Gaggle in My Head

In our clubroom there is a blackboard listing the up and coming birthdays for the month. My birth-date will be added to the list in a couple of weeks. The thought of another year got me to thinking.

New Years Day and my first day of continuous sobriety both mark a new beginning. A beginning and a promise of new adventures, disappointments, grief, happiness; you know the whole basket of life's goodies and badies and inbetweens. I know there really are no stand alone goodies or badies .......just life in technicolor.

I also thought of early recovery when my mind was loaded down with a crazy gaggle of voices. They screamed at me during the first few months to continue acting out insanely. I was/am thankful that beneath the ranting voices there were new-to-me barely audible voices of encouragement to behave differently.

I pleaded with my sponsors to tell me how to get free;to be able to shut down the "ranting" voices once and for all. The cold water in my face was their reply, "No way, those voices will always be with you, waiting in the swamp end of your little head. You'll be okay you'll develop the tools to keep them quiet and send them back when they surface. Your life in recovery will be a process not an event."

I realized that there would be no instant gratification here; that the day I took my last drink, that was an event; the event that marked the start of my journey. The days and years between the dates would be a well-traveled path into sobriety/spiritual growth; I also would be given the grace to walk it one day at a time.

I'm grateful its a process and that I don't have to be held accountable for perfection. Only yesterday when reviewing a strategy for publishing my book with my agent the crazy gaggle of voices began to emerge out of the swamp. I was being bombarded by them with snide remarks like: "not good enough"; "nobody will read it"; publisher will laugh" or "who the hell do you think you are?" as well as other loving bits of encouragement.

Over the course of my sobriety I've developed a go-to plan when in trouble. I went immediately to my Higher Power then to my basic spiritual first aid kit. I love that kit because I can depend on it to put my demons in their place and to get back on the high road sober/sane for another day.

To me the most encouraging of words by the the crafters of the 12 Steps remain: "...God could and would if He were sought." ("money in the bank") and "...we are not saints...progress (no matter how long it takes) rather than perfection."

JF