By Thoughts of Recovery
It was one of those late summer mornings that clings to everything—warm air, buzzing stillness, the scent of lavender and sun-warmed wood.
The kind of morning where nothing rushes, and everything is fully, unapologetically itself.
I was sat on a fold-up chair at the end of the garden, barefoot in the grass, notebook on my lap. Not just any notebook. A fresh one. Blank pages. Heavy cover. The kind that dares you to be honest.
I was on Step Four.
“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
It had taken me weeks to get here. Not because I didn’t want to move forward, but because I knew what this Step asked: to face myself. Without flinching.
And part of me still wanted to flinch.
“Big day, eh?”
I didn’t even look up. I knew that voice.
Bertie, the hedgehog. Friend, teacher, occasional Zen heckler.
“Yep,” I said. “Big day.”
He climbed up onto the garden bench like a general inspecting the troops. “Inventory time. Fearless. Searching. All the fun words.”
I gave a nervous half-laugh. “Feels like I’m digging into a compost bin and hoping to find treasure.”
“That’s not far off,” he said. “Though what you’ll find is mostly muck. But muck is where the roots grow.”
I opened the notebook. Touched pen to paper. Then stopped. Again.
Bertie noticed. “You stuck?”
“Just… don’t know where to start. Or how deep to go. Or if I’m even ready.”
“Well then,” he said, “I suppose now’s as good a time as any to meet Marvin.”
“Marvin?”
Before he could answer, a soft mound of soil near the rosemary bush began to shift. Then a dark shape emerged—smooth fur, tiny claws, thick glasses askew on his nose.
A mole.
“Marvin,” Bertie announced. “Meet the human.”
The mole gave a slow, deliberate bow. “Peace to you,” he said in a soft voice with a surprising depth to it.
“Hi,” I said, unsure what else to say to a mole in spectacles.
“I heard you were beginning Step Four,” Marvin said, settling onto a sun-warmed stone. “I came to offer… stillness.”
Bertie nodded. “Marvin lives the Buddhist way. All silence, no fluff. Great at finding what’s buried. Terrible at parties.”
Marvin smiled. “The truth is quieter than most people think. That’s why we miss it.”
I looked down at the page. “I’m scared of what I might find.”
“Of course you are,” Marvin said gently. “The fear is part of the process. But fear is just a gate. Not a wall.”
Bertie leaned forward. “Look, Step Four’s not about shaming yourself. It’s not a hit list of everything you’ve ever messed up. It’s about seeing clearly. So you can live clearly. No more hiding. From others. From yourself.”
Marvin added, “The Buddha said, ‘There are only two mistakes one can make on the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting.’”
A wasp hovered nearby, then darted off. Somewhere a pigeon cooed lazily.
The world wasn’t rushing. So why was I?
I looked at the page again. Then I started writing.
Not fast. Not perfectly. But honestly.
I wrote about people I’d hurt. Moments I’d lied. Times I drank instead of speaking. I listed my fears. My old resentments. The secrets I had protected like heirlooms, even when they were poisoning me.
Tears came. And I let them.
I kept writing. Pages. Lines. Half-thoughts. Half-truths turned whole.
When I finally looked up, the sun had shifted, and both of them—Bertie and Marvin—were still there. Not watching. Just being.
“Was that fearless?” I asked.
“No,” said Marvin. “But it was honest. And that’s braver.”
Bertie nodded. “Fearless isn’t about being unafraid. It’s about walking anyway. Even if your knees are shaking and your pen leaks shame.”
A warm breeze moved through the garden then. Not dramatic. Just enough.
“Inventory isn’t punishment,” Marvin said. “It’s preparation. For freedom.”
I closed the notebook. It wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. But it was open. And that’s what mattered.
Bertie yawned. “Well, I’m off. I promised a friend I’d help him build a compost meditation hut.”
Marvin adjusted his glasses. “If you ever want to sit in silence, I’ll be nearby. I dig slow, but I listen deep.”
And then, like a dream fading with the sun, they were gone.
Leaving me with the warm air, the open book, and the quiet certainty that I was finally, truly beginning to know myself.
Message for those in recovery – Step Four:
To take inventory is not to punish yourself. It’s to bring the unseen into the light.
You are not what you’ve done. But you are responsible for how you grow.
Write honestly. Feel fully. And when the fear comes—greet it like a friend, and walk forward anyway.
Sometimes healing sounds like a hedgehog. Sometimes it looks like a mole. And sometimes, it’s just a pen scratching quietly under a summer sky.
The Mole Beneath the Lavender
The morning did not arrive,
it unfolded.
Like steam from sun-warmed wood,
like the hush before a question.
Air thick with stillness,
not silent, but listening.
Even the lavender leaned in.
I sat barefoot on the earth,
not above it,
not beside it,
but within it.
A notebook lay on my lap,
its pages unmarked,
its weight asking only one thing:
truth.
I had reached the Fourth Gate:
searching,
fearless,
moral,
words that clang when spoken,
but whisper when lived.
I did not walk alone.
Bertie, the prickled sage, appeared.
His eyes always smiling,
his words both firm and calm.
“Inventory,” he said.
“The soil remembers.
So must we.”
I hesitated.
The pen in my hand
trembled like a leaf in no wind.
And then came Marvin,
soft-furred,
slow-spoken,
spectacled and sacred.
A mole of the deep way.
He bowed not to me,
but to the task.
“Stillness,” he said,
“is not the absence of movement.
It is the presence of attention.”
He spoke as the earth does:
without urgency,
but with knowing.
I asked him about fear.
He answered with a gate.
I asked him about shame.
He answered with soil.
Dig.
Not to find blame,
but to find root.
So I wrote.
Each word,
a seed uncovered.
Each tear
a rain returning.
I wrote of harm,
of silence kept too long,
of drinks that swallowed truth,
of masks worn until I forgot,
what my face looked like beneath.
And the garden held me.
Not with judgment,
but with breath.
When I paused,
they did not praise.
They did not pity.
They stayed.
Fearless? I asked.
No, said the mole.
Honest. That is rarer.
The hedgehog nodded.
Courage walks in muddy boots.
And shame doesn’t like the light.
The breeze moved,
soft as forgiveness.
Step Four is not a reckoning.
It is a reckoning with,
with self,
with shadow,
with soil.
I closed the book.
Not finished.
Never finished.
But no longer afraid,
to begin.
The Way does not demand.
It waits.
The truth does not shout.
It sits.
The soul does not rise,
by avoiding the dark,
but by planting itself,
within it.
And so I plant.
And so I grow.
