Recently my boyfriend and I had an opportunity to stay with friends at their spectacular fishing resort on a somewhat secluded section of Vancouver Island.  On our first night there, he caught a 12 -pound Chinook salmon in the cove in front of the property.  The next morning, we awoke to a stunning vista of [...]

Several months ago I bought two tickets to a rock concert as a treat for myself.  The tickets arrived, I put them in my “important stuff” drawer and promptly forgot about them.  The other day I realized that the concert had already happened, and that I had spent $170 on two empty seats. As a single mom [...]

“Stop whistling those dirty songs” said my English teacher in college, as a way of demonstrating to the class how powerful suggestion can be.  Now, of course a tune can’t really be dirty, but if the listener recognizes the tune and remembers the lyrics that go with it, they can certainly choose to be insulted.  [...]

Since I was six years old, I’ve suffered through the experience of getting migraines.  Over the years I’ve learned to avoid many of them, but when one hits I’m faced with the decision of how to deal with it.  I used to lock myself in a dark room with a cold cloth and lots of [...]

Once you’ve learned to start trusting yourself again, you can slowly start to build your trust in others (and maybe even the alcoholic) as well.  We’re not talking about trusting them with your car, or your child at this point; this is just the baby steps of trusting them in a social setting, or at [...]

In your own recovery, it is vitally important that you work on redeveloping trust in yourself.  That trust is synonymous with self-respect, self-confidence, and your sense of self generally.  It is the foundation on which your spiritual being can begin to heal, and your mind and body will follow.   Until you trust yourself, it will [...]

Alcoholism robs us of our sense of trust.  To truly heal, we have to learn how to get it back again. Trust is one the strongest characteristics of a human being.  When we are born, our very survival depends on trust in others for food, warmth and comfort.   As we grow, we slowly learn to [...]

It’s said that if we refuse to learn from the past, we are destined to repeat it.   In my support group we know that unless we learn life’s lessons, we’ll be hit with them over and over again.  It keeps us working hard on our recovery because we don’t want to relive that misery.  But [...]

One of the characters from Amy Tan’s book, Saving Fish From Drowning, informs the reader “I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I had placed them”. We’ve all been there.  In the midst of survival mode, the dial on emotions seems best kept in the “off” position.  When I was in crisis I rarely [...]

I don’t mean the small changes, I mean the big ones.  Change jobs, change cities, change relationships, change our attitudes and behaviours, change our belief systems.  It doesn’t happen often but when it does, why do we do it?  Perhaps the more telling question is, why don’t we change? Here are some possible explanations: We’re [...]