EMOTIONAL SOBRIETY: each day is a new beginning Every single morning, the universe hits reset. 🌅
If all the happiness in the world lives in the morning, then every new dawn carries the promise of something entirely unknown. Life isn’t a single timeline. Life is a beautiful, endless series of (BARDO) beginnings and endings.
In recovery, we don’t just stop an addictive behaviour; we return to our authentic selves. We step out of the pain held inside, and step into the power of a mind that creates its own world.
UPON AWAKENING sunrise ushers in a new the day. s again. The world is made of mornings—if all the happiness in the world lives in the morning—then every new dawn carries the promise of unknown things, and perhaps of almost everything. Despite the doom, and gloom, fear and doubt, chaos and confusion I remain hopeful. Life is magnificent.
“There is joy in recovery and helping others recover that joy.”— First Lady Betty Ford
What if you could face the future entirely free from addictive behaviours? If I can do it, you too can recover from addiction. The success of recovery reflects our individual intention to heal. By stepping onto this path, you can release fear, frustration and depression intensified by being stuck in cycles of addiction. Living in the past. Projecting into the future – ergo nothing in the present. Build inner resilience. Integrity. Self-regulation. Return to you – your essential self: And finally achieve freedom from psychological pain.
“The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain? Not the world, not what’s outside of us, but what we hold inside traps us. We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.”— Dr. Gabor Maté
The Origins of Universal Compassion
All beings, everywhere, suffer. Let your heart go out to them in spontaneous, immeasurable compassion. Direct that love, along with the blessing of the God of your understanding, to the alleviation of suffering everywhere.
Compassion is healing. Pity has its roots in shame. When my fear touches a loved one’s pain, it becomes pity; when my love touches their pain, it becomes compassion. To be in compassion is to recognise that all beings are the exact same and suffer in similar ways. It is to honour all those who suffer, knowing you are neither separate from nor superior to anyone.
TONGLEN is either giving or receiving comfort, love, and peace. It is an ancient Buddhist meditation practice designed tp cultivate deep compassion to a loved one who know is suffering. It helps dissolve self-centeredness and expands your capacity to handle difficult emotions with an open heart. The Tibetan word tonglen translates to “sending” (tong) and “taking” or “receiving” It reverses a habituated avoidant pattern or behaviour, a normal instinct to bypass pain and hold onto pleasure.
What you feel for one person, you can extend to all. Working with both the immediate suffering of one individual and the universal suffering of the world keeps the practice grounded, heartfelt, and expansive.The true self remains the silent, witnessing awareness that it is at all times, it’s the stillness of the mind that recognizes its source as that luminous, open, consciousness.
It is that recognition of the mind that answers the core question of “Who am I”?Self-knowing awareness simply is what it always is.We often associate this sense of knowing our deepest self with the heart area because that is the area of our body awareness that the feeling-mind operates through most strongly.
If in doubt about the effectiveness of mantra meditation, I want to say that: Mantra meditations have been working for many thousands of years.To bring attention from the surface, active thinking to the presence of pure, open awareness, the mind needs permission to become undirected, that is not focused through the channels of sensory perception or cognitive thought patterns.
The sound quality of the traditional mantras does this.Once attention is undirected, the inherent quality of awareness to move to its source can come into play and the mind can go beyond itself and experience pure consciousness, its essential nature.
This transcendence can happen with other non-mantra practices, but you still need a way to break the mind’s patterns and habits and reach this state of suspension so that awareness can slip into the gap and experience its true nature.
Universal, Unselfish Love The Pali word Metta is a rich term meaning loving-kindness, friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, fellowship, amity, concord, inoffensiveness, and non-violence. Buddhist commentators define Metta as a strong wish for the welfare and happiness of others (parahita-parasukha-kamana).
