Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. -- Eleanor Roosevelt
When we were using alcohol and other drugs, we often thought that we were different from others. We secretly thought that no one could understand us. Maybe we tried to be one of the group, but we were lonely.
Now we know for sure - we are different from others. Everyone's unique. We all have this in common. Being like others helps us feel safe and normal. But we need to feel good about the ways we're different from others too. We think a little different, act a little different, and look a little different from anyone else. We each have our own way to make life better for others.
Prayer for the Day
Higher Power, help me be an individual. Help me use my special gifts, not hide them.
Action for the Day
Today, I'll make a list of the things I'm good at. I'll think about how I can use these gifts.
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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~Dr. Seuss
My parents were very different from each other. One came from the mid-West and the other from the east. One from the city and the other from the country. They met during WWII at Kelly Air Force base where they were both stationed, and I was conceived there. They argued about everything, how to say the short 'O' in frog, what foods were best, how to raise us kids. If I said 'frahg' my mother felt bad,, and if I said 'frawg' my father felt bad. What was I to do? I 'disappeared' into alcohol and didn't say much of anything, or asserted something defiantly. After all, we all hve to be the same, don't we?
The kids at school were very intolerant of being 'different'. The girls all did this, and the boys all did that. Everyone wore this this year. There was the 'in' crowd, which if you weren't part of made you 'out'.
But I am unique. There is a song,, that Sammy Davis, Jr. sang.... "I've got to be me. I've got to be me. What else can I be but who I am? " "Me" was suicidal for many years, and when I am rejected, as I have been often, for not being who someone else thinks I should be, or wants, or needs, that still triggers the idea that I am not what or who I should be. But God made me who I am, I believe,,, and I don't have to be what someone else thinks I should be, according to their personal standard of perfection.
It took a lot for me to learn that: that someone else's standard of perfection is just their own personal thing, and is not any real criteria for me. In fact that is why I came to these rooms here,,, if anyone remembers - I had gotten into a relationship with another alcoholic who kept putting me down, and I was losing my own recovery. It didn't help him or me to keep blaming things on my shortcomings, and it didn't help me to keep buying it.
I'm glad to say, that now, a couple of years later, I have progressed a lot in being 'me', and in being the best me I can be according to Step 11, and accepting that I am not 'perfect' according to any standard, but that that is okay. And that I'm happier to be just one of the masses now,, more balanced,, neither wanting to be prominent, nor hiding.
love in recovery,
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
