is that I live my life. I am filled with eternal gratitude.

We all need each other. We are all in this together. May we increasingly recognize that which keeps us impaired in our capacity to be informed, to act, and to care so deeply about the welfare of us all. This takes a lot of effort and courage in a society which chronically and dangerously works to keep us distracted, disinformed, and divided. We can change this. We can transform ourselves individually and collectively and the dangerous trajectory that we are on. We can join together in solidarity in the great universal struggle for a just, peaceful, equitable, and caring world. May it be so. 🙏

Bless us all, no exceptions...

Molly

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED — Alexa Redner: The Wise View

 

The Wise View

This was a dharma talk given at Portland Insight Meditation Center by Alexa Redner on April 19th. My husband and I were both gifted with being present. What Alexa spoke to, and the depth of wisdom and love that we experienced, inspires me to share this talk with others. And regardless of whatever spiritual or religious path one may follow, it is my belief that the teachings here are universal and can be an absorbed and embodied gift to us all.

Several times as Alexa spoke I was moved to tears. My heart was broken open and touched so deeply. What I experienced was the gift of bringing universal spiritual teachings, the essence of which are beyond words, into the sanctuary and into the depths of each of our hearts. 

Alexa became a mirror for a wise view that is embodied in that which connects us as human beings with all other humans and nonhumans and life on Earth and beyond. As she spoke of the profound messages from the astronauts who just returned from circling the moon and viewing the Earth from deep space, it became crystal clear how we are all connected, all in this together, and that all that truly matters is love and helping each other.

May we humans seek in an ongoing way to grow and evolve in wisdom, generosity, compassion, courage, and love. May we come to recognize and address the obstacles to lovingkindness that we have absorbed. And may we expand our capacity to live openheartedly, to act out of a commitment to alleviate the suffering within ourselves and all others, and to practice and live out of the awareness of wise view.

Before sitting down to write this post, I listened to Alexa's dharma talk again. And I bow with the deepest gratitude to Alexa and to all that empowers us to remember what we have forgotten and to grow into the sacred fullness and beauty of who we truly are. Blessed be. 🙏

With Metta,

💜

Molly

Alexa's website: https://www.alexaredner.com/

Other dharma talks given at PIMC by Alexa, Doug Pullin (my therapist), and many others: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbQZ0jEQzwKvR354utoX11w

Information about the Women's Sangha that Alexa leads and which I have been part of since February 2025: https://www.alexaredner.com/portland-insight-meditation-center

A Profound Tragedy With Catastrophic Costs

There is a profound tragedy with catastrophic costs that has been perpetrated by those mired in greed and delusion. These are the people in positions of power — in BOTH major political parties and the mainstream corporate funded media — who have long spread doubt, denial, distraction, and disinformation about the climate crisis and its connection to burning fossil fuels. These are the human beings who are the greatest criminals and who have committed the greatest evil of all times. These are the forces responsible for the endless resource wars, the horrifying wildfires and tornadoes and floods and droughts and rising seas, the desperate climate refugees forced to leave their home lands, the spiraling hunger and starvation and violence and death, and the ever shrinking habitable places on our planet. It is hard to find the words for those responsible for destroying our only home, our Earth Mother.

May we all work together on behalf

of the highest good for all of life on Earth.

We are all connected, all related, all family,

all in this together.

— Molly

John O'Donohue: In Praise of the Earth

Bald Eagle at Sunset. Photo by Molly

 In Praise of the Earth

Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth.
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.

And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.

When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And holds our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.

Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed’s self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.

The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.

That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.

— John O’Donohue

From To Bless the Space Between Us:

A Book of Blessings

Anne Hillman: Learning To Love

Photo by Molly

Learning to Love

We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.

 

— Anne Hillman

Angeles Arrien: Life Keeps Calling to Us to Open the Arms of Love and Bring Our Healing Medicine to the World

It has now been decades since I first heard of Angeles Arrien and read The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary. This was a life changing experience for me as I worked to integrate these teachings into my life. On several occasions, I have also been moved to share these "Four Rules For Life": Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Don't be attached to the results. I believe that this wisdom is deeply needed in these times. May we all inspire and support one another in bringing our healing medicine to the world. ― Molly

Photo by Molly

No one is immune to the pull of the natural cycles 

of the universe: no one is immune to love. 

In many indigenous cultures, you can find some variation on the following rules, which are intended to make living a life very simple. The first rule is, Show up. Choose to be present to life. Choosing to be present is the skill of the warrior archetype, an old fashioned term for leadership abilities. The warrior in us chooses to be present to life.

Once we show up, we can go on with rule number two, which is, Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. This rule is associated with the archetype of the healer, the one who recognizes that love is the greatest healing power in the world. When we pay attention to what has heart and meaning, we are opening the arms of love.

