Through the Red Door Blog

In his book The WISDOM of the ODYSSEY, Phil Cousinaeu writes: “If we want to grow up, or even down, into a more soulful life, we must learn to listen to others, appreciate that everyone we meet has their own troubles, their own grief and sorrows. The telling and the listening allow us to carry on.” (48).

As I read that I couldn’t help but think of storytelling as a way of healing and rebuilding in our Fellowship. Initially, I did not see that much importance in what people told one another, a lot of the time I did not believe such stories. I didn’t believe it because, upon reflecting, I realized that the stories of others were my story also and I didn’t want to believe it.

Cousineau writes “we must learn to listen to others, appreciate that everyone we meet has their own troubles, their own grief and sorrows.” I listened alright – but I did not fully appreciate what I heard. As I look back, I realize that, for that first year, I was in something of a fog. I was trying to understand this damn disease as it applied to me and yet I didn’t want to believe I had this disease. I couldn’t bring myself to say “I am an addict.”

It all came down to the simple statement, “If you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it….” I wanted peace of mind, I wanted the joy I saw in others, but I also wanted my friends, Daniels, Jameson, Walker, etc.

“If we want to grow, we must listen to others.” I am not alone in this world – although I often felt like I was while drinking and in early sobriety. The insanity of feeling alone and lonely and denying it, pretending it didn’t matter, pretending that I was happy being alone. I had to learn to listen, to pay attention and stop comparing my life story to that of others, in order to appreciate what was being shared by a fellow human being, another alcoholic.

To appreciate, to be thankful for, to be glad for, to be pleased that a fellow human being was willing to share his/her experience, strength and hope so that I could benefit from their life story and become more a part of the fellowship.

“Stay around long enough and you will hear your story being told” someone once said at a meeting. I seriously doubted that statement. After all, I had not seen another minister at any of the meetings I attended. Then it happened one night. An individual began to speak and suddenly I found myself listening to him. It was not just what he had done under the influence of alcohol, it was also the feelings he shared that hooked me. “He’s telling my story” I said to myself. I actually heard it and, thank God, I did not run away from it.

Tentatively, I began to share – although superficially, nothing deep and nothing that would embarrass me. As Cousineau wrote: “The telling and the listening allow us to carry on.” Although I was in, what I now know to be a dry-drunk – it was the telling and the listening that helped keep me coming back. I listened for more and the more I listened the more I became attached to this program that was beginning to save my life.

The Odyssey, is a story of pain, hurt, faithful and unfaithfulness, of blaming the gods for one’s mistakes, of being displaced, off course, on a journey home. That is my story. I met my demons, found a Higher Power, learned the meaning of faithfulness, took personal responsibility for my thoughts, words and actions and returned home.

The home I returned to I barely recognized. It took time, counseling, working and living the Steps, and having a trusted mentor (Sponsor) that helped me accept myself as I am and guided me into becoming who I was born to be and become.

The Journey is not yet over. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, perfect. However, thanks to listening to stories, learning to have compassion, respect and appreciation for others that I am who I am today. Today, I am happy, joyous and free and for this I thank my Higher Power and the power of storytelling.

Séamus D.
Séamus D is a semi-retired priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana.

As someone who usually writes about trauma and addiction, lately I find myself interested in joy. At first, I thought that this has to be a contradiction. But now, the deeper I go into studying grief and traumatic growth, I find it makes perfect sense. And as I study more about spirituality, I keep coming to joy.

But joy is not happiness. It is something sturdier, quieter, and far more mysterious. It is not what happens to us; it is what grows in us when we choose to stay grateful, and to stay connected—even, and especially—when life is not happy.

At first glance, joy looks like happiness’s brighter, louder cousin. We often use the words happiness and joy as if they’re interchangeable, as if they both live on the same emotional shelf. “I just want to be happy,” people say and it sounds like the same wish. But when I look at my own life, and at the lives of people I love, the moments I recognize as joy rarely showed up when everything was going my way. Joy arrived in fun times certainly, but it also showed up in hospital rooms, and in kitchens at the end of long, complicated days. Joy doesn’t erase pain; it glows inside it.

There is nothing wrong with happiness, of course. It’s wonderful, and we need as much of it as we can get. But happiness is fragile because life is fragile. When circumstances shift—and they always do—in recovery we say “life on life’s terms” —happiness scatters. A phone call late at night, a doctor clearing his throat, a child struggling in ways we can’t fix, or an aging body that no longer takes our direction.

