Addiction - Healing- Recovery Archives - Page 4 of 20

Addiction- A perfectly normal response to unhealed, unacknowledged, unsupported, long-term, ongoing trauma.

Trauma is an experience that overwhelms our capacity to process and integrate what is happening.

The Cost of Emotional Inheritance

Break the Cycle. Starting Now. To the people who were older, and on whom I relied to teach me about love, trust, and connection: The messaging—that your encampment in your ways was more important than me—wounded me deeply, from my earliest recollections. It left me believing it made sense to marry a person who would also leave me feeling this way: Invalid, overwhelmed, panicked, sidelined, benched, discarded, dismissed, denied, anguished, alienated, banished, persecuted, shamed, abandoned, unworthy, alone, non-essential, unprotected, unwelcome,…

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March 31, 2022

Addiction - Healing- Recovery

Mountain Bike Meltdown: A Story About Power and Parenting

My older son loves mountain biking—loves it. Sweet Greg introduced him to it and supported him for more than five years. Since buying his current bike, my son has grown almost six inches, and he’s been researching new bikes and ways to earn money for months. The next bike will be bigger, more specialized, and more expensive—and bikes are still hard to find because of the Covid backlog. Both boys worked hard last week to tune up and clean their…

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June 28, 2021

Addiction - Healing- Recovery

Me Too: Finding Connection Through Shared Pain

Me too. Not necessarily hashtag‑MeToo, but “me also”—and sometimes, yes, #metoo. Since I no longer attend live, face‑to‑face 12‑step meetings, this is my meeting. What I always got from in‑person meetings was hearing people articulate feelings and experiences that I had never been able to put into words. It’s a pivotal moment when you realize you are not terminally unique, not alone with the pain and confusion that saturate every relationship touched by addiction, abuse, neglect, or mental unwellness. Before…

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May 29, 2021

Addiction - Healing- Recovery

What Shame Does

Nothing good has ever come from shame in my life. It never faded on its own, and when I didn’t face it, it made me unwell — and it spilled onto the people around me, especially my children. Brené Brown describes shame as “an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging… I think the fear of disconnection can make us dangerous.” That lands for me. Shame pushes us to…

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September 22, 2020