Trauma and addiction recovery bring us face to face with the fact that our life did not go as planned.
Maybe nobody’s life does. But our life really, really didn’t.
And, we’re going to have feelings about that fact.
There’s going to be anger about that fact.
There’s going to be sadness about that fact.
And if you’re like me, there’s going to be plenty of just…f*cking…amazement at how spectacularly off the rails life has gone.
Many survivors in recovery really struggle with accepting that we’re this far from where we thought, where we assumed, we’d end up.
We weren’t supposed to be HERE by now.
We were supposed to be…who knows where, but not HERE.
We can get real up in our head about where we ended up at this point in our life.
It’s real easy to get into a spiral about the fact.
Reeling ourselves in when we get all freaked out by how f*cking far we feel from the path we “should” be on, is a recovery skill.
We get to feel whatever we feel about it. Sad, angry, incredulous, whatever.
And, we get to not let whatever we feel about it drag us away from working our recovery today.
The truth is, there’s no guarantee we were EVER “supposed” to life ANY specific life.
Hell, I did not even imagine I’d be alive today, let alone on a particular life path.
Whatever “path” we thought was for us, just wasn’t in the cards.
So be it.
Apparently that life was never supposed to be a thing.
This is the life we have. This life, right here, right now.
Not our life as a victim of trauma or an addict in active suffering— but our life in recovery.
The teeny, tiny recovery supporting rituals we do today are more important than anything that “could have been” or “should have been.”
What we do next is infinitely more important than what we did or didn’t do at any moment in the past.
So life didn’t go as planned. So what.
We have today.
We are alive today.
We have a chance to influence today, with our self talk, our mental focus, and our physiology.
We’re here.
That’s all that matters now.
Use Your Damn Skills 