Joy can come from my relationship with that something greater, like a Higher Power --which means I can feel joy even when I am not happy.

Joy has an odd relationship to pain. It doesn’t cancel it. Instead, it widens the frame. Joy is also deeply relational. Many forms of happiness are private: my success, my vacation, my good news. Joy, on the other hand, makes the circle bigger. We find it in shared meals, shared sorrows, in recovery circles, and in the rooms where people tell the truth.

When I look back on the seasons of my life, the happiest chapters are easy to remember—vacations, successes, celebrations. But the most meaningful moments, the ones that shaped me, are threaded with joy that was not dependent on things turning out well: Sitting with a friend in recovery, holding a patient’s hand in the hospital, telling the truth when it would have been easier to hide. None of those moments were “happy,” and yet each carried a sense of being fully alive to what mattered most.

I think about a memorial service I attended years ago. The grief was clear and raw and jagged. But there was also laughter—genuine, full-bodied laughter—as stories were told about the person we’d lost. Not nervous laughter, but laughter rooted in love. That room was not “happy.” But it was full of joy.

So, I no longer say, “I just want to be happy.” Happiness will come and go as it pleases, like weather moving across the sky. Instead, I want to be capable of joy. Joy doesn’t deny how hard life can be, but it refuses to believe that hardship is all there is.

***

Diane Cameron, Albany New York

Is it just me, or was this July filled with more 7^th step meetings than usual? It seemed that every meeting I went, even ones that were not step meetings, the topic was something about “Humbly asking God to remove my shortcomings.” Even my daily readers were all about the 7^th step because it is the 7^th month of the year! Does this happen every year? How did I not notice that?

Then it dawned on me that perhaps my higher power was trying to speak to me – over and over again! Perhaps it was important for me to hear the step in the Big Book as well as the Twelve and Twelve AND all the shares that I heard. So, what was the message that I needed to hear?

It has taken me almost the whole month to sort through the message to me. When I think about my character defects, I often find myself saying to myself – I’m working on removing it, or I want it to go away, or I ask myself, “why can’t I let go of this?” I think I believe that thinking means the effort must all come from me! The thing I don’t do is to ASK my higher power to remove them. I think it is all up to me!

About a month ago, my first AA friend in my new AZ homegroup died. Barb was 80 something and not in good health. When I moved to AZ, she welcomed me, invited me to lunch and we often visited before or after the meeting. I really miss her. After she died her husband let me know that he had packed up all the AA related things of hers.  She had well over 40 years of sobriety and had sponsored many women. Dave gave me two boxes of things! There were Big Books, Twelve and Twelves, Daily readers and other bookd as well as many coins (probably ones that had been hers) as well as bookmarks and small cards with the 3^rd step or 7^th step prayers, Acceptance, and the St. Francis prayer. I took all the books, cards and coins to my home group so that the women at the meeting could have something from Barb. She has been a member for many years.

One card in particular was a Daily Inventory card. On the left was a list of character defects and on the right was I list of character assets.  The card was small and could fit in my pocket. The next week I was the chair of the meeting and I brought the card. I told everyone that I had realized that I was struggling, and that Barb’s daily inventory card had shown me where I was making mistakes about the 7^th step.

First, I had to let go of all the WORK I was doing to get rid of defects and remember that all I am asked to do is ASK God to remove them and then LET GO and LET God. Then I realized that I hated to take inventory because I didn’t really know what to do when I let go. That second column of Assets rarely occurred to me. If I humbly asked for the negatives the be removed, my part could be to try to feed the assets and leave the rest to God. I carry the card now and each day I have been reading the Liabilities, asking God to remove them and then reading the Assets and be aware of how I can do my part! Thank you, Barb for your love and support in teaching more about my sobriety and AA. 

Libbie S.

My answer is this: “Since I surrendered and started working the Steps, I go to the weekly Tuesday meeting at East One or St X Noon to recharge my batteries and where I made commitments years ago to the Program of Alcohol Anonymous.”

