Second acts. Third acts. Fourth acts. More acts.

Something I strongly believe in, to the very core of my being, is that life unfolds in second, third, and fourth “acts.” 

I remember being suicidal and in very active addiction at age 20— and being firmly convinced my life had run its course. 

At age TWENTY. 

I remember thinking, I’d had my chance at adulthood— and blew it. 

I’d had my chance at love— and blew it. 

I’d had my chance at a career— and blew it. 

Again: at age twenty. 

What I didn’t know then, and I do know now, is that I had only experience one, or maybe two by that point, of the “acts” of my life. 

I didn’t realize there were more. 

Not only were there more— but my second, third, and fourth “acts” would look ridiculously different from my first couple of acts. 

At age twenty, I had no vision of being a psychologist. 

At age twenty, I had no vision of writing things for public consumption. 

At age twenty, I had no vision of supporting trauma survivors and addicts like myself create realistic recovery blueprints and make recovery supporting choices one day at a time. 

Those things, which now powerfully define me, were not even on my radar screen. 

At age twenty, I wouldn’t even meet the person I would eventually marry for another twenty six YEARS. 

At age twenty, two cats who I would come to overwhelmingly love weren’t even close to being born yet. 

I’m telling you: we don’t know where we are on our recovery, or life, arc. Even now we don’t. 

You and even I have life “acts” ahead of us that we can’t even imagine. 

You know the Twelve Step slogan, “don’t quit before the miracle?” This is what I think that slogan means: don’t assume what you’re currently thinking, feeling or doing, will be what you’re thinking, feeling, or doing indefinitely. 

Don’t assume the identity you understand as “you” today, will be “you” tomorrow. 

I understand: it’s very, very hard for survivors who are suffering to believe there can be ANYTHING positive in front of us. The phenomenon psychologists call “learned helplessness”— where we give up expecting anything to change, because nothing has ever positively changed for us in the past— kicks our ass up and down the block. 

Trauma Brain is very convincing when it tells us we have assumed our final form in how we feel and function right now. 

But we haven’t. 

Neither you nor I have assumed our final form. 

We both have life acts ahead of us. 

And if there’s any one thing I believe about the rock bottom nature of reality, it’s this: what came before can absolutely not predict what will happen next. 

You and I can and will build lives so utterly foreign to our pasts, our bullies and our abusers, it is absurd. And we will do so not by magic, but by realistic, incremental, purposeful changes to how we talk to ourselves, focus, and use our physiology. 

Trauma recovery is not magic. It is philosophy and behavioral science, and works on principles we’ve known about for centuries. 

Recovery is for you, and you are for recovery. 

You have life acts to write and perform that you’ve barely glimpsed. 

Breathe. Blink. Focus. 

Don’t quit before the miracle.