August 15

COURAGE MONTH: DAY 15: “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” ― Winston S. Churchill

And there is NO end…even when we think it is all over, there is always more to know and to learn and to see and to hear. Always more…this is good news and this is scary news sometimes.

Even if the only success we can see in our lives is our willingness today NOT to drink or use, that is the best it may get.

Between yesterday and tomorrow, there will be many successes that we can look back and see. Every achievement we gather is a process. Relationships occur over a time frame that is conducive to that relationship. Marriages, children, careers, education…these are all things that can hold many successes and many failures within a spectrum of time that is a process.

We do not learn to cook a gourmet meal in one day, it is usually a process of learning that is cumulative and acquired over time. A successful sports team is only successful after many, many hours of practice and work toward that achievement. Even, then, they often experience great failures in the process.

All of life requires day-to-day process, without letup for us to consider ourselves successful or not at anything we may do.

I can be a good writer on some days and not so good on others. Then there are moments when a sentence I have written brings me to tears. The same holds true for my hiking and my gardens and everything else that I choose to do. I only became a successful wife in the last months of my husbands’ illness, when I knew what I was there to do and did it. That was not what I believed about being a good or successful wife until that time. There were days when I knew I was a miserable failure, because I am so selfish and self-centered.

And so it goes. A great actor has nearly always had some roles that were dismal to reflect upon. Every athlete has golden moments and many dark hours when they did not know how to go on. I am sure we have all had those days or moments when going on did not even appeal to us, because we did not know how to do it. This is our humanity and what we are here to do with one-another.

Recently, some folks have been discussing the whole concept of working with others in this thing. The best I know how to do is continue to be the cheerleader for 12-step recovery…I don’t care where you get it…I know where I get mine and it comes from several sources because I qualify for several kinds of 12-step recovery. So I get what I need when I need it and where I need it. The best I can do with the work that I perform in the world is to continuously know that I was given words…and I use them to continuously cheer for the healing I have found in 12-step recovery. That is all I can do. I don’t get down to citing paragraph or page, because that is not my deal. I use whatever groups and whatever meetings and whatever writing I do to encourage and cheer for those who are going in that direction. Some will dip their toes and not stick around (they are in the vast majority), others will engage with me and move into relationships with others doing something similar or a bit different.

I cannot become attached to the idea that I know the only road…I barely know my own road…there is a distinct difference in those two phrases, one that can keep me on track if I remain mindful of it. But I do not consider any moment spent “sharing” with others the miraculous events that have occurred for me in this arena…and cheering for the amazing things I have seen and done and felt and witnessed, to be wasted or them as failures.

I have words, and I have a voice and I have a spirit that is indomitable and happy, joyous and free. My only task, and here I cannot fail (except to fail to perform it) is to use those things to cheer others on who are walking in this direction or even opening the door a crack to peek inside. What I have learned over all these years of doing it is that 25 or 30 years later, those folks come back around and tell me they hear my voice every day, reminding them of the things that I felt were important for them to know about healing and love and light and the spirit of a Universe where all of this can happen…and does…at least for me!