Recovery proverbs

Page 4

◆ The test we must set for ourselves is not to march alone but to march in such a way that others will wish to join us.

- Hubert H. Humphrey98

◆ Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive.

- Gail Caldwell98

◆ We've been there and come back. When you fall in the pit, people are supposed to help you up. But you have to get up on your own. We'll take your arms, but you have to get your legs underneath you and stand.

- Bucky Sinister98

◆ Guilt is a destructive and ultimately pointless emotion

- Lynn Crilly98

◆ Everywhere we shine death and life burn into something new…

- Aberjhani98

◆ We take action when we have the honesty to admit that things are still broken, despite our best efforts otherwise. We take action when we hold ourselves continually open to new techniques, remaining resolutely receptive to new sources of support and new feeds of information. We take action when we are willing, in each new moment, to try again.

- Shannon Cutts98

◆ The only person worthy of your love is not one who overstayed in the relationship without a single change, but one, who appeared like an angel, and used a single day to make a million change.

- Michael Bassey Johnson98

◆ Real hope combined with real action has always pulled me through difficult times. Real hope combined with doing nothing has never pulled me through.

- Jenni Schaefer98

◆ There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with our first great sorrow. Before we know what it is to have loved and lost, to despaired and have recovered hope.

- George Elliot98

◆ We must be content to grow slowly. Most of us will still barely be at the beginning of our recovery by the time we die. But that is better than killing ourselves pretending to be healthy.

- Simon Tugwell98

◆ Public truth telling is a form of recovery, especially when combined with social action. Sharing traumatic experiences with others enables victims to reconstruct repressed memory, mourn loss, and master helplessness, which is trauma's essential insult. And, by facilitating reconnection to ordinary life, the public testimony helps survivors restore basic trust in a just world and overcome feelings of isolation. But the talking cure is predicated on the existence of a community willing to bear witness. 'Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships,' write Judith Herman. 'It cannot occur in isolation.

- Lawrence N. Powell98

◆ Everything is, the way it is, for a reason. Or it isn't. Or neither. Or both. It's so hard to tell. It's so hard to tell you're a mile away by the Luke in your eye.

- Alistair McHarg98

◆ From recovery to rags and rags to recovery symbolizes art - a perfect compilation of human imperfections.

- Criss Jami98

◆ I found the prospect daunting, but somehow comforting, too, because the counselors insisted it could be done, and, after all, many of them were recovering alcoholics themselves.

- Craig Ferguson98

◆ The power of hope! Even a lack of ambition can, for a time, pay off as a necessary facet, as long as hope outweighs it.

- Criss Jami98