Metta is an entirely altruistic attitude of love, completely distinct from mere amiability based on self-interest. Through Metta, one refuses to be offensive. It actively dissolves bitterness, resentment, and animosity, developing a mind of benevolence. Breaking Barriers. Metta evokes a warm-hearted feeling of fellowship and sympathy which grows boundless with practice, overcoming all social, religious, racial, political, and economic barriers. Metta makes a person a pure font of well-being and safety for others. Just as a mother gives her own life to protect her child, true Metta only gives and never demands anything in return.
The Ultimate Shift in Perspective
Promoting one’s own interest is a basic human survival instinct. However, when this urge is transformed into a desire to promote the happiness of others, the mind becomes universal. By identifying our own interests with the well-being of all, we naturally promote our own healing in the highest possible manner.
Ultimately, Metta provides a tremendous inner power that preserves, protects, and heals both the practitioner and the world around them. In a world menaced by destructiveness, Metta in deed, word, and thought is a pragmatic necessity—the supreme means to bring peace and mutual understanding.
Addictive behaviours compound self abandonment. We all incarnate as the innocent archetype. If there is relational trauma within the family, a child senses their parent is emotionally unavailable. The continuum theory is ideal for a baby to thrive attachment theory.
ATTACHMENT & TRAUMA BONDS
Complex trauma, then one is ready to heal psychological pain and suffering caused by self abandonment. Identifying the depth of one’s inner core, recognizing in self and in others. The end of suffering in silence. Pausing. Breathing. Feeling hopeful. Forgiving of the past. Facing uncertainty with courage, and a commitment to the best version of oneself, one relationship at time.
“Drugs take away the dream from every child’s heart and replace it with a nightmare, and it’s time we in America stand up and replace those dreams.” – Nancy Reagan
While she was involved in the anti-drug cause before reaching the White House, by 1982, the first lady had embraced the campaign with energy and evident feeling. A name for her cause was chosen after she met with schoolchildren in Oakland. “A little girl raised her hand,” she remembered, “and said, ’Mrs. Reagan, what do you do if somebody offers you drugs?’ And I said, ’well, you just say no.’ And there it was born. I think people thought we had an advertising agency over who dreamed that up – not true.”
By 1988 more than 12,000 “Just Say No” clubs had been formed across the country and around the world. The results were encouraging: cocaine use by high-school seniors dropped by one-third, the lowest rate in a decade.
The crusade made serious demands on her time: 110 appearances and fourteen anti-drug speeches in 1984 alone. Her intense effort to fight school-age drug and alcohol abuse took her to sixty-five cities in thirty-three states and nine foreign countries. She also invited the spouses of two dozen heads of state to a three-day anti-drug forum in Washington and Atlanta.
In 1986, when the president signed a proclamation creating the first official “Just Say No to Drugs Week,” Nancy Reagan spoke from the heart when she said, “Someone asked me if I wanted to make a New Year’s wish, and I said yes- and it was that I’d like to see every young person in the world join the ’Just Say No’ to drugs club. Well, just the fact that Congress has proclaimed “Just Say No Week’ and in light of all the activities taking place, it seems that my wish is well on its way to coming true.” https://www.reaganfoundation.org
And I did say no, when someone at a Beverly Hills party asked me “Do you want one?” pointing to a tiny candy dish of largeish white pills… “No. don’t want one, I want two. ” I woke up the next day UCLA Hospital having survived totalling my car, with a fractured skull, a micro cut lip and badly bruised hands.
The party’s host was the first face I saw when I came out of a coma, he looked frightened for me when he said the police had found the invitation to his party in my purse, and passed it onto the hospital who called him as …I was more worried about having to ask him to go and collect a leaving hospital outfit from my house to hasten the discharge process. I was in a blackout, and can only presume my hands was bruised because I had grabbed the steering wheel to stop me going through the windscreen when the car left the road, and hit a tree. At the crash scene, because I was not speeding, the hit back at the car, a line of were dented bricks I had been cut of my clothes and thankfully not the car.
The police called by to tell my car had been towed to the wreckers. A follow-up appointment with the neurologist abruptly concluded when he suggested I stop drinking and drugging… I left without telling him that was not going to happen…instead I stopped driving. Drank and went to A.A. meetings although one is not supposed to…A.A. literatures suggests as the only requirement for A.A membership is a desire to stop drinking.