Daily AA gatherings take place, and you’ll be welcomed at any AA group. That’s for sure, and they’ll ask you to return. AA meetings are sorta social events, one of seeing and talking with old friends, meeting a new person you’ve been working with, maybe you were the “coffee maker” that month, or perhaps you wanted to hear your sponsor’s lead, especially the story of his days of rage.

AA meetings are all that and more. We also attend AA meetings to listen to something we probably need to hear but maybe we didn’t know we needed to hear it. On the positive side, maybe it’s something you wanted to pass along to the new person you are sponsoring.

We’re reminded of our conduct while intoxicated. Yes, as a drunk, our fine suit or dress didn’t hide our condition.

Frequently, and probably at every meeting, we are reminded of Step Three and its call for us to turn our “will and our life” over to God as we understand Him.

Maybe someone you were just in conversation with before the meetings asks you if you ever had to deal with Step 8, “How’d you handle it?”

Maybe we go to that Tuesday East One meeting, and honestly, you’re not sure about this “Higher Power stuff” and they probably will start talking about it. Your standard response may be that “This Power stuff is old info for I know about that from my paster Fr. Stanley’s sermons.” But, come on! I’ve learned a great deal in various leads at East One and have studied AA writings. And in time, I felt Christ at any AA meeting.

There’s a highly personal aspect of AA meetings because there we have the chance to bring our questions. As a result, with time, I learned and believe He’s there. He can work with us, to help, to reach out His hand of fellowship. We learn we’re not alone. The interesting thing is that He may work through someone else at your “home” AA meeting who brings a question or thought or problem.

Sure, our home group provides fine social support, but the meetings bring more. Ask yourself, “What can I learn? How do I assist my friend who’s new to the Program, or has gone out again into that alcoholic forest”

Your High Power is already at that East One meeting on Tuesday at 8:00 PM, in the bank’s basement. Laughter often prevails before the meeting starts; during the meeting it may make an appearance and likely it springs out through the guest speaker’s Lead.

We are there for these and more reasons to get to those meetings whether on a Tuesday night in the basement of that bank or at Noon at St X in its basement.

Jim A, of St X Noon and East One, Cincinnati

“Alone no more” is what my first sponsor, Mary M, wrote on the back of the Serenity Prayer plaque she gave me to help celebrate my first AA Anniversary. And those three words sum up my 41 years as a recovering alcoholic/alanonic. I am alone no more…I don’t have to try to do anything alone…I have a posse, I am one among many, I belong.

My recovery journey, like that of many others, started in Adult Children, then I moved to Al-Anon, and then to AA. I was 37 years old when I got sober: it took me a long time to realize that I could be a mother devoted to her children, a professional woman, a faithful Episcopalian choir member and lector, and someone determined not to repeat the mistakes I had seen other people make—and still be a codependent alcoholic.

My finding the 12 steps was really the 12 steps finding me. One day in 1984, having just fired yet another therapist, I prayed to God, “Please—send me a group I can’t bs!” And sure enough, within weeks a friend told me about the disease of addiction, the possibility of recovery, and the different kinds of 12 step programs.

When I was 15 months sober (I waited until I had passed the one-year mark!), I moved from the small New Hampshire town where I had started my recovery to another small NH town. As soon as I moved (40 years ago), I immediately went to an AA meeting in my new town. People greeted me as if I were the long-lost cousin they had been longing to see. They gave me their names and their phone numbers and urged me to come back. They told me about other meetings in our town and in towns around. I sure knew that I was not alone, even though I was in a new place and the names and faces were unfamiliar.

Even so, a few days later I crashed. The newness of everything was overwhelming. Where were my friends?  Why didn’t I see my sponsor at the meetings I was going to? I was miserable and scared. Yet, I did what I had been taught to do: I found the piece of paper where I had written the names and numbers and I called Sandy, one of the women I had met at my first meeting in that town. Sandy listened to me for a few minutes and then she said, “I’ll be right over…give me your address.” So, I did and she did. She came and sat with me and let me cry about everything I had left behind and how bewildered I was that I had packed up and brought myself and my kids to a whole new town. And she showed me, in her person and in her presence, that I belonged.

And for 40 years, I have lived and learned and laughed and loved in that beloved community with those beloved friends. I have attended countless AA and Al-Anon meetings and heard thousands of stories. I have watched people stay sober and serene and reach out for help from the group when they were faced with every kind of joy and sorrow. I have learned that I can’t do it alone and I don’t want to do it alone---what’s “it”? Live.

