One of my goals here is to sift through traditional Twelve Step recovery concepts and make the language and ideas more palatable for agnostics, free-thinkers, atheists, and non-believers who, like me, are in recovery from addiction. I also work stuff out in my mind as I write, with my first draft often becoming my published […]
Making amends is about owning-up for bad behaviour that hurt someone else. It’s about looking them right between the eyes and acknowledging “I did exactly this, and you bore the cost of my wrongdoing.” In the Secular Twelve Steps, making amends is Step Nine, the final stop along the journey of ‘cleaning-up the wreckage of […]
I haven’t felt the urge to post here in almost a month. I have been writing, nevertheless, focused on working the Secular Twelve Steps with my sponsor. I’ve also been regularly attending peer-support meetings, getting out of my cocoon and rejoining the human race. The purpose of this post is to talk about how I […]
In recovery, I am ambivalent, perhaps indifferent, to the matter of whether or not God exists. If the gift of recovery is available only to believers, and therefore unattainable to non-believers, does this not make for a punishing and cruel God? More importantly, does it not also place limits on God, since God’s grace is […]
Everyone needs something to lean on sometimes. As a recovering addict, I definitely need some sort of power greater than myself to stay sober and to quell the self-destructive rebellion in my mind. Fortunately, that power doesn’t need to be outside myself. The nature of pure awareness Thoughts, ego, personality–and desires and cravings–are all aspects […]
Two words loaded with religious undertones (and overtones!) are magic and miracle. My goal in writing this piece is to demystify the two terms and ground them in the secular context of addiction and mental health. Sounds weird, eh? Well, I have some help from a book I read a little while back, and I’d […]
The Peace of Wild Things 