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.
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| 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 — something which followed Jim's 17 years of abstinence. 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.
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| My family, December 1968 |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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What recovery looks like today is that I know joy. I can hold and experience grief and a whole range of emotions. I am grounded in a spiritual practice rooted in compassion and love. I have a daily practice of gratitude. I break all of the old don't talk, don't feel, don't trust, don't be rules that I had once lived by. I know what I know, see what I see, feel what I feel, and need what I need. 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 of my spiritual practice and knowing 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
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