Recovery Quotes - Page 2

Don’t ever forget you are beautiful, although your life, your past and your present situation may be ugly. You are beautiful.

Just because you may live your life in recovery, surely doesn't mean the PARTY IS OVER, Nope!, it just means you can remember what you DID LAST NIGHT!".LOL

Political prisoners describe:- extreme physical and emotional torture- distortion of language, truth, meaning and reality- sham killings- begin repeatedly taken to the point of death or threatened with death- being forced to witness abusive acts on others- being forced to make impossible "choices"- boundaries smashed i.e. by the use of forced nakedness, shame, embarrassment- hoaxes, 'set ups', testing and tricks- being forced to hurt othersRitual abuse survivors often describe much the same things.

It's crazy, how similar we are. Here's both of us, working through our stuff, trying to make something positive out of something really bad.

Eradication of pain, deviant, or oppositional behaviors does not indicate healing; however, it can signify successful conditioning.

Is it bad to like the way the scars look on my skin? Oh, the way they feel under my hands. My body’s protecting itself, saying, “No, this barrier of scar tissue is to keep you out.

It all made sense — terrible sense. The panic she had experienced in the warehouse district because of not knowing what had happened had been superseded at the newsstand by the even greater panic of partial knowledge. And now the torment of partly knowing had yielded to the infinitely greater terror of knowing precisely

Making amends is not only saying the words but also being willing to listen to how your behavior caused another’s pain, and then the really hard part…changing behavior.

One of the hardest things was learning that I was worth recovery.

Rather than assuming weakness or defectiveness, we should acknowledge that getting through depression requires considerable strength. Rather than assuming permanent debility, we should recognize that some depressions are followed by thriving.

Learning to let go is not giving up! It is simply passing the burden to a better fighter, so you can fight another day. (God)

You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.

Recovery itself is a very un-glamorous daily process of being willing to fall down again, to break again, to cry again, to get up and try yet again until ‘success’ manifests as ever-greater sustained healing.

Even when everything hurts, even when other cities are exploding and people we love are disappearing, there’s still space for sweet things.

If you are looking for love under rocks or bringing home water moccasins, you might be confusing love and pain.

Then the long nights, that were also days, in the hospital. And the long blanks, that were also nights. Needles, and angled glass rods to suck water through. Needles, and curious enamel wedges slid under your middle. Needles, and - needles and needles and needles. Like swarms of persistent mosquitoes with unbreakable drills. The way a pincushion feels, if it could feel. Or the target of a porcupine. Or a case of not just momentary but permanently endured static electricity after you scuff across a woolen rug and then put your finger on a light switch. Even food was a needle - a jab into a vein...("For The Rest Of Her Life")

In some ways, com­ing to terms with my­self and work­ing to­ward re­cov­ery has been like say­ing “I love you” to some­one but keep­ing a loaded gun hid­den in your back pocket, just in case that per­son pisses you off enough.

Perhaps that’s the best way to recover, to return to the way things were before as quickly as we can. We won the Great Battle, so nothing needs to change.

Sometimes we take leaps of faith, and sometimes we take tiny steps. Even the tiniest step can require a lot of courage. Like climbing out of denial and admitting my real need for help. Like trusting someone who said I wouldn’t die from eating a bowl of pasta, and taking another bite. Like reaching for a pen or a yoga mat when what I really wanted to do was reach for a cookie. Like searching for a smile in my heart when my mind was busy screaming about how sad and serious I should be.

Food is something I am going to have to face at least three times a day for the rest of my life. And I am not perfect. But one really bad day does not mean that I am hopeless and back at square one with my eating disorder. Olympic ice skaters fall in their quest for the gold. Heisman Trophy winners throw interceptions. Professional singers forget the words. And people with eating disorders sometimes slip back into an old pattern. But all of these individuals just pick themselves back up and do the next right thing. The ice skater makes the next jump. The football player throws the next pass. The singer finishes the song. And I am going to eat breakfast.

I don't have the perfect roadmap drawn out, but I do know which roads I'll never drive down again.

At this very moment, you may be saying to yourself that you have any number of admirable qualities. You are a loyal friend, a caring person, someone who is smart, dependable, fun to be around. That’s wonderful, and I’m happy for you, but let me ask you this: are you being any of those things to yourself?

