Show Some Kindness
November is the month of gratitude. We celebrate Thanksgiving, a day of giving thanks for the blessings and the harvest of the preceding year. The Thanksgiving holiday history in North America is rooted in old English traditions. In the United States, the modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to a 1621 celebration at Plymouth, Massachusetts. George Washington proclaimed as President of the United States the first nationwide thanksgiving celebration in 1789 as, “A day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.” In modern times, the President of the United States will issue a proclamation and pardon a turkey on this day.
Thanksgiving is not only about being grateful, it is also about community and family. People come together to celebrate this day and express their gratitude, enjoy a lovely meal, visit their churches, do activities, and be kind to each other. The dictionary also defines it not also as being thankful, but as, “…readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” Returning kindness’ seems to be something that people just keep forgetting in this definition of being grateful. Gratitude is not about taking and feeling good, but about giving kindness in an act of being grateful.
As a person in recovery I have a lot of reasons to be grateful every year. I don’t need to pick the day of Thanksgiving or November as a month to express my gratitude, but it is a good reminder to reflect and see where I came from, what I have reached, and how wonderful my gift of sobriety really is. If you participate in 12-step meetings, you will hear this month a lot about gratitude. As for me, I would not be here on this earth anymore without finding recovery a little over five years ago. I am grateful for every single day that recovery gave me. As we spend Thanksgiving often with loved ones, family, friends, and in our local community, I am grateful for all those people in my life today as well. I would not be in recovery if there would have not been an army of people helping me to become who I am today. I was unable to escape myself this dark path of addiction and alcoholism, I needed a lot of people who believed in me and didn’t give up helping me. Without their love, their encouragement, their financial help, their hope and often their honest, hard, criticizing words towards me, I would not be alive anymore. It sometimes needs a village, but any life is worth it. The work I put into my recovery, all my dedication, my willpower to continue were the seeds that I harvest today. My community helped me nurture those good seeds in me and gave me the sunshine to grow them. I couldn’t have done it without any of them. I wish I could return all the kindness that was brought to me and given to me so freely.
Recovery is a family affair, just like holidays are. Holidays with family in active addiction or alcoholism can be a real nightmare for the entire family. Addiction destroys family peace and family resilience, it’s almost impossible to enjoy time together, if one or more are struggling with the disease. Recovery is restoration and it restores the family as a unit, if all family members agree to want it and let it happen. We need to be forgiving, especially to ourselves and remember love as the ultimate motivator for change. I am grateful today for a family that was loving me also in times, when I was absolutely unlovable and could not return love either. If your ties with your family are still a bit disrupted, this month might be a good time to start some repair work. Give some kindness, even if it seems not being appreciated or noticed. I want to share with you this beautiful poem I found:
The Bond Of Family
(Michelle Peters)
Family is the strong tie,
That holds you to the ground.
When it seems that you have lost,
All that you had found.
They are the rock that holds you down,
When you start to float away,
And they can turn your life around,
When you go astray.
They are the friends that you are born with,
They are with you ’till the end,
And when life treats you rough,
Your broken heart they will mend.
Although sometimes you may fuss and fight,
And may not always agree,
In the dark, they are the light,
That shows the path so you can see.
I wish every Hero in Recovery a wonderful month of Gratitude, a pleasant Thanksgiving. May lots of kindness come your way and be reflected. Maybe you feel inspired to make a gratitude list every morning or every evening this month and write down a few things, people, situations, or facts you are grateful for. Please be a part of our community of Heroes in Recovery, be inspired and encourage others. Sign up and receive our free monthly newsletter with inspiration, news and interesting links for your recovery. Together we can live in gratitude and exchange some kindness.
We do recover.
Susanne Johnson