January 27

”Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.” Rabindranath Tagore

Love is a challenging subject. Falling in love after separation was not something I planned or expected to happen as soon as it did. Even though I have spent a good deal reading about true love, it’s another thing trying to put it into practice. This has been further complicated by the simple fact that I have spent to many years deny any and all emotions, good or bad. So learning how to show my feelings of any sort is not something that comes naturally. I have had to play some serious catch-up with my emotional maturity. And like learning anything, I am making mistakes along the way. I do believe that I have found a loving relationship with a wonderful woman. Someone whom I am fully aware of, and that I accept as she is. In turn, I am confident that she feels the same about me. We are honest, genuine and authentic with ourselves and with each other. This vulnerability is at the same time exhilarating and frightening. There is room for great hope and joy, but also the risk of a deep hurt. I pray that it is God’s will that we stay together for many years of good times, and few struggles.

Affirmation In surrendering myself to the will of my power greater than myself, I open myself to the possibility of receiving many precious gifts.

January 19

”Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” George Bernard Shaw

Much of my life has been dominated by me fears. And it is those fears which have held me back, which have been obstacles to allow me to take certain risks in my life. I am afraid of being rejected, of those unwilling to accept me as I am. I am afraid of not being loved or worthy of love. I am afraid of being abandoned, left alone with no one to keep dear and near to my heart. These fears lock me into the present. They bind me to what is comfortable, make me less willing to try something new, to truly listen to my intuition and follow my dreams. These things I am afraid of keep me from striving to reach my full potential. Yet recovery is showing me I am worthy of all that I hope and dream of. It is teaching me that my Higher Powers will is to have all this and more. I am not alone. I am not worthless. I am loved, capable, talented, and beautiful. I can overcome and I will succeed.

Affirmation I will face my fears to make way for the new choices I want to make to start making my own trail in life.

January 18

”Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.” Jean Vanier

My addiction became the largest part of my defense mechanism. I was the wall I built to protect me from my suffering, my defects and my weaknesses. The intentions were good in the beginning, when I was younger and didn’t know a better way. But because it became the primary method of dealing with most anything in life, I didn’t live fully. I spent my time hiding, pushing emotions inside and burying. There was no room to accept how life affected me. What was once a protective barrier had become an all-consuming entity that was destroying me. Recovery has a great deal to do with acceptance. I have to accept me as I am. That means accepting all that has happened to bring me to today. It also means that I need to take time to face all the things I put away in the closet and didn’t give myself permission to feel. It means becoming willing to let go of those aspects of myself that no longer serve their purpose. I am learning to accept my weaknesses, along with my strengths in equal measure. In getting to know myself once again, wholly, I open the path to growth and nurturing.

Affirmation There will come a time when I need to let go of things from my childhood which no longer work for me as an adult. I am willing to take this mature step forward.

January 17

”Wisdom begins with the sacrifice of immediate pleasure for long-range purposes.” Louis Finkelstein

There’s the truth of my addiction, all neatly wrapped up into one simple quote. Its goal is not wisdom, but chaos, as its focus is not on the long-term, but only the immediate pleasure. If this is what consumes me, then I will not succeed in achieving purposeful goals. My decisions will not be made to support a healthy path in life with great accomplishment. Rather, I will simply continue to exist between my periods of acting out and preparing to act out, driven by the guilt and shame that fuels the darkness within. Sacrifice, this is a pretty harsh, brutal word. Yet I must sacrifice the instant gratification if I hope to find serenity and sobriety. If I don’t, then I will continue to sacrifice myself to my compulsive and unmanageable desires. The sacrifice to my addiction is a fatal path, of this I am certain. Sacrificing my addict, however, is liberation and an opportunity for a new life. I am grateful that I have found SAA and the 12-Steps to help me begin making the sacrifice of surrendering my will and letting go of those immediate urges and cravings. It is neither easy nor obvious, but it’s a necessity for my own preservation.

Affirmation I will seek my Higher Power in help me resist the immediate temptations, to ride out the wave of craving to the calmness that will follow.

January 13

”Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13

There are quite a few versions of the bible, and in some this passage talks of love, hope and charity, rather than love. I find it interesting that the words charity and love can be equated, but I think it makes sense. Charity is about giving to others, about having something to share without the expectation of what will be received in return. I believe that to be the true sense of love as well, that it is also about what we have to share with others without expectation. In recovery, this same idea applies to service. For me, service is about giving back to the program which has saved my life. It is about keeping my group and fellowship healthy and vibrant, about sharing my experience, strength and hope with others to help them in their own journey. It is about giving simply because I have the capacity, and not because I expect any kind of reward in return. So love, charity and service all fall into a similar category. They are meant to be unconditional acts performed simply because one is able. They are about giving and not receiving. When I look at them together in this light, it is another way for me to help distinguish sex from love, something I have struggled with for many years. I am grateful for this new awareness and connection.

