Sometimes, when we are in the midst of pain and grief, we become shortsighted, like members of a tribe described in the movie Out of Africa.
"If you put them in prison," one character said, describing this tribe, "they die."
"Why?" asked another character.
"Because they can't grasp the idea that they'll be let out one day. They think it's permanent, so they die."
Many of us have so much grief to get through. Sometimes we begin to believe grief, or pain, is a permanent condition.
This couple of paragraphs has always caught my eye when reading this book. Part of recovery means walking through our pain. For me, this was not at the beginning, it took me a while to understand recovery and build enough recovery skills to be able to even face the pain and walk through it. I needed all the tools I could find.
The most painful part of my recovery is when I had to accept that my son was truly an addict, that I could not save him, and that if he didn't find recovery for himself he would surely die. This kind of pain no mother should ever have to face. It was the darkest period of my life.
But recovery had brought me support and my wonderful friends here stood by me and encouraged me by telling me that the pain would end one day, once I had walked through it. And I learned that the only way through it was to face it straight on and keep going. I prayed more than I have every prayed in my life, I held on to the hands that supported me, I cried and I kept working my program in faith that it would take me through this. It did, and I came out the other side blessed with peace, serenity, acceptance and faith that God could do for my son what I could not.
There is a time when we think the pain will never end, like that tribe in Africa. There is a time when we think we are not strong enough to keep walking, but we are with the support of our recovery family, and there is a time when we surrender our struggle and learn to live in faith that the world is exactly the way it is supposed to be.
A gift of recovery is that we do make it through the pain, and we rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of victimization to the light of survival. We survive and we learn to live well, just as life intended.
Hugs