I have learned that the 12 Steps of Recovery really do have the answers to life’s problems. That with the fellowship and the program, there is “there is no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too great to be lessened.”

In 2020 there was a profound shift in my (our) recovery. The world went into lockdown, but the 12 Steps found a way to unlock the doors. “Alone no more” took on a new Hollywood Squares-ish meaning. We learned how to Zoom. For me and many of my friends, new kinds of meetings and meetings in new places began to happen. Even after the quarantine ended and we were free to move about the world once again, we realized how expanded our worlds had become. For a few of years, I went to a Zoom meeting that was centered in Las Vegas. I visited there in 2023 and so I met many of my dear AA Zoom friends in person! Because of Zoom, I have been able to attend Al-Anon meetings with the group where I had started out in 1984. The world is large and solid. The program and fellowship continue. None of us are alone. We belong.

And here I am, having moved to a new home in a new state just 12 days ago! And I already have friends here. For the past year, I’ve been Zooming in on some meetings that now I can attend in person. When I walked into my first meeting in this city, people recognized me and I knew who they were. The promises do come true!

Thanks to our amazing 12 Steps, we know that we are never alone. There is nothing we can go through that someone else in our fellowship hasn’t already gone through and stayed sober and serene throughout. We look each other in the eye and promise, “You belong here. Alone no more.”

By Christine H

“The answers will come if your own house is in order. But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven’t got….Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of the past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of happy destiny.” *

“The answers will surely come…” Heck, I didn’t know the questions to ask. I didn’t want to be here. I told my boss I’d stop drinking and go to meetings. That’s all I really knew about Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh, and do the steps – whatever that meant. “Fake it till you make it” sounded like a good idea to me. I had no real idea about this disease as it applied to me.

And Fake it I did. What is fascinating about the process of faking it is that it begins to soak in. I got comfortable with the meetings. I shared (superficially), I led meetings. And, in time, I realized that I wanted what they had and I didn’t know how to get it and was too proud to ask.

Then came the day when I had that “ah ha” moment – “I am an alcoholic” and I needed to do the work necessary to become sober, not just a dry drunk. Honesty, Open- mindedness, Willingness. These three were the basic ingredient to sobriety. This meant, I learned, not only working the steps but living them.

As I completed my fourth and fifth steps the answers came to my unspoken questions “Am I really an alcoholic? Was I that bad? Did I say those things?” Memories began to flood my mind; not complete memories but ‘flashes’ of moments that I thought were fun and now I’m seeing in a different light.

Then came the making of Amends and more answers came to unasked questions, and I learned more of my behavior. I was not the person I thought I was. What was happening to me was that I was not owning my behavior and learning to accept myself as a human being who made mistakes which I made under the influence of alcohol and drugs. I was now “cleaning away the wreckage of the past.”

“But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven’t got.” Until now, I did not have peace of mind, I did not have sobriety – I was a dry drunk. Not being able to do this on my own, my only choice – if I wanted what they had – was to listen to the good advice, to the direction for living sober, offered as a suggestion by Bill because the experience of the early AA members was that this is what worked for them. Abandon, let go, trust and all will be well. I reconnected with the loving God whom I experienced in earlier years.

“We shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.” I never met any of those who co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous or were part of the early growth of the Fellowship. And yet, I feel their presence when I read our “Big Book.” They are here with me in Spirit. At times I can hear Bill read the book to me.           

I prefer the word “hike” to the word ‘trudge.” I loved to hike in the woods, take in the sounds, and smells, and watch for the variety of life that makes the woods a living sacred place.

To hike the Road of Happy Destiny is, for me, today, to work the steps, to live the program, to immerse myself in the Fellowship, and to give thanks for this gift of life on a daily basis.

Séamus D

Séamus D is a semi-retired episcopal priest in New Orleans diocese.

*ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. 3^rd Edition. 164

Every Recovery Sunday at my parish, and for our quarterly diocesan 12-Step Eucharists, we read Prayer 56 from the Book of Common Prayer:

"O blessed Lord, you ministered to all who came to you: Look with compassion upon all who through addiction have lost their health and freedom. Restore to them the assurance of your unfailing mercy; remove from them the fears that beset them; strengthen them in the work of their recovery; and to those who care for them give patient understanding and persevering love. Amen."

