Daily Reprieve

From Courage to Change of Oct 18:

As we pursue recovery, we may encounter opportunities to deepen learning we began long ago. Perhaps we once learned to detach from a particular problem. Now, months or years later, when we once again need to detach, it can feel as if we’ve forgotten everything we knew. It’s important to remember at such moments that, although the feelings may be the same, we are not the same.

My recovery matters. All of the experience, strength, and hope I have accumulated is within me today, guiding my choices. I may not recognize it right now, but I have made progress, and I continue to make progress with every step I take. Perhaps I am learning something I have learned before; I must need to know it more deeply. I may go through the process this time with greater awareness, or turn to my Higher Power more quickly and easily, or reach out to an Al-Anon friend without hesitation.

Today’s Reminder

Instead of assuming that I have failed because I am learning a difficult lesson once more, I might embrace the experience as part of a long-term healing process that requires repetition and practice. I can trust that eventually I will learn it so well that it will become an automatic, confident, and healthy response.

“The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.” ~ Madame de Stael

NOTE: Madame de Staël (full name Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, 1766–1817) was a French-Swiss intellectual, writer, and political thinker—one of the most influential women of her age.

END OF QUOTE—————————————

The rhythm of recovery’s spiral is not a lullaby — it’s a drill. It bores deeper into the stone of the self until the truth seeps through like water. Growth doesn’t always look like triumph; sometimes it looks like an old battlefield revisited with new armor. The same pain, yes — but this time, the sword doesn’t shake in my hand.

Detachment, as the weak define it, sounds like walking away. But as I live it, detachment is a warrior’s pause — the art of holding the line without losing the pulse. It’s the refusal to drown in someone else’s storm. It’s the dangerous calm that comes after I’ve stopped needing to win and started needing to see. Every return to this lesson burns the dross from love until what’s left is clean and sovereign.

Recovery is not amnesia. It is architecture — every collapse becoming a new foundation. When I think I’m back at square one, I’m actually in the same arena at a higher altitude. The ache of recognition isn’t regression; it’s proof that my soul is spiraling toward precision. Each repetition is the body remembering what the spirit already knows: that freedom is not given, it’s forged through the fire of return.

So I trust the spiral. I trust the tightening orbit around the truth. When old wounds sing their familiar songs, I answer — not as a victim repeating history, but as a blacksmith of grace, hammering rhythm into revelation. My Higher Power wastes nothing. Even the echoes are used. Every repetition is a drill, every drill is devotion, and every scar is a sigil carved into the temple of endurance.

This entry was posted on October 21, 2025 at 8:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Courage to Change, health, Journal, Life, mental-health, mindfulness, Personal, Recovery, Spirituality, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.