Affirmation It is true it is in giving that we receive, but that should not be the reason that I decide to give of myself. I share because I can, not because of any reward.

January 12

”A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory.” Arthur Golden

Life is full of choices. One of the areas that was a struggle, and still is from time to time, is finding myself dwelling on the “what-ifs”. I can get stuck in a cycle of self-doubt, wondering about the past, present and future. None of this worry lends itself to me moving forward though. It only serves to keep me locked in my bubble. The Serenity Prayer serves as a constant reminder that I have to focus on those things within my control. After that, I have to work at being content to leave the rest to my Higher Power to be concerned about – my worries are not going to make things any better. Once I make choices, the only thing left is to accept the consequences, whatever they happen to be. Regret for the past leads me back into doubt and worry. At the end of the day, I can look back to see that I made the best decisions with what I had available to me at the time. I don’t have a crystal ball to know how things will always turn out. I do have a great deal of faith in the God of my understanding though, that if I continue to work to do His will, things will work out as they should.

Affirmation I will be conscious of when I find myself what-iffing and work to Let Go and Let God instead.

January 11

”Yeah ain't it just amazing, how a God can tend a broken man. Yeah let him find a fortune and then ruin it with his own two hands.” Lyrics from Difference Maker by Needtobreathe

I recently watched the movie Thanks for Sharing, another film that challenges the subject of sex addiction. It`s challenged a number of areas of my life, not just for myself, but for some people close to me who also choose to watch the film. I am grateful for opportunities to discuss my recovery. On the other hand, I still get a sinking feeling in my gut when asked about my past behaviours – there still remain traces of my shame and guilt from my actions. The movie allowed me to see once again how much my life has changed since finding the program. I related well enough to the characters still stuck in active addiction. Yet at the same time it was a sobering reminder that my serenity and recovery is fragile and that my addiction is still lurking. Relapse can happen any time, and my program needs to be something I am continually working. It`s also brought to light how important some of my new relationships are, and how I cannot afford to take them or the people around me for granted. Still, I need to be selfish enough to put my recovery first, for with it none of the rest of the good things in my life will be possible. And to all my fellow brothers and sisters in recovery, thanks for listening, and thanks for sharing.

Affirmation Recovery is a daily activity that I need to continue to work at to maintain this new life of serenity and sobriety.

January 6

”Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is true in several aspects in my life at the moment. I see it in my workplace as my current project is heading to a close. Even with months of careful planning, trying to put a concept into place has met with numerous unforeseen challenges. It is also true in my personal life. It is true of my efforts to close a chapter in my life and to open a new one. It is also true of my venture to share my meditations with others. In the past, finding the road before me blocked by an obstacle of any size would have been motivation enough to turn to the poor choices of my addiction. These days, there are moments when I feel that familiar pull, but only for a short while. Instead, I am more often full of the desire to overcome the challenge before me, to press on and to reach the goal that I have in mind. This to me is one of the best signs of the progress I have made. Goals used to be something I set up so that I would have a reason to fail, and a reason to seek the solace of my addictive behaviours. I am thankful that they now serve a higher purpose, to push me further, to make me strive to be better, and to find solutions. And hopefully, this is all work to propel me along the path of my Higher Power.

Affirmation Recovery is less about changing what happens around me, but how I react to it instead.

January 2

”One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.” John Burroughs

There are days when even though most things have gone well, just a few episodes can seem to ruin a perfectly good day. It seems that communication is still a challenging area of my recovery. Sometimes I wonder if I have simply just missed the boat, that I wasn’t paying enough attention to those around me, and that’s why all of a sudden the ground seems to fall out from under me. Recovery has taught me to be humble. It’s in these moments that I need to fight hard not to put myself on the defensive and become argumentative. Instead I need to be willing to take the first step and admit my faults and work to make things better. Trying to prove who was right or wrong doesn’t help me make my relationships better. The small things are important, and these are the things that I missed first when I was in my active addiction. I was too preoccupied to notice all the small nuances in life as I was too self-absorbed. So I as much as it can be painful to have to deal with days like this, it is certainly better than the alternative.

Affirmation Little things that go wrong are still important and need to be resolved. I will not ignore the small hurts that need to be fixed today.