I’m grateful for a really pretty morning and an excellent cup of coffee. I’m grateful for the chances to just be myself. I’m grateful for enthusiasm. I’m grateful for the chances to see what went wrong. I’m grateful to not have to live there. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Click the picture to read this on the website:
Lots of big doings these days, as Tommy (“Your Sponsor”) hinted, we’ll be launching an online Big Book Study Group very soon. We’re still deliberating on the format, but it’s likely there will be 12 sessions (right?) that would cover most of the first 164 pages of the Big Book and would include working the first three steps together. Anyway, more details TBD.1
I read this a bit ago, loved it and then didn’t find the scrap of paper reminding me to tell you all that I loved it until last night:
I just found this moving on so many different levels. It reminded me of living in the Maryland suburbs. Me and my posse of yellow labs (Kayla and Buddy) would often encounter a pretty large herd of deer—eight to ten deer browsing and there was a pretty good-sized stag (12-14 points) on look-out duty. Did you know that deer can make pretty scary hissing noises when suddenly confronted by charging, barking dogs? Kayla did not know that, either. After that one encounter, she did her barking from behind my legs, peaking out ferociously to add a snarl every once in a while.
Her snarl was actually quite ridiculous.
Anyway, I loved thinking about those mornings. I’ve always been an early-riser. Being up so early as a kid, when it felt like no one else was, gave me such a sense of freedom. There was no one awake to tell me that I should be doing something different, no one to try to put a framework around what I was thinking or feeling, just me and sometimes my dog. It was a magical time, it was a beautifully mysterious time, there was so much I hadn’t made sense of yet and nothing seemed completely impossible. I thought this sentence just perfectly captured that:
The adult in me will fold her hands, calmly, and rest in what certainties she has earned over time. The child in me will play quietly under the table, talking to spirits and spiders and filling her belly with mysteries.
Deer-Ghosts, An Unwilling Theology
I really love that. Recovering the sense of mystery and possibility under the grown-ups’ table or in those early mornings on my paper route is a big part of recovering me. There’s a lot of that going on these days, I think.
Stay tuned, this week’s edition of Growing Pains: Sober Girls Edition is coming this afternoon! Here’s last week’s, if you’d like to brush up:
Thanks for Letting Me Share
hahaha, not that kind of TBD.
I’m grateful for sunny mornings. I’m grateful to have just enough extra time to spend with animals who need it. I’m grateful for my grandfather and his hilarious comments. I’m grateful to be rolling up on 2 years clean. I’m grateful for happy tears and the sad ones as they are all motivational. I’m grateful for taking the road less traveled by because that has made all the difference. I’m grateful to no longer let the deaths of old friends kill me too. I’m grateful to be able to say NO and stand my ground! I am grateful to be clean today.