Courage to Change:
In the past, many of us learned to make choices strictly on the basis of our feelings, as if feelings were facts. If we were frightened about taking a certain action, for example, then it was best avoided. There was no middle ground and no room for more than one feeling at a time.
Part of Al-Anon recovery involves learning that feelings aren’t facts. I am a complex, fascinating human being with a wide range of emotions, experiences, and thoughts. There is more to my identity than one feeling or another, one problem or another. I am a wealth of contradictions. I can value all of my feelings without allowing them to dictate my actions.
Today I can feel anger toward someone and still love them. I can feel afraid of new experiences, yet move forward through them. I can survive being hurt without giving up on love. And I can experience sadness and still be confident that I will be happy again.
Today’s Reminder:
Today I am learning to embrace my complexities and contradictions and to be grateful for the richness they bring.
“Life, for all its agonies… is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing…and whatever is to come after it — we shall not have this life again.”
– Rose Macaulay