Originally Posted by
silentrun 
I love this. I've started turning into a bitter old woman 8 years in because my inner narrator is getting out of hand. I used to do things like that so maybe that's part of my problem. I'm also going to check into the chanting you suggested.
I think about things like this because my recovery was anything but graceful. All the good suggestions given here I didn't do and just waited for the wall to fall down and kept moving along my recovery. It worked but now my tools are only venting and waiting.
I came up with one that helped me with some of the people I know who drive me up the wall. I imagine David Rose standing by me and making faces at their comments.
My own inner narrator vacillated from Joe Pesci to Morgan Freeman in the early days. Morgan seems to be taking up more and more space these days
Life is such an interesting thing. I'm not anywhere near 8 years but I do know that I cannot afford to be in the mental or emotional place I was in all the other times I got sober. I didn't have a healthy recovery in all those attempts. I just removed the drink and half assed some tools. I felt miserable. We don't know what we don't know.
I am grateful now for all the relapses. The relapses taught me that If I want to be happy in sobriety then I better work a million times harder and keep finding "tools" to get better. Its mental. All mental. Maturing emotionally. Now its all about growing in the positive and maintaining the positive. Hard work for sure.
Nichiren Buddhism (the chanting I speak of) has literature that is about harnessing the power of our lives and turning poison into medicine. Its about winning. Not being defeated and overcoming any and all challenges. The heart of NIchiren Buddhism is happiness. Finding happiness and helping others to be happy. I have not known happiness. True happiness. The deeper solid stuff that is unwavering. With all the trauma, abuse, neglect from childhood to the trauma, abuse and neglect I put my own self through, its not any surprise that I felt adrift and completely lost to the beauty that this world holds. That will not be the story I continue to write and tell. I am creating now. Living. Finding moments where laughter has me falling off a chair and its real. Each day is new and fresh and I don't feel so overwhelmed with cyclic thinking that is destructive to my being. Who wants a dark cloud following them around all the time? **** that!
All that being said, Its a work in progress and that is what is beautiful about it. I am no where near where I envision myself. That is also beautiful. The vision of the future. We all get to find our medicine. We all get to choose the road we walk. Work in progress for sure. All of us.