I was not ready to stop, nor could I despite my protestations; “Today is the day I get healthy…’ my best attempts were forgotten in the tsunami of constant cravings for love, drugs, vodka, valium and cocaine. I could not stop the abject madness that is active addiction. .
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” “The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” “There’s no coming to consciousness without pain.” “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Carl Jung
ALCHEMISING ADVERSITY: a life changing, purposeful conversation with Andy Warhol, at a Christmas Party, circa 1986. More abut that conversation in the memoir. Suffice to say throughout my life I have been guided by the most extraordinary human beings.
DIVINE INTERVENTION: The day the madness that is active addiction stopped at the exact moment I was ready, willing, to accept I needed help with healing traumatic rock-bottom, October 1988. The act of surrendering. Recovery is not solely about sobriety. Recovery is purposefully being in community, with likeminded recovering recovery companions.
EARLY SOBRIETY It was recommended I do a day count: 90 meetings in 90 days beginning the day the madness stopped. 12th October 1988 signifies the end of hell on earth. Psychological suffering manifested at a soul level, a profound spiritual awakening. Hope. Awareness. Evolution.
THE ARCHETYPAL JOURNEY. My earliest child memory happened at bedtime, before I closed my eyes to sleep, per chance to dream, was this ritualistic prayer: “Please God, I pray my mother and father do not die, or disappear into the dark night. Always followed by my prayer: upon awakening, the beautiful pink and blue-sky God painted for everyone to see the love and beauty of a new day.
CYCLE OF CYCLES: I incarnated with sense of knowing. Initially when I had intuitive flashes, oftentimes I felt, unsettled. Then, one day I felt a flash, followed by waves of emotions, and knew it was love.
THE PAST IN THE PRESENT Visiting Horus’s temple for example in Egypt is an experience I go into in detail another time, appertaining to my father passing. The past in the present energies have occurred throughout my life.
WRITTEN IN THE STARS: Curious by nature I am a “walking question mark.” Cycles of existential angst drove me to find the answers. Who am I. How do we live this life. Is my soul eternal? How do I have a good death?
It was relief to find an astrologer, Mr Probert, to do my first natal chart and projections on my 15th birthday. He was a tiny person. Kind. Funny. Staggeringly insightful, humanistic, and intelligent. Mr Probert’s was a guiding light throughout my troubled, turbulent teens. His skill in deciphering the ephemeris detailed my natal charts house positions, aspects, and transitions.
I am Leo Sun Sign and Leo ascendent. LEO Sun represents life force, in addition to its radiance, inner light, sense of purpose continues to illuminate the way forward. Sun describes the heart of your life force. As I grew into my Sun Sign, I consciously developed its qualities. Creatively expressing and experiencing them personally and professionally.
Leo is yang, masculine, and heroic energy. It is associated with my father and my experience of being fathered, yin-yang energy polarity in all of us.A Moon in Scorpio brought me a sense of safety, albeit consist with complex trauma is intense emotionality.
My birth, body and emotions are one and the same thing. emotional reactions register in your body, and the state of my body affects how I feel. The symbol of the Moon depicts a hierarchy of human human needs, that must be met for optimal mental, physical and spiritual growth to occur. One is the need for the physical body to be fed, comfortable, and safe. Another is the need for essential emotional safety. A felt sense of belong. Being loved. Being see and heard.
My future life sounded fabulous on paper. However, life in the present moment was troublesome. Addictive personality traits/risky behaviours and tricky consequences got my attention…albeit fleetingly…already I was adept at sabotaging, acting out trauma, created drama, and intensity. Probert’s astrological projections, in particular the energy scheduled for release on my 35th cycle around the sun would be of great significance.
Perhaps, the genesis of addiction: clueless re what to do, acknowledging I had a problem with alcohol resonated the first time I experienced a blackout. The morning after, feeling guilt and shame was not how one was supposed to feel after a social event, celebration, or party.
