I always thought my life would never change. I figured my parents would live together forever; that I would stay disappointed with myself, and that people could never be trusted. I grew up alone, isolated, and afraid, without a purpose or direction.
As I free-floated my way through life, I felt sure life had nothing to offer me except a job sufficient to pay for my drugs of choice and enough men to go around to make life interesting. Until it didn’t.
The more life spins out of control as we try to manage the unknown, the more insane our lives become. Professional help and recovery teach us to take baby steps in accepting life on life’s terms. If you were like me, active in my disease when life got really real, then chances are, this is for you.
Recovery for us becomes that flimsy reed we grasp to keep us grounded and above-board with ourselves, the God of our Understanding and others. It’s here we discover we can relinquish fears that never materialized and turn our attention on where it needs to be: on our Higher Power by letting Him 
control everything and everyone else. With the assurance that Higher Power is situated snuggly in our side pocket, life unfolds around us in the manner and in a time unknown to us. We don’t condemn ourselves to extremes of always or never any longer. Each day is unique as we try now, to live in the grey, in the middle of black or white.
As we learn we deserve the same care and thoughtfulness we so freely give to others, sober recovery shows us the way to love and nurture ourselves. At the same time, we feel sure we are shored up with a new reserve of patience, as our lives now are re-created in peace and understanding. Whatever comes our way now and however life unfolds, we take comfort that if it was supposed to be different, it would be, and we trust it.
Without reservation, we come to accept the fact that we are a full-time job, prepared to face and handle whatever comes before us in the daily realm of surprises. There is no room in sober recovery for negativity and old thoughts and behaviors that do nothing to enhance forward motion on our journey. Life-on-life’s terms comes freely and we gratefully embrace our twenty-four hours for the gift that it is. With practice, we become free to let go of the darkness of negativity and the the insecurity of our own resolve, including the need to control. The belief that our lives would never change dissolves as the power and the soundness of our spiritual beliefs illuminates an otherwise dark road.
What freedom there is to be a warrior in recovery, facing life on life’s terms just for today, handling and taking care for whatever unfolds. We join our Higher Power in walking through and overcoming whatever comes our way for this is the essence of life-on-life’s terms in recovery.
“If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”– Thich Nhat Hanh
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Be on the lookout for the soon-to-be-released “Changing Our Perspective, Steps to Open Our Hearts to Our Highest Self” Available in Amazon on or before October 15, 2021. Visit Harriethunter.org often to visit this and other