I'm grateful for naps. I'm grateful for staying connected to my NYC meetings. I'm grateful to learn through laughter. I'm grateful for the new music some of my favorite artists have released these past few weeks and how the songs have lifted my spirits throughout the day. I'm grateful to be reminded we need to always search for and work on the root causes of our addiction. I'm grateful to recall that things don't always need to happen on my timeline. I'm grateful when bits of wisdom I heard from fellows a while back return and help me out today.
At a meeting last week an old-timer, who identified as a long-standing atheist, shared an idea that stuck with me - a "God of Retrospection". He affirmed that he doesn't believe in any form of God whatsoever, but the concept of a Higher Power, as it revealed itself to him, was in part gained from regular reflection. While thinking about the past after some distance from it, he was able to comprehend and appreciate the true takeaways - the deeper reasons - for why things happened in the ways they did. This exercise of observing these invisible, undefinable forces over time that transform people like him, who were once so hollow from addiction, enabled him to believe in a power outside himself. He decided to define this practice as his "God of Retrospection".
I am a genuine sucker for AAâs bevy of pithy acronyms and sayings so naturally I latched onto the term as soon as I heard it and have been letting it swirl in my mind for a few days. Early in sobriety I spent a lot of energy ruminating on the past, especially reliving the most despondent moments where I had hit my various bottoms. I'd wonder why these events happened, feel shitty they did, and find no ways of productively reframing them. Finally the memories would subside until the next time they got triggered, which back then was throughout the day. Honestly it was a shitty period for a while as I didn't have ways of putting these events into any meaningful context.
With a little time and a clearer mind thanks to alcohol's absence, I have become more adept at revisiting what happened, how it happened, and why it needed to happen in order to get me onto a path of recovery. By honestly sharing my darkness with others, journaling through the discomfort, and using previous trauma as a motivator to be of service, I am able to find ways to grapple with my history in a cathartic fashion. Self-pity doesn't overwhelm me like before. While I'll always hold onto a bit of sadness and guilt around what I did, I survived. I survived and can use my new found strength to help others. Thanks to the atheist old-timer, I can now codify this line of thinking that allows me to accept and grow from the past as my "God of Retrospection" - the latest addition to how I define my ever changing, Frankenstein-ish Higher Power composite.