A Serious Embrace

The flowers featured in today’s post came from a recovery friend. She was inspired to pick flowers and share them, just as we choose recovery and share it. Vibrant colors and inspired actions often follow darkness and suffering. Sadly, some follow the darkness and end their own lives. On one recent day, I heard about two suicides. One was a past acquaintance, the other a friend’s relative.

For some, addiction contributes to their choice to take their own life. Addiction is potent, baffling, a serious illness. Ongoing recovery from it is serious work. “Daily work for my daily disease” is one of my mantras. Do the work. Listen. Repeat. If I do the work, what I am listening to is healthier. If I don’t do the work, my default thoughts, toxic and tantalizing, start to get louder. Do the work. Listen. Repeat.

Some days are a grind, in recovery and in life. Some days my job invigorates. Other days it depletes. Some days the writing flows and other days it comes out with some effort and pushing. Life is like that. Recovery can be like that.

I am emphatically reminded at times like this, when lives succumb to pain and illness, how very precious and fragile this life you and I have is. We are vulnerable and we will know pain. We do ugly things to ourselves and others, and yet we are beautiful beings worthy of love.

Behind the flowers in this picture, the words “Embrace it all” can be seen. I embrace my recovery friends. I embrace my family and the life we have together. I embrace the spiritual journey that never ends, the transformation that keeps unfolding. I embrace it all and it keeps me tethered to a desire to live. A deep, grateful desire to keep experiencing what life keeps bringing.