Left out, not being to share with friend’s anecdotes I no recollection of the night in question. 17th Birthday party. My focus, the wine bottle label. Specifically, the alcohol content. I silently pondered the word “ALCOHOL” thinking, it is missing the letters: “I and C.”
I knew in that moment I was an alcoholic. I thought it amusing to be gifted a Tiffany Martini shaker, magnums of Pol Roger champagne, and exotic recreational drugs. For the next 17 years, the pursuit of success and (suppressed failures) in my role as privileged fashion professional spanned four continents. Memorable affairs of the mind and heart were not enough to fill the hole in my traumatised soul.
Spiritual bankruptcy caused humungous psychological suffering at every turning point. And so it goes, everything I had ever done, every thought and action brought me the end of suffering in silence.
The bedrock of 12STEP recovery is in its individual unflinching honesty…a way of life many are unfamiliar with, but millions across cultures class, and religion are in stable, sustainable recovery, our stories disclose what happened, what changed and what continues to heal.. 12step service is encapsulated in the philosophy of the 12steps where the infinite possibilities of “a magnificent reality” await the addict seeking to heal their soul.
My recovery journey has its genesis in holistic therapies, I personally have practiced a core few for over 50 years.. informed, and inspired by the inevitability of love for oneself, one’s community and humanity.
Of course…recalling my love of the sky, my favourite adolescent pastime, lying on the grass, meditatively looking up at the fabulous sky where limitless hope lived in my imagination.
Rumi loved the Sky, as much as my My zen Master, Thich Nhāt Hanh whose teachings taught me many lessons in my lifelong quest for meaning and purpose. His passing was a beautiful remembrance of his memorable talk: ” A Cloud Never Dies.”My compassionate wish is that my you be well, may you happy. May you have peace of mind, May you share my felt sense of being quietly happy.
SELF CARE: Homage to recovery. Having fully embraced the plethora of healing disciplines readily available to me, life on life’s terms was begging to normalise my life. I learned about letting go of past, conditioned thinking. How to create a new, empowering belief system.
Over time, fear of the unknown, lessened and waves of self-love were truly magical. Confidence grew. I came to believe that God was doing for me what I had not been able to do for myself. Daily affirmations grounded my thinking, healthy boundaries, resilience, and strength.
Trauma from the past in the present decreased in intensity. Healing maladaptive coping mechanisms occurred at random times. Sometimes, I would have to leave wherever I was, retreat home, to safety and calmness.
The admission of powerless liberated me from years of psychological pain and suffering. Spiritual bankruptcy calls for affirmative action. My 12 step sponsor pointed out me that I could not recover on my own. Freedom from obsessive, compulsivity behaviours, pathos, psychological pain and suffering. Timeless wisdom: autonomy, self regulating, responsibility and accountability. Loving, meaningful connection.
Addiction is a taboo topic. Many suffer from the impact of adverse childhood events in silence, and shame. Alone. Isolated and alienated from family and friends because this is what addiction does, it broke my heart.
And so, it goes…
The AA preamble and the ubiquitous moment of silence became a silent prayer to my father who passed without entering into recovery. I watched him suffer and worried for his safety when the roles reversed, and he became the one who needed protecting from his demons.
The wisdom of the 12 steps and my close friendships with people in recovery whose stories were so similar in emotion to mine the healing between us, tender and heartfelt.
How it works: “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program … Usually men and women who are constitutionally Incapable of being honest with themselves.” A.A. Big Book.
I was a few months into recovery when the opportunity to visit the upstate New York home of co- founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson for a sponsorship workshop.
To stand in the small studio in the garden where Bill had written the 12steps & 12 traditions was an amazingly humbling experience. In the kitchen were countless cups, one immediately reimagined men and women sitting here, drink tea or coffee andsharinG their experience, strength and hope.
Bill Wilson had his
“Each of us must act as a pilot of his own soul on its solitary voyage.And is into the unknown. The loneliness of the isolated individual is one of the saddest facts of human experience.” anonymous.”