Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday where I continue to start each week off with a slice of gratitude from my life, which for today is for something a close friend of mine said to me recently about a certain trait of mine, one that only developed because of all my 12-step recovery work.
Before I mention what that trait is that my friend said he appreciated so much and touched my heart, leading to this very piece of gratitude, it’s important to note that I once was a very untrustworthy person, who gossiped incredibly, and always got mad when people didn’t open up to me, never once looking in the mirror as to why they weren’t.
Considering that, a few weeks ago as I dropped my friend Lee off at the airport after his visit and had just given him a hug goodbye, he told me that while he wasn’t the type of person to ever really open up to people, he felt safe and comfortable doing so with me and that I was a person he believed he could talk to about anything, which said a lot for a guy like him, who truly is more of a listener in life than a sharer.
When I think back to all my active days of addiction, I never would have heard those words from anyone. Because most people saw how I went from person to person sharing things originally said out of confidence to me. Sometimes those private things made their way back to the person who shared them in confidence with me and even then, I’d make excuses, saying something like “I didn’t know it wasn’t meant be shared” rather than owning my character defect and doing the work to change that toxic part of myself.
If there is one thing that I know about myself today, it’s that I’m not that person anymore. Rather, I am a trustworthy person. I have had many people over the past decade during these hardcore years of recovery work share very deep things with me because they’ve seen my 12-Step dedication to being a spiritually healthier person. I’ve become a repository of sorts now of people telling me one thing after another that they wouldn’t ever tell another living soul. Sometimes it’s hard to hear some of those things, but I give gratitude to God for being a person now that people can come to and open up with about things they probably wouldn’t ever do with any other individual.
So, I’m grateful today on this Grateful Heart Monday, for Lee reminding me of that. I’m thankful to be far more of a trustworthy individual nowadays and that I occasionally have people like Lee who remind me of this, as it truly does show that 12 Step recovery works.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