When we show up and pay attention to what has heart and meaning, then we can follow the third rule: Tell the truth without blame or judgment. This is the path of the visionary, the one who can give voice to what is so. Telling the truth without blame or judgment is not necessarily being "polite," but the truth teller does consider timing and context as well as delivery. Truth telling collapses our patterns of denial and indulgence, keeps us authentic.

When we are able to tell the truth, we can go to the fourth rule: Be open to outcome, but not attached to it. This is associated with the archetype of the teacher, who trusts in the unexpected and is able to be detached. Often, in the West, we define "detachment" as "not caring," but detachment is really the capacity to care deeply but objectively. If you've taken the other three steps, then the fourth rule should come naturally, if not always easily: if you have shown up, paid attention to what has heart and meaning, and told the truth without blame or judgment, then it should follow naturally that you can be open, but not attached, to outcome.

None of this is necessarily easy to do. But one of the great joys of soul work is that whether or not we are able to be fully present to life, like keeps calling to us. No one is immune to the pull of the natural cycles of the universe: no one is immune to love. And because it requires just as much energy, if not more, to stay out of life as it does to be fully engaged in it, why not be engaged? Octavio Paz, a Latin American poet and Nobel Prize winner, realized that when he was in his forties just how much of himself he had spent staying away from the deep currents of his life. He wrote this prose poem describing that experience and describing, too, the persistence of the world in spite of it all:

XII    After
     After chopping off all the arms that reached out to me; after boarding up all the windows and doors; after filling all the pits with poisoned water; after building my house on the rock of a No inaccessible to flattery and fear; after cutting my tongue and eating it; after hurling handfuls of silence and monosyllables of scorn at my loves; after forgetting my name and the name of my birthplace and the name of my race; after judging myself and sentencing myself to perpetual waiting and perpetual loneliness, I heard against the stories of my dungeon of syllogisms the humid, tender, insistent onset of spring.

No matter how we try, soul calls out to us. We may have become so injured in our instincts, so wounded in our souls, that our demons threaten to overwhelm us, that we cannot quite hear the call of spring. But spring calls to us anyway. The center of our soul work is ensuring that the good, true, and beautiful in our nature is at least as strong as the demons and the monsters: put another way, it is ensuring that my self worth is at least as strong as my self critic. That issue is central to all of the indigenous peoples I have studied. If I am living in a way that feeds the good, true, and beautiful in my nature - as opposed to feeding the self critic - then I can heal myself. If I can stay in touch with my own deep source, my soul. And I can also be a healing agent in my family, my community, my nation, and the world.

I said before that the basis of soul work is really to eliminate everything that gets in the way of my being myself and to feed that which encourages me to be myself. I want to suggest a simple exercise - two simple questions - to help you track that. Each morning, before you step out into the world, ask yourself, "Is my self worth as strong as my self-critic?" Be sure that you can say yes before you go out the door. Then, using your name, say, "Jim, are you Jim?" or "Sally, are you Sally?" and be sure that you can say yes to that, too, before you go out into the world. 

All of us carry, within ourselves, an original healing medicine that is not duplicated anywhere else on earth. If we say yes to those two questions every day, then we can bring our medicine fully into the world. We can, as the woman at the bus stop did, move out of reactivity into creativity. When we live soulfully, each of us can be a shape shifter: each of us can be fully engaged , moment to moment, in the great gift called life.

― Angeles Arrien

Excerpted from a chapter in Nourishing the Soul:

Discovering the Sacred In Everyday Life

- with writings from several teachers, healers, and visionaries.

This can also be found in Angeles Arrien's book The Four Fold Way:

Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary

EXCELLENT — Rebecca Solnit: The United States Is Destroying Itself

So excellent!! Horrifying and 100% spot on! Worth sharing again. And again and again. Thank you, as always!, Rebecca Solnit. And thank you, too, Mo Husseini. Deepest bow. 🙏🙏 Molly

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Mo Husseini writes about this article:

Rebecca Solnit, in the Guardian today, writing (as always) the piece that the moment requires. Read it.

She is doing the thing that almost nobody in mainstream media is willing to do right now, which is to stand back far enough to see the full shape of the destruction and then describe it clearly, without flinching, without hedging, without the false balance that has become the coward’s substitute for journalism.

This is what it looks like when a writer decides the truth is more important than maintaining their access to monsters.

Read it.

‘Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled.’ Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The daily news can’t adequately convey the administration’s sabotaging of our government, economy, alliances and environment

By Rebecca Solnit

The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled. All this is common knowledge, but because it dribbles out in news stories about this specific incident or department, the reports never adequately describe an administration sabotaging the functioning of the federal government and also trashing the global economy, international alliances and relationships, and the national and global environment in ways that will have downstream consequences for decades and perhaps, especially when it comes to climate, centuries.

Across the branches of government, the services that are supposed to protect us – nuclear stockpile monitoring, cybersecurity, counter-terrorism – are being undermined, understaffed or trashed. A different kind of protection that consists of public health, vaccination programs, food safety, clean air and water, social services, civil rights and the rule of law is also under attack. The federal government that serves us is being starved while the federal government that serves the Trump agenda and the oligarchy is glutting itself on taxpayer money, including the grotesque sums dumped on the Department of Homeland Security and the US military now being warped into Pete Hegseth’s twisted vision of a ruthless mercenary force. Hegseth has reportedly stood in the way of promotions for more than a dozen Black and female officers.

It is striking that the Trump team’s constant refrain is that we cannot afford to protect the vulnerable or provide for the people, which is why the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, atop Doge, destroyed USAID last year, which has already resulted in tens of thousands of deaths from starvation and preventable disease. The Iran war is creating a fertilizer crisis in Europe, Africa and Asia that may also result in widespread famine. Meanwhile, the former head of homeland security Kristi Noem spent more than $200m on an ad campaign starring herself before she was fired.

Although there are far worse things about the utterly gratuitous and literally unjustified war on Iran, the fact that it burns through billions a day is striking, given that huge cuts are being made to environmental protection and national parks, and the forest service is being effectively sabotaged, while public lands are being offered up to fossil fuel companies and mining interests. The forest service headquarters are being moved across the country, which will probably cause many resignations, like the similar move of the Bureau of Land Management in Trump’s first term. More than 50 forest service research stations are being cut, meaning more loss of irreplaceable ongoing research, data, facilities and staff.

Trump said in his droning dullard speech last week: “We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country ... We’re fighting wars ... It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.” Your money, our money, our public lands, our kids. Trump even bribed the builders of offshore windfarms almost a billion dollars to stop, just because he has a personal vendetta against the clean energy systems. The US used to lead the world in scientific research, including medical research, which had led to important breakthroughs in disease treatment and health, but all that has been slashed to the bone and beyond. This is murder.

The old aphorism about how long it takes an aircraft carrier to turn around might be why the nation seems relatively stable, and why reactions have been inadequate; the full impact is yet to come. At some point if the ship doesn’t turn around, maybe it will start taking on water or listing badly or hit an iceberg, or perhaps the iceberg has been there all along and is named Donald Trump. He has started a war for no particular reason – the word fun was deployed – that is further undermining the global economy he already badly damaged with his ever-fluctuating tariffs. Enterprises need to be able to plan, and tariffs that triple and melt away and pop up again like his moods undermine the ability to do so. In much the same way, threats that aren’t carried out, talks that never took place, administration actions that the courts reverse become forms of political whiplash, jerking everyone and everything around, a show of force that is also a show of incoherence and inconsistency.

But the offensiveness may be a distraction from the destructiveness. A whole sector of mainstream media now functions as spirit mediums attempting to interpret Trump’s actions to try to fit them into the context of competent leadership and coherent and consistent agendas. If there was a coherent agenda, it would be a destructive one, a malevolent one. The newly popular slogan “the purpose of a system is what it does” is useful here, because what this system does is weaken, damage, corrupt and harm. The idea that there’s a coherent agenda driven by Vladimir Putin works in the sense that most of what Trump has done is good for the ageing Russian dictator while also bad for the US.

It’s also evident that Trump wanted to come back into office in part to revenge himself on a country that in 2020 had rejected him, the way an ex-partner sometimes becomes a murderous stalker of the woman who dared to escape him, and specifically revenge himself on the individuals and institutions that had prosecuted him for crimes or otherwise thwarted him. Trump at some level knows he’s failing politically, cognitively and physically and wants to take it all down with him, the way that ancient rulers were buried with their slaughtered horses and servants. He’s also, as mortality breathes down his neck, trying to grab some immortality by sticking his name on buildings and park passes and currency.

But trying to understand motives is something of a hobby when the focus needs to be on consequences. We do not need to understand these criminals in order to try to contain and ultimately remove them. They will not last for ever, and we need to think about what happens when they’re gone – to talk about the kind of reconstruction the US will face for the first time since the civil war, the reconstruction a ravaged and corrupted country has to go through to return to functionality. But not to return to the way things were.

It’s the antidemocratic weaknesses in our system that created the vulnerabilities that let this happen – the electoral college and voter suppression that gave Trump a minority victory in 2016, the gerrymandering that has given a minority party majority power in Congress and statehouses, a grotesquely corrupted and unaccountable supreme court and the corrosive influence of the ultra-wealthy in a system that gives them power on a scale that is a direct assault on democracy. We need to imagine a more democratic, more egalitarian, more generous country, one that operates in recognition of an abundance of wealth that should serve all of us – and nature and future generations too – rather than is driven by the moral poverty of billionaires.

• Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her newest book is The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change

Please go here for the original article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/12/united-states-trump-destruction