If you attend 12-Step meetings you’re bound to hear a bunch of corny sayings like “Denial is not a river in Egypt.” You’ll either laugh or roll your eyes dismissively. Where you’re at with your recovery has a lot to do with how information gets filtered through the addict-mind, what your ears pick

I have been holding Santosha (contentment) retreats for four years. This year is my fifth. Each of the topics is designed to investigate and address something that harms our contentment; preventing us of enjoying peace. This year I am presenting aspect of letting go. What is so difficult about letting go? Why do we hold

  Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Step ten is, in many ways, an ongoing version of steps four through nine. With step ten we take a quick inventory of the day or a specific situation, identify our part in any problems, and, when necessary, we self-correct and

  When you are unhappy, depressed, anxious, etc., it’s usually because you’re not getting your needs met. This is especially true when your partner or a loved one is in active addiction. Addicts focus on meeting their own needs and the needs of their addiction, and give little to others. That doesn’t mean they don’t

  I didn’t realize it at first, but I’m sure it was there. After countless days of coming home to them passed out on the couch, after so many bright mornings lost to drunken tirades, after so many little moments turn into major splinters, you slowly see what has been creeping in that dark space

The reality is 2017 is just about over, and you have less than a week to live out any goals you may have set for yourself for this year. So now may be a good time to pause and reflect on what has and has not transpired for you over the past year. As an

  With the ever increasing demands on us to function in our high pressure world, many of us find we live in a constant state of high alert and anxiety. I myself, spent over a decade in sustained high stress situations (probably longer than that if the truth be told) and having to deal with

For recovering addicts, the holidays are a dangerous time of year. At the very least, we must deal with holiday expectations for love and connection and merry making. Often, we think our holidays should look like a Normal Rockwell painting, and when that doesn’t happen we feel disappointed, pressured, anxious, not good enough, and maybe

Active addiction blew my mind. It blew out my nervous system in much the same way as it disconnected me from others, my spirit, and my core. This is a true fact. Whether you have been addicted to a substance or a behavior addiction hijacks your nervous system and can bring real harm to how

If you grew up in a family where one or more family members repeatedly violated boundaries and wasn’t held accountable for their bad behavior, you may believe there are certain people with whom you don’t have a right to establish boundaries. This is simply not true. Often, people think about boundaries as attempts to keep