Daily Reprieve

From Courage to Change of Oct 26:

I remember others’ unkind words vividly. Criticism sent me reeling. Snickers crippled me for days. It never occurred to me that I was being abused, or that the harsh words could be untrue. Everyone seemed to know just how wrong I was, and my identity was bound up in a knot of shame. My self-esteem sank lower and lower.

I, in turn, treated others cruelly. I found it great fun to assault someone’s character in the company of friends. For a few minutes I felt better about myself — but not for long and only at other people’s expense. Gossip never enriched anyone’s character. It was only an excuse to avoid focusing on myself.

Today’s Reminder

Many of us tend to react rather than act. When we hurt, we may want to strike out and hurt someone else. In Al-Anon we learn that we can interrupt this automatic response long enough to decide how we really want to behave.

Someone else’s unkindness is no reason for me to lower my standards for my own behavior. When I take responsibility for my actions, regardless of what other people do, I become someone I can be proud of. When I feel good about myself, it’s much easier not to take insults personally

“If one throws salt at thee thou wilt receive no harm unless thou hast sore places.” ~ Latin proverb

END OF QUOTE—————————————

NOTE: There’s no credible named author for the “Latin proverb.” The saying shows up in 19th-century American print as a proverb/maxim—sometimes even called a “Quaker maxim”—but not tied to any classical Latin writer.

• Earliest hits found in AI directed search are U.S. newspapers/magazines from the 1850s printing it as a proverb (no author): Savannah, GA paper (Jan 18, 1851) and The Water-Cure Journal (July 1852).
• A later retrospective explicitly calls it a “Quaker maxim.”
• Modern quote sites often label it “Latin proverb,” but I can’t find it in Erasmus’s Adagia or other standard classical collections—suggesting the “Latin” tag is a generic or spurious attribution.

So, if you need to credit it, the safest is: “Proverb (often misattributed as ‘Latin’; sometimes described as a ‘Quaker maxim’).” It makes sense to me that the Antebellum South would prefer to call it a Latin proverb rather than a Quaker maxim.

END OF NOTE—————————————

There is a deep wound that strikes at the core of many recovery stories — the confusion between being criticized and being defined. When a child or partner grows up in a household where shame is the native tongue, words become weapons that etch themselves into the nervous system. The body keeps score — not only of trauma, but of tone.

This confusion is not a misunderstanding; it is a crime scene. Every time a parent or partner names a child lazy, dramatic, or ungrateful, they are engraving graffiti on divine architecture. Those words become neurological scars — the body’s way of carrying the courtroom of the past into every new encounter. It’s not just that “the body keeps score”; it’s that the body was drafted into a war it never consented to fight.

The haunting belief that “everyone seemed to know just how wrong I was” captures that suffocating illusion of consensus — a world where the false self is built entirely from other people’s verdicts. Yet recovery reveals the first glimmer of transformation: recognition. Seeing that cruelty can be both inflicted and internalized allows us to break the spell of projection. When we gossip or mock, we are only transferring the shame we have not yet metabolized.

But reflection is not retreat — it is reconquest. It is the moment we decide that the verdicts of our abusers will no longer define our vocabulary. That we will no longer carry their tone in our throats. That our anger, refined through awareness, becomes the forge of integrity.

Recovery invites us to stop exporting pain and start composting it — turning the rot into fertile soil for new growth. Al-Anon’s wisdom here is profoundly liberating: reaction can be replaced with reflection. The pause between impulse and action is the doorway to self-respect. And when we act, rather than react, we reclaim authorship of our own story.