Sometimes we are not aware that healing is happening until we come out the other side. What seems like a hardship at the time can have powerful positive effect.

Every once in a while life can throw you a curveball and set you off balance. Hopefully we are able to move through the difficult times without losing ourselves.

For those of us who have done any kind of step work, we remember all too well what it was like to go through steps 4 and 5. Making a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves and admitting to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. This process is a painful one, but necessary.

We all do things that we know we shouldn't, or don't do things that we know we should. Often were left with a feeling of guilt or remorse afterwards. We might be angry with ourselves.

Becoming a parent is the biggest commitment we will make in our lives. We will be responsible for caring for, nurturing and keeping our children safe for years to come. They will rely on us for everything at first.

I fell off my bike two days ago. I feel really stupid about it. I was going around a sharp corner, hit some mud and went flying. Thankfully, I didn't do any serious damage to myself or my bike. I was able to get up and keep riding. partly because I was far from home, and partly because I was embarrassed.

What I like to call “whack a mole” addiction can also be referred to as Cross Addiction or Addiction Interaction Disorder. This is the all-too-common condition where a person has more than one addictive behavior.

My birthday is coming up this week. Rather than feeling excited, I'm starting to feel the dread and anxiety that comes around this time of year. I think it's because I see the numbers creeping up and start to question how much longer I have on this earth?

If you’ve ever posted anything online, you have undoubtedly been met with negative comments and negative feedback. This unfortunately is a fact of life.

Growing up in the Catholic Church, I had a keen understanding of rules, protocol, commandments and punishment. I was not, however, a spiritual person.

Personally, I have always found my time outside hiking, camping and just being in nature very calming and reassuring. I don't think that I realized how much it was actually doing for me.

There is a space between a stimulus and a reaction.

If we are able to slow down our thoughts enough, we can sit there, ever so briefly, allowing ourselves time to respond rather than just react. It can be as simple as a long deep breath, or physically stepping away from a situation momentarily.

Can you even call yourself an alcoholic if you haven’t relapsed multiple times??

Stopping drinking “forever”, then picking up again is what we do. We know we are hurting ourselves, hurting our families, jeopardizing our health and security and so on, but we pick up.

What does it mean to be living a sober life? What is sobriety?

I know what it is not. It is not a destination or something that we achieve and no longer have to work at. Simply not drinking or not using, for an addict, seems impossible in the beginning.

Imagine you are looking into the opening of a long dark tunnel. You can see no light at the end, you only hear the voice of your teacher. You must enter the tunnel. You must walk through the darkness. You follow the voice. For the tunnel is not straight, it has many corners, and as you round the last corner you see your teacher, standing in the light, waiting for you.

When I separated from my husband eight years ago, I moved out of the house. This was my choice. As the marriage deteriorated past the point of repair, there was never really a question about the fact that I would be the one to leave. The house was owned by both of us, both of our names on the mortgage, but I never really felt that the home was mine. I always felt as if I was living in someone else’s space.

We are taught from a young age to beware of danger. We learn how to recognize it and avoid it. The dark back alley, the stranger standing too close, the sharp turns on a highway, even household products, chemicals in our food and the long list goes on. As recovering addicts, we learn a new type of danger.

I would like to talk about the day I accepted help, real help, the type of help that I desperately needed but would not admit too.

I have been sober now for almost 3 years. It has been a long road getting here. I have written about my journey in previous posts. Let’s just say I was in a really bad place, completely unable to help myself and ended up in rehab.

I am sitting on my hotel balcony in the rain. It’s not a heavy rain, it’s light. The kind of rain you can be out in for a while without getting completely soaked. It has been raining like this for 2 days. I am looking at the little park across the highway. The sprinklers are on,