A little program in the day.

When my marriage was taking its last breaths and I was freshly sober and working with my first sponsor, I was an anxious, paralyzed mess. Here was my self-fulfilling prophesy fulfilling itself, years of self-evident beliefs becoming truth: My husband did not love me, I was unlovable, people will always abandon me, nobody can be trusted, everybody lies.

My young and grace-filled sponsor gently, insistently reminded me that everything happened for a reason, that it was God's plan and that it would be okay. I would be okay. I did not believe her. To believe her would have meant I had to shift my perceptions in cataclysmic ways. This would have required a 7.5 earthquake.

Instead, over the years, I've experienced minor temblors and my view is starting to shift.

I need to hear something hundreds of times before it sinks in. At every meeting, people talk about faith. I had no faith, but thankfully I didn't need it because the rooms are full of proof. People can tolerate difficult life changes--divorce, death, loss, and unmet expectations--and be okay, even learn something from the experience. Some, in hindsight, even begin to view the trials and enormous roadblocks thrown into their lives as gifts. This is the proof I need. Proof of faith.

Now I have some proof to share. The last three years have been difficult--end of marriage, financial fears, two teenagers--but I am okay. Work has showed up when I needed it to pay my property taxes. Here's the thing: I believe that I will be taken care of, although what I'm given may not always be what I want.

I wrote this in the margins of page 65 in my big book: Willpower is my thoughts. Life is action.

For me, willpower is not pushing myself to go to the gym or pass on dessert. It's the voice, not always kind, that's trying to direct the way I feel about things: You will never find the job you want because you did not go to a good university; nobody will want your novel because it's not great literature; nobody will want your novel because it's not commercial enough; your stories only get published in tiny literary journals where the editors/undergrads will publish anything.

I have spent years of my life worrying about things I can't control, namely the future, but also other people, climate change, politics, and the economy. I believed that life was a veil of tears and full of hardship or luck, there was no in between. I was going to die fighting or win the lottery. Everything I had was given to me by mistake or as a payment for something I was going to have to pony up for in the future. This is my will talking. The action to keep that will in check? I make a gratitude list and, suddenly, things start looking like gifts.

“The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs.” ~James Allen


I just read that quote on Tiny Buddha. You can read the whole post, but basically the writer says that our lives are shaped by experiences which we then turn into beliefs. For instance, if you spent your whole childhood being fed a food, say strawberries, that made you sick, you would eventually believe all strawberries were bad and avoid them. When you read the newspaper, you would give extra attention to stories about e coli outbreaks--See? your self would think, Strawberries do make people sick!

Maybe the strawberries your family fed you were always bad? Maybe you just got unlucky? But avoiding strawberries as a child served you well. Now that you're grown up, you're missing out. If you want to enjoy shortcake and smoothies and sorbet and a lot of other lovely things, you have to challenge your beliefs. This is very SCARY and there is no way around the scary part. Sorry.

It helps to hear stories from other people who have eaten strawberries and been okay. It also helps to have a lovely woman hold your hand and tell you that you'll be fine. I will be fine. I am okay, no matter what happens.