Topic for the week: Acceptance
“Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes.”
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, Page 417
When I first got sober back in 2015, I was spiritually, emotionally and morally bankrupt upon walking into this program. I had more wreckage than I even knew what to do with and the shame I felt ran deeper than I knew how to handle. I could barely even look at myself in the mirror. The year prior to getting sober, I unknowingly was doing a first step. I was stuck in a cycle of praying to God in my journal to help me get sober & then I would find myself blacking out from drinking on a regular basis. I felt completely helpless. I was a shell of a human that last year. I did know yet understand the power that acceptance would have in my life. It was in October 2015 that God placed on my heart that enough was enough. He told me to get help and showed me the way to an IOP & from there I found AA. Once I fully surrendered to the fact that I was an alcoholic, that’s when acceptance and healing could begin to take root. Since that time my life has had a dramatic shift. I’ve went onto be extremely successful in my professional life, made living amends to my husband and my now teenage daughter and have grown to love myself as a sober woman of dignity and grace. I’ve had the opportunity to clear the wreckage I caused while in active addiction. I am not the same woman who I was back then.
In January 2023 God told me that I was going into a year of acceptance. I thought I had already fully grasped that concept, but I came to realize that acceptance of myself and others was something I genuinely lacked in my recovery program. Last year I had endless opportunities to show compassion, empathy and understanding towards many people that came in and out of my life. I was even in a car accident last March and was able to have acceptance and forgiveness towards the driver who smashed into me immediately after the accident occurred. I choose not to carry my anger with me because as an alcoholic I know this becomes a resentment, so I have to forgive immediately and have total acceptance around the circumstances. I have learned that true self acceptance is loving myself right where I am at today. Acceptance is the key to my happiness and peace of mind. It’s something I have learned that I need to practice in all my affairs. Without acceptance of people, places and things – I can not experience serenity. So I choose my peace and make acceptance an intentional practice every day. That is one of the ways that I stay in fit spiritual condition.
Today, I live a life I never thought possible. I attend an AA meeting every single day because it’s my medicine & I’m clear that as an alcoholic, that is what I need to stay sober one day at a time. I sponsor other women and have a sponsor who I love dearly. I have worked the steps many times over the years. I know that I will forever be a work in progress and that’s okay. I have complete and total acceptance in the fact that I am an alcoholic who needs a program of recovery to have a daily reprieve. I’m so grateful for what this program has done for my life and that I get to call myself one of the lucky ones. Thank you for letting me share.