recovery
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The Things Logic Cannot Feed There is a peculiar poverty in a life that has learned how to explain everything. We have become suspicious of mystery. We want to know why the child died, why the marriage failed, why the heart broke, why the stranger appeared at precisely the right moment. We dissect our suffering…
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We have a strange habit of explaining away the things that should stop us in our tracks. I have carried a needle full of Hepatitis C into my body. I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun. My heart quit beating at twenty-seven. We speak about miracles as though they belong to another century. As…
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I spent years trying not to feel. Not just pain. Joy, too. Longing. Grief. Love. Wonder. The whole unruly mess of being human. I learned early that some feelings seemed too dangerous to touch. Trauma teaches you that. Addiction reinforces it. Before I ever put a needle in my arm, I was already looking for…
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If you’re grieving, you’re not failing at anything. You’re just human in the rawest possible state, stripped down to what can’t be argued with or managed or optimized. There are days when the heart doesn’t feel “broken” so much as shattered early and quietly, like something cracked in childhood and you only learn later how…
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Jesus keeps setting tables in the strangest places. I know because I’ve stumbled into a few of them. A child’s bedroom where something sacred was being violated. A house full of secrets. A girl learning too early that the world could be beautiful and monstrous at the same time. I thought I was abandoned there.…
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Introspection — what better way to start a week. Question: Do you easily call out the deception in your abuser(s) or do you deny what you see? One of the easiest ways to stay outside of healing and freedom is to deny what you see. As children, if you came through childhood sexual crimes, you…
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Jeremiah says God already knows the plan. That line lands differently when your childhood was a demolition site…when trust was not a given but a gamble. When the adults meant to be load-bearing walls turned out to be paper props & you grew up sharp-eyed, feral with insight, suspicious of every promise. Hope sounds like…
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The devil rarely tempts you with anything that looks like evil. That would make it too easy. He comes offering what seems manageable. Reasonable. A small permission you can live with. I know this because I took those permissions. My fall didn’t begin with addiction or self-harm. It began with the quiet decision to override…
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For the next 12 days, we are returning to posts from the past that have been the most popular with YOU! Here’s our 6th post as a nod to our readers. C-PTSD ~The Cost of Childhood Trauma I turned 56 this July (five years ago). My daughter bought me a book titled, The Complex PTDS…
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The pull toward “living authentically” is strong. People chase self discovery like it’s a sacrament. We’ve built a culture that runs from authority and breaks out in hives at the idea of submission, so authenticity stepped in as the last moral compass. It isn’t enough to tell the truth anymore. You’re expected to honor your…