Quote:
We should learn not to grow impatient with the slow
healing process of time. We should discipline ourselves
to recognize that there are many steps to be taken
along the highway leading from sorrow to renewed
serenity...
--Joshua Loth Liebman
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For me recovery is about two things, healing and change.
Although I suffered physical violence, the emotional and mental scars go much deeper and take longer to heal.
Originally posted on another site in 2004.
There is no visible scar, and often we don't know that it is there, but the body does remember and it will surface one way or the other.
I think that it is the reason a lot of the abused become abusers.
My problem my friend was that I shut down and shut off my feelings since I saw my brother killed when I was three and he was two. I didn't know what I was doing, but I was told in treatment, that we shut down emotionally when we experience our first traumatic event. That could mean I shout down at one year old because I had a birthmark removed at a year old and was badly burnt and hospitalized for a week at 18 months.
I never felt anything to deal with it. I started long before I became a practicing alcoholic.
As my friend says, "I didn't get this way overnight, I can't expect to heal overnight, this is not a quick fix program. It is a one day at a time program, and I pray each day for the awareness, clarity, inner knowing and healing I need each day and be open to my truth and be honest with myself. Self honesty goes along way toward healing and then I need the acceptance of what is in today and be willing to do what ever it takes in order to recover.
It isn't about the other people in my life. I had to stop the finger that was pointing to others and look at the three fingers coming back at me.