The acknowledgment that our Lord ministered to all who came to Him reminds me of my own active addiction and early recovery.

Throughout my addiction, I prayed for God to help me. Granted, they were what most people call "foxhole prayers," but I believe God heard them and answered them. I prayed not to go crazy and jump out of a window like the stories I was hearing on television in the 1960s and 1970s. I prayed, "Please let me come down from this drug and not be like this forever." I prayed not to get arrested and go to jail. I prayed not to overdose and have my son wake up and find me dead.

With every prayer came a promise: I would never do it again.

Eventually, I began to think God was simply going to let these terrible things happen to me because I had made the same promise over and over and never kept it. Then came my final prayer before getting clean:

"Dear God, please help me. I can't stop."

Within a week, I was in rehab.

Was it a coincidence? I don't believe so. Was God hearing my prayers and answering them? I believe He was.

It wasn't only God's compassion that I experienced. At the time, I was working as a church secretary. The compassion and mercy shown to me by the people there—the staff, the Daughters of the King, and other church women—helped remove my fears and strengthen my recovery.

I continued to pray for God's help.

Help me be willing to go to any lengths to stay clean.

Help me accept the things I cannot change and stop trying to control everything outside my little hula hoop that isn't going my way.

Give me the strength and courage to be honest, to open up to my sponsor, and to share honestly in meetings.

Help me stay out of relationships and learn that I don't need a man in my life to be okay.

The prayers were many.

Was God answering them? Was simply admitting I needed help giving me the strength to do what I needed to do? I really don't know, and it doesn't matter.

Just as my foxhole prayers were answered, these prayers in recovery were answered as well. I regained the freedom to choose not to use drugs, to make healthier decisions, and to live life without the need to escape through substances.

It took a village to walk with me through early recovery—the 12-step fellowship I attended, and still attend nearly four decades later, along with members of my church who offered patient understanding and persevering love.

As we approach the Fourth of July and celebrate the freedoms represented by Independence Day, may I never take those freedoms for granted. Most of all, may I never take for granted the freedom from active addiction that has been given to me.

Recovery is possible. Freedom from active addiction is possible. Through the grace of God, the support of others, and the life-changing principles of the 12 Steps, that freedom can become a reality.

May I continue to share this good news with others, so that they too may find freedom from active addiction.

The other day I was listening to an essay on our local public radio station and a man was describing his experience of interviewing Mr. Rogers, and what it was like to be in his presence for an hour. He said he was struck by the simplicity of Mr. Rogers and his calm centeredness. He described the impact of that meeting and how he later, after Mr. Rogers died, remembered the change in himself as a parent.

He had wanted to be an entertaining father to his kids but one day it came to him that Mr. Rogers was never entertaining. He recalled that Mr. Roger’s was just himself, and that the message he conveyed to little kids was: It really is OK to be yourself. “There’s no one like you” Mr. Rogers would tell children, “No one just like you” and “I’m glad you’re my friend.”

It seems that Fred Rogers had landed on that paradox that people in recovery know so well as addicts and addicted people. It’s that thing the Big Book talks about: being an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. And this message from Mr. Rogers is the perfect antidote to that complicated personality dilemma: We want to be special but we feel so insignificant. Or, we feel we are not enough so we try to puff up and be a big big deal. “There is no one just like you,” Fred Rogers says and it’s all there: no need to puff up, you are special as you, but so is everyone else. It’s like the statistical improbability of Lake Woebegone: Where all the children are above average. In a sense we are all above average despite what that does to the averages.

This man on the radio said that he caught himself being a clown to his own kids and buying them things, and trying to be the “great dad” when he could simply be “their dad”

He said, in his closing and this shot through me to my core: “I realized I could simply be a glass of water instead of a can of Coke.”

I understood immediately. So often I want to be a can of Coke because I think I have to be to be enough. And even after so many years there is still a part of me that does not get it that I am enough. Or I think of the recovering woman sitting next to me in any meeting: “Well, she may be enough, but not me”.

A glass of water rather than a can of Coke. I think I need to be shiny and red and sugar sweet instead of cool and clear and simply thirst-quenching. Is there anything more thirst quenching than a glass of water? Anyone more relaxing to be around than a person who just is?

Yes, this is another way to say “Be yourself,” and “You are enough.” But I like this question: Am I trying to be a can of Coke or glass of water?

A glass of water is enough.

Diane C.
Albany, New York

When I find myself down and stuck, a random prayer I have put in a drawer somehow suddenly appears. I may find it on the mirror in my bathroom or tucked into a book. It could be on the dining room table or in the pocket of some pants I wore a few days ago.  Every time I run into one, I stop and read it and then say it out loud. It’s a God Shot.

Here are a few I found this week:

1. God, today help me set aside everything I think I know about You, everything I think I know about myself, everything I think I know about others, the world, getting older, my faith etc. etc. etc. And everything I think I know about my own recovery –

So, I might have a soft heart, an open mind and new experience with all these things. Please help me see the truth.

2. God – Please help me let go of fear and embrace your will. Please surprise me

3. Please take me where you want me to go
Let me meet who you want me to meet
Tell me what you want me to say
And PLEASE keep me out of your way

There are so many!  Today as I looked through them, I found more! 

I forgot I had Prayers in Recovery from Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church! You could get one at: https://www.episcopalrecovery.org/

A few weeks ago, I chaired a meeting and shared the complete Serenity Prayer. Most of the people there had not heard. So, I shared it and found that this prayer most often was the only one I needed.

“God grant me the serenity                          
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking this world
As it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that God will make all things right
If I surrender to God’s Will;
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with God
Forever and ever. Amen.”

Libbie S.

In his poem “Undressing”, Rumi writes “Learn the alchemy true human beings know: the moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given,/ the door will open./ Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade./ Joke with torment brought by the friend./ Sorrows are rags of old clothes and jackets/ that serve to cover, then are taken off. / That undressing,/and the naked body underneath/is the sweetness that comes after grief.”

Little did I know what I was getting into when, for the third or fourth time, I finally accepted “I am powerless over alcohol that my life has become unmanageable.” “I am an alcoholic and an addict. My life is unmanageable. I need help.      

“...the moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open.” One door after another opened and the phrase, “more will be revealed,” became a way of life’s surprises and I looked into my life of alcohol and drugs. There was nothing glamourous about it.      Once I accepted the reality of my disease, then the learning began. The student was ready and the teacher came.

The door into my emptiness opened wide. The values I proclaimed to live by were gone and I did not see them go as I was having way too much fun. The door into my loneliness and isolation opened and I had to accept that I had pushed away many good friends and then began to believe “they were not real friends anyhow.”

And even as the door opened, one of my difficulties was in accepting the reality that I was now facing. “Embrace whatever is hurting you,” said my therapist. I knew that line. I too was a therapist. And yet, that is what was needed to bring about the healing of the torn body within.

“Joke with torment brought by the friend.” Learn to laugh. Learn to laugh at some of what you said did. Learn to laugh at your pride and prejudice. Learn to laugh at all those notions you had about yourself and your greatness. “You are one of us. You are a fellow traveler on the road to wholeness. . We all make mistakes and it’s okay. Let’s continue the with the cleanup.”

“Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, then are taken off.” I had bundles of “rags of old clothes and jackets” that served to cover my fears, my emptiness, my longings, my lowering self-image. The room that was once filled with strong values was now littered with broken promises, values that one were my honor were now shattered and broken.

And so, I asked for help, found a Power greater than myself that began to restore me to sanity and, more often than not, I call that Power, God. Good Orderly Direction. Gut Orientated Dialogue.

The direction I took was to follow the steps, become rigorously honest with myself, God and another human being. I wrote. I cried. I wrote and wrote and I laughed. I cried. This undressing was painful and, as yet, no one saw my nakedness but myself. There was too much grief for me to go naked into the world.

“The undressing / and the naked body underneath,/ is the sweetness that comes after grief.” The doors that opened to show me my past, that left naked on the floor the wrongs of an unhealthy way of life, now opened doors to inner strength, an inner awareness, that I was being healed. I had cried enough. Now it was time for gratitude. Today, I am a grateful alcoholic and drug addict. I am grateful that I am alive to tell my story, to make amends and “to seek only knowledge of God’s will for me and the power to carry that out.”

“…the sweetness [harmony; freshness, wholesomeness, lovability,] that comes after grief.” Put it another way “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half-way through. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it, we will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.…. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”

Séamus D.
Séamus D. is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Louisiana.