Celebrating Two Months

Here I sit at two months, a gift that I need to give myself is the time to write in this blog today.  I have fallen out of practice and it has been squeezed out with other “work” I have been doing for my sobriety and stupid shit I have to work on not related to my sobriety.
 
I feel like sharing the path that got me to the resources that I want to share with you and where I am at this 2-month mark.
 
I am “working the steps” in AA, but I’m kinda on pause since the expat group I am a part of here have all gone on vacation around the world, including my sponsor.  I have continued with my own program, which needs to include more blogging! Grace, thank you for the email that nudged me to get into the blogging saddle, I appreciate you taking the time to reach out to me.
 
I’m reading and listening to the book Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction by Noah Levine to supplement my AA program.  I read last night about importance of meditation for recovery, especially forgiveness meditation.  Start with forgiveness?  To me this feels like the hardest part, to forgive myself for being myself, to forgive those that fuel my resentments and previous addictions.  Yes, I know these are deep rooted causes from my drinking, but I have to start at the hardest most tender place???  What do I do when faced with these tasks? I ask the internet for help.  I now have a few new meditation apps to try out since not one what suited specifically to what I wanted.  Why aren’t there meditation apps geared around recovery: forgiveness, resentments, cravings, letting go, self-love, strong emotions, etc.? There is a market to explore out there people!
 
After meditating for 10 minutes I took the dogs out for a walk and listened to the Edit Podcast, where Jolene and Aidan mentioned “judging others’ outsides by your insides” and mentioned a site where a woman posted pictures from her own Facebook Account and wrote what was going on in her life during the beautiful pictures.  I pulled the dogs over and went to this site immediately, since this theme of not judging myself against others has helped me be less self-loathing.  I found a new blog to follow (thanks Laura McKowen)! This post made me tear up on the street.  At the bottom of this post was this link:  On forgiveness (looking for love in all the wrong places) and that made me down right cry in public.  This is the point of my post today: I was led to what I needed to receive on how to start forgiving myself.  I still haven’t emotionally recovered from these two posts, which tell me they were the truths I needed today to be present where I am: 2 month sober and learning to love imperfect self.  And soon learning to meditate on forgiveness.