Just a thought… There’s a lot of things we all wish we could have done differently. But if you spend too much time of your life trying to change the past, your biggest regret will be that you spent your life wishing to change a ‘done’ past when you could have been changing an unwritten present and future. [baggagereclaim.com]
As always, you can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.
Thank you for coming in and we’ll start with a wish for peace for Ukraine. For strength, for triumph and for healing. For Canada and the US and the rest of the world to come together within their own borders and support Zelenskyy and his courageous forces, and beat back the murderous thug Putin. May the bright joy of sunflowers power your day and your week.
Mine is fueled by a sense of well-being in our own embarrassingly abundant and joyful lives: baking three days in a row, twice with our grandson, who scooped out the cookie dough and helped with a cake mix. An angel food cake with money tucked into waxed paper packets inside for Lauren’s birthday; I don’t know why I didn’t think of “angel food” before. But now, every time we serve a cake for dessert, little Jane insists on candles and blowing them out after singing Happy Birthday…to her. Jane, we’re gonna need more candles.
Our hearts were also boosted by a small gathering of six friends yesterday to catch up and share some laughter. My glass was filled with alcohol-free wine, as it has been now in some form or another (actually more often than not now tonic water) for 1002 days. Saturday marked 1000 days since I finished that last half-bottle of wine I had carefully meted out as I chose to quit, just a few weeks before entering seven weeks in rehab.
I haven’t told you much about those weeks and I’m sure there are some people with questions. I’m not exactly sure why I went, except that I needed help, not with the drinking, but the whys of it. In the two, almost three years that have passed since coming out in the month of August, I have turned my attention to the spiritual side of my life: the life that we chose, the ones that await, and stuff I alluded to in Thursday’s journal.
Don’t worry – I’m not going to go into that every time or even any time at all in the future. But it’s just how I’ve shifted my focus. Sobriety has allowed that.
Sobriety has let me read and read and read at night. I’ve got no fewer than three books on the go right now, two about spirituality and a third a murder mystery. I set out on Facebook last week to collect people’s recommendations and there are a whole lot of great ones just waiting to be downloaded onto my Kindle.
Sobriety has let me write more – and a new story: The Big Bad Wolf visits Piggies’ Cove – drops tomorrow on Drift – for free. We’re almost at our month’s end of all listens contributing to redcross.ca through our sponsor enVy pillow, by the way. So give it a listen. Do good while enjoying great sleep stories, won’t you?
Sobriety has let me wake up without the remorse and terror of what I might have said, done or put on social media when my filters were soggy and my basket all out of damns to give.
But best of all, it’s put me even more in a place of service where when people write and say they think they might have a problem and want to stop, ask what I did. Ask how they can do it. They want what I have and that’s the best side effect – the best hangover, if you will – of sobriety there is.
And I will always tell them that they will never ever find a safer and more welcoming place than an online or in-person AA meeting. Ever.
And so on we go…cautiously and masked. Protecting not just ourselves, but those who have compromised immune systems or need our protection. It’s such a small thing to do, and as some people saw in the weather this weekend, and the rest of us witness the increasing cases of the BA.2 virus, the winter of Covid is not over because we will it so or because those in power want it to be over.
If we could simply wish things away, the fields in Ukraine would be dotted with germinating sunflowers instead of tanks and shells. If we could wish things away, Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl and the family of his friend and drummer Taylor Hawkins would not be in such pain today at the death of Hawkins at just 50. If we could wish things away, seeing our flag would bring pride and not anger at those abusing it for their own causes. If we could wish things away, our country would come together stronger than before in appreciation of the freedoms most of the world would and have killed for.
Once again, Jane, we’re going to need more candles.
I’ll be back with you here on Thursday.