By Thoughts of Recovery
I nearly squashed it with my mug.
That’s how it began.
A flicker of movement on the wooden bench beside me—silent, shadowed, too large to be believed. At first, I thought it was a crumpled leaf.
Then it opened its wings.
And the world tilted slightly.
A moth—almost as big as my open hand. Dusty brown with veins like gold-threaded parchment, eyespots like ancient coins, and a stillness that hummed louder than flight.
I froze.
And then I whispered, “Bertie…”
“I see it,” came his voice, lower than usual, from beneath the rosemary bush.
He waddled into the light cautiously, eyes fixed on the creature. “That,” he said, “is Margo.”
“The moth?”
“The moth,” he confirmed, “and not just any moth. A rare one. Poplar hawk moth. Only comes out when things are… delicate.”
“What kind of delicate?” I asked, still not moving.
“The kind where you might spoil something just by trying too hard.”
I slowly sat down on the bench, mug trembling slightly in my hands. Margo didn’t flinch. She simply was—unmoving and enormous and strange.
“She’s here for Step Ten, isn’t she?” I said.
Bertie gave a small nod. “Of course she is.”
“Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”
“I thought Step Ten was about maintenance,” I said. “Keeping it steady. Clean-up as you go.”
Bertie nodded. “It is. But that makes it sound simpler than it is. Step Ten’s where people start to slip. Not at the beginning—when the pain’s fresh, when the past is pressing. But here. When the water’s clearer. When the dust has settled.”
I looked down at the moth again, still mesmerised by its silence. “So… why now?”
“Because you’re close,” he said. “And people usually fail when they’re on the verge of success.”
I felt those words land like stones in a pond.
He continued, reciting softly:
“A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
He who acts spoils it; he who grasps it loses it.”
“You’ve come far,” Bertie said. “But the danger now isn’t falling back—it’s trying too hard. Grasping. Managing recovery like it’s a to-do list.”
I sighed. “I caught myself doing that just yesterday. Snapped at someone I love. Then tried to explain it away like I was above that now.”
“Ah,” said Bertie, “spiritual pride. Deadliest of them all. Even Marvin the mole fell into that one once. Spent three weeks in a mud cave ‘unlearning enlightenment.’”
I laughed despite myself.
Margo, the moth, fluttered her wings once—slowly, like a cathedral door opening in the breeze.
“And that’s Step Ten,” Bertie said. “Not perfection. Not management. Just presence. Review. Awareness. A quiet sweep of the floor each evening, not a demolition.”
“But what if I miss something? What if I mess up again?”
Bertie turned to me, serious now.
“You will. That’s why you watch. Not obsessively—but gently. Without grasping. You do not chase the moth. You wait. You let it come to you.”
I breathed in deeply. The moment stretched.
Margo lifted herself silently from the bench and glided away toward the Acer tree, her wings casting momentary shadows like ancient runes.
She was gone before I even thought to move.
The spell lifted.
But something stayed with me: the stillness. The discipline of gentle awareness. The truth that real growth doesn’t crash in—it drifts, like wings in twilight.
Message for those in recovery – Step Ten:
You are no longer cleaning up the wreckage of your past—you are tending to the garden of your present. Step Ten asks for quiet vigilance. Not control. Not guilt. Just honest noticing. And when wrong, to admit gently. Promptly. With humility, not theatre.
Recovery does not need your grasping hands.
It needs your open ones.
Let the moth land.
The Moth and the Moment
A leaf, I thought,
until it breathed.
Wings like cracked pottery,
in the shape of stillness.
She came with no sound.
No flutter.
No warning.
Just presence.
Margo.
The kind of moth that does not,
announce arrival,
but reveals it.
And I,
trembled with tea in hand,
because some things,
are too sacred to chase.
A tree,
as great as a man's embrace
begins as a whisper in the soil.
A journey,
a thousand miles long,
starts not with thunder,
but with the soft crunch of the first footfall.
But what happens,
on mile 900?
When the path is flatter,
and the wind is kind?
We forget.
We act too soon.
We grasp too hard.
We want to keep our healing,
like it’s a trophy,
and not a garden,
to be weeded,
daily.
Step Ten is not triumph.
It is tending.
A broom.
A pause.
A mirror held up gently at dusk.
No drama.
No applause.
Just the question:
Did I live well today?
Did I harm?
And if so—am I ready to make it right?
The moth lifts when you stop looking.
The Way returns,
when you stop grasping.
People usually fail,
when they are on the verge of success.
So I fold the moment like linen.
I put down my pride,
and pick up the stillness.
Not to win,
but to remember.
The great towers crumble,
when we forget the soil beneath.
The journey is not over.
But tonight,
I brush the path,
one quiet step at a time.
And I leave the light on,
in case the moth returns.