No one will come and save you. No one will come riding on a white horse and take all your worries away. You have to save yourself, little by little, day by day. Build yourself a home. Take care of your body. Find something to work on. Something that makes you excited, something you want to learn. Get yourself some books and learn them by heart. Get to know the author, where he grew up, what books he read himself. Take yourself out for dinner. Dress up for no one but you and simply feel nice. it’s a lovely feeling, to feel pretty. You don’t need anyone to confirm it.

If you do not cultivate your life's environment, you will not captivate the worlds enlightenment.

You’ve got to reach bedrock to become depressed enough before you are forced to accept the reality and enormity of the problem.

Its front porch had a beautiful view of the water and invisible screening to keep the jellybugs and stinkmoths at bay. I wove mats for the floors and painted sincere, klutzy seascapes for the walls. Piece by piece I assembled chef-quality cooking equipment, learned how to use it, and achieved a state of domestic competence that would have astounded my long-suffering ex-wife, Joanna.

Reality may not be what you want it to be, but it is the reality you now must face. You can deny this reality and try to wish it away, or you can accept it and not waste any energy on wanting it to be different.

The truth is, we tend to train people how we want to be treated. If others know you have wishy-washy boundaries then they are free to walk all over you; the results…you become a doormat. We have actually trained others to do this when we will allow people to wipe their muddy feet on us. After all, we are doormats.

You become a house where the wind blows straight through, because no one bothers the crack in the window or lock on the door, and you’re the house where people come and go as they please, because you’re simply too unimpressed to care. You let people in who you really shouldn’t let in, and you let them walk around for a while, use your bed and use your books, and await the day when they simply get bored and leave. You’re still not bothered, though you knew they shouldn’t have been let in in the first place, but still you just sit there, apathetic like a beggar in the desert.

The key problem I encounter working with wounded, depressed, and unhappy people is a lack of connection…starting from a disconnection from themselves and then with others. This is why love often becomes so distorted and destructive. When people experience a disconnection from themselves, they feel it but do not realize the problem.

Any life wasted or spent is gone and it will never come back.

No matter how smart we may think we are, no matter how committed we are to our truth, we can lose our way.

Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.

If one looks at a balancing scale putting “fear of change” on one side and “status quo” on the other, they are often in balance. Change is hard. We tend to accept our condition and no matter how painful, we will not change until the balancing scale is tipped - only when the discomfort becomes greater than the fear of change does the scale tip.

Something they seem to omit to mention in Boston AA when you're new and out of your skull with desperation and ready to eliminate your map and they tell you how it'll all get better and better as you abstain and recover: they somehow omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. Not around pain, or in spite of it.

Willpower, though important in its own way, is never enough. In order for you to be truly powerful, you must open up and trust in something beyond yourself—something you cannot prove for certain.

Would they be cheered by their recovery, or marked for life by their trauma?

Why lie, Robert? Why lie? You know that lying is the alcoholics kryptonite, you can’t afford it, the reasonable voice in his head screamed.

I used to think a drug addict was someone who lived on the far edges of society. Wild-eyed, shaven-headed and living in a filthy squat.That was until I became one...

Hope is made of air, and wishes. An empty box wrapped in shiny paper.And now Dad wants me to be the ambassador of hope for his foundation. How can I be the ambassador of hope, when hope doesn't change anything? When unrealized hopes only bring pain and despair?

The power of hope! Even a lack of ambition can, for a time, pay off as a necessary facet, as long as hope outweighs it.

Her eyes bled from venomous anger...Her flower had been gruesomely deflowered...Her life had slowly turned into a blunder...There was no more thinking further....She would rather become a Foetus murderer Than end up a "hopeless" mother....Of course, she found peace in the formerUntil later years of emotional traumaOh, the foetus hunt was forever!The only thing you should abort is the thought of aborting your baby. Stop the hate and violence against innocent children.

It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing.

Hollowness: that I understand. I'm starting to believe that there isn't anything you can do to fix it. That's what I've taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mold yourself through the gaps

So at family gatherings… I try to stick to the acceptable script. Indeed, I discover that the less I say, the happier everyone seems to be with me. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off as a paraplegic or afflicted by some tragic form of cancer. The invisibility and periodicity of my disorder, along with how often I border on normalcy, allows them to evade my need for their understanding. And because our most enduring family heirloom is avoidance and denial of pain and suffering, I don’t need much prompting to shut myself down in their presence.

History dressed up in the glow of love’s kiss turned grief into beauty.