A Spiritual Experience Is Messy

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A Spiritual Experience Is Messy

I have always been a girl with an imagination. It’s a blessing and a curse really. I hate scary movies because if I believe it’s possible that it could happen in real life, it becomes too real for my consciousness. Until I was old enough to truly separate imaginary from reality, life was full of fear, but also overwhelming possibility. I remember being crushed when I found out Santa Claus wasn’t real. I remember using the Ouija board to communicate with my dead relatives at the age of 12. Call me crazy, but deep down inside even as a child, I felt intuitively special. I felt in touch with my inner voice. My sister and I still joke around about how I said I had psychic abilities because there were times when I would predict the phone would ring before it did.

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7 Things I Learned At My First ICYPAA

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7 Things I Learned At My First ICYPAA

Do you ever feel like you were just destined to be friends with someone? You meet and it's not weird at all. It's like you've known each other for years. It's a rare quality in a friendship and I got to experience it this past weekend. I finally met my online friend Beth after catfishing her for a year and a half (I kid.) Our paths crossed in the rarest of circumstances. We both wrote about our sobriety and our posts both got picked up by the Huffington Post in May of 2014. We both wrote each other emails and discovered we shared the same sobriety date. Just like that we became friends. We started talking, texting, and snapchatting daily. A year and a half later, I finally met her in the flesh and blood when she came to Florida last week. Beth came down to go to ICYPAA - the International Conference for Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous and I went with her.

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10 Reasons Why Being Alone is Awesome

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10 Reasons Why Being Alone is Awesome

Being alone is often thought of as lonely, boring, or even a waste of time. I find this is especially true among addicts and alcoholics. If you're anything like I was, being alone is like hell. I thought being alone was for losers. I tried hard NOT to be alone. I surrounded myself with people, parties, drugs, and alcohol just so I didn't have to be alone. I never realized at the time that I was doing this on purpose. It wasn't until I got sober that I realized I hated to be alone with myself. Being alone meant thinking about everything and I hated to let my mind wander. Alone time meant beating myself up, questioning my whole life, my existence, and constant anxiety about where my life was headed. It made sense that I chose to occupy my life with fake friends, nights out at the club, and literally anything else that would keep my body and my mind busy. I couldn't figure out why there were people who actually enjoyed being alone, staying in on the weekends, or even, ::gasp::, people who quiet their minds on purpose.. also known as meditation.

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10 Name Concepts For Your Own Higher Power

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10 Name Concepts For Your Own Higher Power

Now that I've been attending AA for about 5 months and I'm working the 12 steps, I've had to explore the concept of a higher power. Like I've mentioned in my previous posts, anything with the word God attached to it used to make me cringe. I would run far far away from whatever it was. Organized religion and the word "God" still don't sit right with me, but what I love about AA is that it has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with spirituality.

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Alcoholism, A Spiritual Sickness

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Alcoholism, A Spiritual Sickness

Lately I've been thinking a lot about my spirituality. The concept of spirituality is new to me. I didn't grow up in any type of church or religion and most of the time I consider myself to be borderline atheist. I guess I always associate religion with God and those two things have caused so much fighting and heartache in the world, I never understood people's deep connection to it. Spirituality wasn't something I ever thought about in the past or even considered for myself. I assumed it wasn't for me.

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