Month: October 2019

Grateful Heart Monday

It’s Grateful Heart Monday, a time always dedicated to a single piece of gratitude from my life, which for today is for Jeremiah S., a sponsee who helped me to see that life shouldn’t be so black and white, especially when it comes to doing the 12 Steps.

I’ve sponsored in some fashion probably close to 100 individuals over the years since coming into the world of 12 Step recovery from addiction. I was taught how to do the steps by a woman named Lorraine many years ago and have ever since continued to teach this way to each of those individuals who’ve asked me to sponsor them. Unfortunately, I’ve also been a little too rigid in that process and have a number of times watched as sponsees moved on to other sponsors because of it. But then along came Jeremiah who walked into my life in somewhat of a strange way.

I had been asked by a friend if I was open to sponsoring someone at one point and said I really wasn’t because I had a full plate, but not too long after that, I had an opening because one of my sponsees went back out and decided that sobriety wasn’t for them. On a random evening shortly after that, I opted to go see a friend’s musical performance at a restaurant not too far from where I live. There, as I sat waiting to hear him play, I was introduced to a guy who too was also there to listen to the performance. He introduced himself as Jeremiah and somehow the topic of sobriety came up while we chatted. I came to learn he was actually looking for a sponsor and when I told him I was open to it, I found out that he was actually the one my other friend had been wondering if I had been open to sponsoring. I kind of saw this as God working in mysterious ways like God always seems to do in my life so I began the path of sponsoring Jeremiah pretty much from that moment forward.

One thing I came to learn pretty quickly about Jeremiah is that my style of sponsoring at times overwhelmed him, especially any time I attempted to push him through a piece of the 12 Step work. But, instead of totally quitting the step work, or ever moving on to someone else to help him, Jeremiah stuck by my side and continued to trudge through the steps, albeit at a pace that was much slower than my ego was used to. Upon reaching the 4th Step, which is the step I like to say separates those who really want recovery and those who don’t, I watched as Jeremiah hit a wall, like so many individuals I’ve sponsored do.

The 4th Step is one where a recovering individual takes a hard look in the mirror and finally sees all the damage they caused themselves and others from their life of addiction. Many don’t ever make it past this step and as month after month began to pass with Jeremiah taking a hard pause on this step, I thought that maybe it’d be best to not be his sponsor and move on to someone else who I thought would be push themselves more in the step work. I couldn’t even see my ego in that initially, but thankfully Jeremiah helped me to see it by finding a way to communicate it to me in a way I understood.

Over the course of just under a year, Jeremiah showed me that maybe I needed to become a little more flexible in the way I sponsor. He never stopped calling me every day, rarely missing one, consistently checking in, and slowly but surely, conquering little by little that Mt. Everest of a 4th Step. I’m thankful to say he’s now fully past it and has moved quickly beyond by both finishing the 5th and 6th step work. As he and I stand at the 7th step together now, I realize I’ve become quite proud of Jeremiah and thankful as well, for teaching me something with the 12 Step work that I never believed could happen. That no matter how much time one takes on any of the steps, so long as they continue to trudge forward sober, one day at a time, that it’s important to keep believing in them and their work, which I’m most certainly glad I did when it comes to Jeremiah. I see him so differently now from when I first met him and am blessed to see how dedicated he is to a number of things that includes his girlfriend, his job, his yoga, and of course his sobriety and recovery.

I don’t think I can be any prouder of him than I am and I’m truly grateful for how the student became a teacher to help me learn an extremely valuable lesson, one I’m not sure anyone else could have taught me. Maybe God knew that, so, thank you Jeremiah for coming into my life, for believing in me as your sponsor, and for proving that the path to recovery may not be so black and white.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Thought For The Day

Quote #1

“If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself.” (Unknown)

Quote #2

“Demonstrate love by giving it unconditionally to yourself. And as you do, you will attract others into your life who will love you without conditions.” (Unknown)

Quote #3

“You can receive all the compliments in the world, but that won’t do a thing unless you believe it yourself.” (Unknown)

Bonus Quote

“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You just need to accept yourself.” (Unknown)

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Daily Reflection

“The fact that someone else loves you doesn’t rescue you from the project of loving yourself.” (Sahaj Kohli)

I really continue to struggle defining my self-worth, even with many great insights made in my therapy sessions in recent years and even with all the other personal work I’ve done on myself. For too long, I’ve thought my self-worth needed to be defined by how much money I made or by the type of job I held or by how many close friends I had or even by the number of likes I got on the postings I made on Facebook or Twitter. Thankfully, I clearly see now though that it’s not healthy one bit to base it upon any of that, as looking outside of myself for self-worth has constantly led me to feelings of inadequacy because there’s always been someone else who’s had more money, a better job, greater friends, all while getting tons of more likes on social media. Regrettably, I’ve lived this way for years and it’s often led to me becoming overly depressed.

That’s why I started asking myself as of late, how do I REALLY define my self-worth with still not having a paying job, with the amount of health issues I continue to have, with so very few readers of my blog after years of writing, and with a very limited number of true friends that have stuck by my side through it all. As you can see I’ve truly struggled with a pretty negative image of myself and a low sense of self-worth.

A brother of mine in my men’s spiritual group recently told me that if I want to have any lasting self-worth, I really need to define it from within, not without, so I began trying that, which has proven to be quite difficult. Yet,  each day I am consciously looking now for things to define my self-worth that don’t come from outside of myself, that aren’t based upon some other person, place, or thing in life.

Things like the meticulous work I’ve done on my yard and gardens. Things like the unconditional love I’ve shown myself, my cat, and those few friends I’ve drawn close to me. Things like all the 12 Step recovery work I’ve done to help others with their addictions. And things like the social get-togethers I’ve coordinated between people who normally wouldn’t spend time together. Honestly, I never thought about any of those being things that could define my self-worth because for the most part, I’ve always defined it by how people see me, not by how I see myself.

Another big realization I made only recently when it comes to defining self-worth is that every act of self-care I do for myself, especially when I’m hurting physically, also helps to cultivate more of it, because so often in life I neglected self-care and instead allowed myself to go beyond my limits, hurting myself a lot more in the process. So caring for myself as I continue to heal on many levels actually improves my self-worth. Go figure.

Thus, I see now I have a long road ahead of me to totally reshape my self-worth from what it has been, that being consistently looking outside of myself for it, to what it needs to be, that being to look within for it. So, as I make a daily concerted effort now to see it in my own reflection, I’m hoping to start feeling a whole lot better about myself and my life in general…

Dear God, I truly do struggle defining my self-worth. I’ve looked quite a bit for others to define it for me for a long time now and feel pretty low more than not because of it. Help me God to cultivate my self-worth from within, and not from without, because I know in doing so, my outlook upon myself and my life will be a whole lot brighter.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson