Repairing relationships is an amazing thing. But the amends this mother experienced was to “dye” for Today I sit here at an AA women’s retreat full of gratitude. Sometimes, trying to find gratitude when you’re lonely and have no contact with family can be challenging. I have six years and almost eight months of sobriety,Continue reading “The Olive Branch – Grapevine Article September 2025 By Charlene P”
Category Archives: Trust
Reason – A Bridge To Faith – As Bill Sees It #208
We were squarely confronted with the question of faith. We couldn’t duck the issue. Some of us had already walked along the bridge of reason toward the desired shore of faith, where friendly hands stretched out in welcome. We were grateful that reason had brought us so far. But, somehow, we couldn’t quite step ashore.Continue reading “Reason – A Bridge To Faith – As Bill Sees It #208”
Emotional Equilibrium Welcoming But Not Clinging – Daily Meditation August 17th 2025 By Father Richard Rohr
Father Richard Rohr describes the necessity of attending to our emotions while not clinging to them. You may also find his reflection on how the Twelve Steps address our Stinking Thinking helpful. Emotions are necessary weathervanes, in great part body-based, that help us read situations quickly and perhaps in depth. But they are also learned andContinue reading “Emotional Equilibrium Welcoming But Not Clinging – Daily Meditation August 17th 2025 By Father Richard Rohr”
Finite & Infinite – Breath; Wake Up To Life By Prem Rawat
I love the reflections on breath from this book. When first sober and very defiant in my agnosticism, I was able to find a way of relating to a Power greater than myself as breath. I knew my breath was absolutely essential to my life yet something I was being given each moment of everyContinue reading “Finite & Infinite – Breath; Wake Up To Life By Prem Rawat”
You Are Not Your Mind – The Power Of Now By Eckhart Tolle
Chapter 1 Extract – THE GREATEST OBSTACLE TO ENLIGHTENMENT Enlightenment — what is that? A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. “Spare some change?” mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. “I have nothing to give you,” saidContinue reading “You Are Not Your Mind – The Power Of Now By Eckhart Tolle”
Invictus – Recovery Poem By William Ernest Henley
Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader who was jailed for his activism and in 1994 became South Africa’s first black President, regularly recited one poem during his more than twenty-five years of imprisonment—the 1875 poem “Invictus” by English poet William Ernest Henley. The poem, which helped Mandela persist through extraordinarily challenging circumstances, includes the iconic lines,Continue reading “Invictus – Recovery Poem By William Ernest Henley”
Freeing Yourself From Your Mind – The Power of Now By Eckhart Tolle
Many years ago I found the book ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle an outstanding practical way to take my ‘monkey mind’ of endless thoughts of past and future and use it to discover a stillness, peace and power in the present moment … what I like to call ‘the Present of the present’.Continue reading “Freeing Yourself From Your Mind – The Power of Now By Eckhart Tolle”
Free Of Dependence – As Bill Sees It #63
I asked myself, “Why can’t the Twelve Steps work to release me from this unbearable depression?” By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer: “It is better to comfort than to be comforted.” Suddenly I realized what the answer might be. My basic flaw had always been dependence on people or circumstances toContinue reading “Free Of Dependence – As Bill Sees It #63”
Accepting Ourselves As Works In Progress – A Spiritual Principle A Day August 8th
“A spiritual understanding of self-acceptance is knowing that it is all right to find ourselves in pain, to have made mistakes, and to know that we are not perfect.” IP #19, Self-Acceptance, “The Twelve Steps are the solution” “Change is a process, not an event,” we often say–because we find it to be true! TheContinue reading “Accepting Ourselves As Works In Progress – A Spiritual Principle A Day August 8th”
Swimming With the Current – Grapevine Article August 2025 By John K.
To him, AA is a program of action, not belief. If we’re honest, kind and living in the love, we’re going the right way When I was a month or so sober, a fellow came up to me after a meeting and declared emphatically, “You’ll never stay sober if you don’t accept God in yourContinue reading “Swimming With the Current – Grapevine Article August 2025 By John K.”