Stay safe enough is a recovery goal. Before I experienced adverse conditions, I was an innocent child. Am I going to be restored to that state and condition again? Is it safe?
“I don’t have an answer to that question, ‘are we going to become entirely free of the effects of past injury,’ which, in my view, is what is meant by the ‘day at a time’ way we live and grow in recovery,” an oldtimer shares. Am I able to love? Am I able to relax and have fun? Can I trust and not have to hold back in ways that cripple my ability to be happy and comfortable, just for today? Can I let go of the past fears and memories of being hurt or disappointed enough so that I’m living today, as a person who can have a life, who does have a life? Are these memories I’m living in, one day at a time, weaving up a new fabric in colors of rich joys and pleasures I wrap myself in, as I go?
Infants are born without expectations—neither fears nor anticipation of the times yet to come. We accumulate experiences, build upon them, learn and grow, as a part of becoming the adults we become. “That’s how it goes,” describes this actual process, but it doesn’t color in how the days feel, taste or smell to us, tucked away in our memories where we can touch them again and again. We can learn to choose wisely among the options available. Step Ten is a pallet of crayons we learn to use to shade in the wise, thoughtful ways to work through what has looked like blotches or blots. Are there holes on old canvases or in fabrics we find wrapped around us? Can we fix them all? We don’t know. We may choose the wrong color—make another mistake!
Is it safe? We don’t know. Our recovery experience, day by day, is the color of courage in a fabric—a living landscape-tapestry—where our trust isn’t blind: Wisdom grows.
Kathleen S.