By Thoughts of Recovery
It all started with a radiator.
It was a small thing—just a coat of paint, a modest act of restoration—but it had felt like a ceremony. A ritual of re-becoming. I’d painted it slowly, mindfully, in the quiet space at the back of the house that used to be a storage room for toys and forgotten laughter, and was becoming, slowly, a sanctuary for peace and creativity.
It had taken shape with my recovery, that room. Bit by bit. Brushstroke by breath. Stillness had moved in before the furniture. Silence, before the words.
Then came Bertie.
He had returned every morning for over a week now, always around sunrise. A small, plump hedgehog who never scurried, never fled. Just… appeared. Present. A little sage in a spiny coat. We’d grown comfortable in our odd companionship.
But this morning was different.
I woke early—before 5am—drawn from sleep by something soft but insistent. Not urgency. Invitation.
The sky was still dark, but already loosening its grip on the stars. I stepped out into the cool hush of the garden. The earth was holding its breath.
Bertie was already there.
He stood near the rosemary bush, backlit by the faintest silver glow of the coming dawn.
“You’re early,” I whispered.
He didn’t turn around. “So are you.”
I sat on the picnic bench, hands on my knees. “I don’t know why I’m up.”
“You’re listening again,” he said. “You’ve been hearing something call.”
I closed my eyes and let the breeze speak across my skin. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was tuning in. Maybe I was learning the difference between noise and signal.
“I’ve been thinking about Step Two,” I said after a while.
“Ah,” Bertie murmured. “Yes. The hinge step.”
I looked at him. “The what?”
He turned now, his eyes reflecting the shifting light. “It’s the hinge. Step One opens the door—admits you can’t keep going the way you were. But Step Two… that’s the turning. The gentle swivel toward possibility.”
“I’m supposed to believe,” I said quietly. “In something. In a Power greater than myself.”
Bertie nodded. “Belief doesn’t come like thunder. Not in the Way. And not here either. It comes like morning light. Slowly. Softly. You don’t will it. You allow it in.”
I looked at the sky. It was already changing—violet giving way to rose. “What if I’m not sure I believe in anything yet?”
“You don’t need certainty,” he said. “Just willingness.”
I thought about that. About how my whole life, I’d tried to control belief. As if faith were something you grabbed. But here, in the stillness, I began to feel it differently. Like a rising. A current. Not mine to command—but mine to join.
Bertie climbed onto the bench beside me. “Do you remember the radiator?” he asked.
I smiled. “Yeah.”
“You didn’t know if the paint would hold. Or if the room would ever feel warm again. But you painted it anyway. That was faith.”
I nodded, slowly.
“You didn’t wait to believe in the whole house,” he added. “You just started with one small thing.”
I felt tears sting my eyes, unexpected. Not grief. Not even sadness. Just release.
Step Two wasn’t asking me to know. It was asking me to hope. To trust that something—something—could begin to restore what had been lost.
Not because I deserved it.
Not because I could earn it.
But because life, like dawn, insists on coming.
I looked at Bertie, who was now watching the sky with a look of old peace.
“You’re saying I don’t need to define the Higher Power?” I asked.
He gave a low chuckle. “Why would you put a fence around the sky?”
We sat together in the rising light, neither of us saying much.
The birds began their slow song. The air grew warmer. Somewhere deep inside me, a door I didn’t know I had began to open. Not all the way. Just a crack.
But that was enough.
To be continued…
Message for those in recovery – Step Two:
You don’t have to understand the dawn to trust that it will come. Step Two isn’t about theology or certainty—it’s about opening a window inside yourself and saying, “I am willing.” Willing to believe that healing is possible. That something greater than your pain is quietly, patiently waiting for your yes.
Keep painting the radiator. Keep sitting in silence. Keep showing up at dawn.
And when your own Bertie turns up—be ready to listen.
The Hinge
The radiator was a beginning.
A simple thing.
A coat of paint,
a quiet act of care,
yet it held the weight of return.
Return to self.
Return to stillness.
Return to breath.
In the back of the house,
where laughter had once been stored,
in boxes marked childhood,
a sanctuary began to unfurl.
Not all at once.
But in the way morning arrives,
first the hush,
then the hue,
then the warmth.
This is how the soul remembers itself.
Bertie came.
Not as a miracle,
not as a vision,
but as a hedgehog.
Small. Whole.
Unhurried by the world’s noise.
He didn’t teach.
He was.
Presence in a spiny coat.
This morning,
before even the birds had stirred,
I woke with something soft within me,
a summons,
not from alarm or fear,
but from within.
A whisper without words.
A note in the melody of becoming.
Outside,
the stars were loosening,
the earth still wearing its night skin.
And Bertie, already there,
stood beneath the rosemary,
bathed in the breath of the coming dawn.
“You’re early,” I said.
“So are you,”
said the Way.
I spoke of Step Two.
Of belief.
Of Higher Powers and hesitant hearts.
Bertie spoke of hinges.
Of how doors do not open
without something to swing upon.
“You don’t need thunder,” he said.
“Only light.”
“You don’t need proof,” he said.
“Only permission.”
“You don’t need to name it,” he said.
“Only to let it name you.”
Faith is not a firework.
It is a radiator repainted.
It is silence invited in,
before words have found their shape.
It is the breath you take
before you know if the air will nourish you.
You do not have to believe
in everything.
Only in the next brushstroke.
Only in the turning.
Only in the dawn
that comes even when no one is watching.
Step Two is not a demand.
It is an opening.
A crack in the door,
where light begins to enter.
It does not ask you to run.
Only to sit,
to stay,
to listen.
Even now,
the sky is changing colour.
Even now,
the silence is saying your name.
Even now,
a small creature waits by the rosemary,
not to teach you,
but to remind you,
you are already turning.
Let the door swing.
Let the light come.
Let belief arrive
in its own soft time.
