This morning, I awoke not with a surge of excitement or because something extraordinary was waiting outside my window, but with a quiet, powerful gratitude that settled deep in my chest. It wasn’t the day itself that was different – it was me. Something inside had shifted, something I had once thought would never move. Yesterday had every ingredient that, in the past, would have sent me spiralling – heat, stress, illness, responsibility, mess, overwhelm. Yet, I didn’t reach for the bottle. I didn’t try to vanish. Instead, I showed up, fully, gently, and without complaint. And that, to me, is the miracle.
Driving, or should I say crawling, a short way through that sweltering heat for what felt like forever, I had every excuse to feel sorry for myself. The sun scorched through the windows, traffic crept, and my mind had every opportunity to take a detour back to resentment or self-pity. But it didn’t. I simply turned the music up and the air con down, let the cold air and sounds wrap around me, and allowed the space to be what it was – mine. Not something to endure, but something to inhabit. That drive became a meditation, a pocket of peace where I could just be. I wasn’t rushing away from discomfort, and I wasn’t craving escape. I was, for once, exactly where I was meant to be.
Arriving at my dad’s and finding him poorly, his home in disarray, would once have broken me. I’d have made it about me – how hard done by I was, how no one saw my pain, how unfair it all felt. But now? Now I saw it simply as life being life. Not a punishment, not a burden. Just a moment that needed kindness. And that’s what I gave. Not heroically, not performatively. Just quietly, naturally, as anyone would tend to something they love. Me and my daughter rolled up our sleeves, cleaned house, and helped my dad without fuss or drama. There was no urge to flee – only the urge to care.
What Alcoholics Anonymous has given me is not just abstinence, but perspective. It’s opened my eyes to the sacred rhythm of living – how pain can shape, how surrender can empower, how humility makes room for joy. Where I once drank to disappear, I now live to appear – to be present, to participate, to witness. That is the celebration: not the absence of struggle, but the presence of spirit. The old me would have needed the world to bend to my will in order to feel so sort of peace. The new me simply bends with the world, like water, soft but steady, finding shape in service, in love, in grace.
This life – my life – is not perfect. But today, it feels whole. Not because nothing went wrong yesterday, but because everything that once would have crushed me, didn’t. The mountain didn’t need to be moved – it only needed to be seen differently. And in that, I realise I am no longer the person clawing at the edges of existence, trying to escape. I am here, breathing, witnessing, cleaning, caring, loving. I am no longer the victim of my own story – I am the honoured guest in a life I never thought I’d get to live. And for that, I am endlessly, silently, deeply grateful.
The Gift Unfolds
At twenty,
I looked upon the world
as if it were mine to conquer.
At forty eight,
I now see the world as a mirror,
reflecting the vastness I have not yet become.
The tree does not scorn its seedling form,
but it does not remain one.
The river honours its source,
even as it flows far from it.
A stranger’s smile,
a child's laugh,
a sudden rain in late spring,
each no more than a flicker,
yet enough to shift the mountain inside me.
If I let it.
Life does not shout;
it whispers.
And it is not always found in grandeur,
but in the falling of a single leaf.
What I dreamed in youth
was not wrong,
only incomplete.
Misguided.
A container too small
for the spirt of my new becoming.
Today,
my cup is larger.
Not because I am better,
but because I have been emptied
by pain,
by love,
by the sacred undoing
of my certainties.
When I cling to what I was,
I lose what I might be.
When I open to what is,
I dance with what is becoming.
Growth is not a task;
it is a rhythm.
Learning is not a burden;
it is a prayer.
Each person I meet,
is a doorway,
to the Divine.
Each moment,
an invitation to be born again.
Let my spirit not grow brittle,
with judgment.
Let me be soft,
like water,
strong in its yielding,
patient in its shaping.
God has given me,
the breath,
the heart,
the wondering mind.
This life,
this one unfolding moment,
is the celebration.
And I,
alongside you,
am the honoured guest.
