Valentine's Day in Recovery

Even after all these years of recovery I catch myself having expectations for Valentine’s Day. How many resentments it has caused. Dates, boy friends, husbands. Even knowing that Valentine’s Day is a commercially created day, the cultural pressure exists.

How do recovering people practice loving kindness for ourselves and others on Valentine’s Day?  How does sobriety guide me to make a Happy Valentine’s Day in or out of a romantic relationship?  What does love really mean in the context of recovery?

One of the joys of sobriety is watching other people grow. For me, it has been particularly moving to observe sober men as they change their lives and beliefs.

Early in recovery—just shy of two years and at the point where the fog is clearing –a man named Fred who was in his early 60’s came to my home group one morning. It was his first day out of treatment and he was in pain. His “bottom” involved devastation at both work and home. He hurt.  I listened as he spoke and I recognized his grief. Then, after the meeting ended, I watched as the men in our group surrounded Fred, gave him phone numbers and insisted that he come to breakfast with them. I watched as the men gathered him, taught him, and loved him.

Even though others in the group had had done that for me, it was then, with Fred, when I was just sober enough to understand that I was seeing love in action. I hold that moment as one of my sobriety treasures. It was the day that I could also see the love that surrounded me and I felt my heart open enough to want that love to surround another person.

Maybe it’s because one of my own wounds is about my father that this touches me so deeply.

This morning at my home group I heard men talk about how recovery changed their lives. Tough guys were softened, fathers recommitted, lost men were found, partners tried again, new romances began and they were trying to do it all differently.

It makes me happy to see men change. To know that under different circumstances my father and my brothers might have changed too. To know that there is an endless supply of love in these rooms and that we are changed by that love.

In early recovery I used to hear, “Let us love you until you can love yourself.” It felt like a puzzle, a bafflement. I didn’t think you could love someone into change. Hadn’t I tried that all those years before with disastrous results?  I know now that I didn’t really love; I was just trying to control someone or to make him take care of me. In romantic relationships, and sometimes as parents, we mistakenly try to love people into changing. It generally doesn’t work.

But in AA it does. We can be loved by our AA fellows until we can love ourselves. And when we have learned to love ourselves, we can then truly love others.

Chief Inspector Gamache and the Near Enemies

I’m still reading the fabulous mystery series by Louise Penny that features Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. I love this guy—and I love the psychological lessons that Penny loads into these books. With each new volume I learn things that I can apply to my recovery and personal growth.

This week is it the concept of “Near Enemies”: a psychological framework in which two emotional states can look the same but are actually opposites. Near Enemies derives from a Buddhist teaching where a positive psychological state has a sort of, “evil twin”.  One parades as the other, and is mistaken for the other, but one is healthy and the other is sick.

Here are examples: Attachment can masquerade as Love; Pity as Compassion and Indifference as Equanimity.

We understand the first pair from codependency: Real love wants the other’s best interests; wants the other to grow, to go, to get on with life and to change; Love wants the other to be independent. But attachment clings, stifles, enables and cripples in the name of love.

The second pair is Compassion and Pity: Compassion involves empathy. You see the stricken person as an equal. Pity doesn’t. If you pity someone you feel superior to him or her.

And then the pair of Equanimity and Indifference. Louise Penny calls this the most corrosive pair. “Equanimity is balance. When something overwhelming happens in our lives we feel it but we also have the ability to overcome it. We might feel huge grief or sorrow, but deep down inside people find a core. That’s equanimity.” But, she goes on to explain, Indifference is stoicism, calm in a crisis without feeling, they don’t feel pain because they don’t care. People with equanimity can absorb a pain, feel it fully, and let it go. But they might look exactly like people who don’t care at all. “But who is really brave and who is the near enemy?”

If you are interested in The Louise Penny mystery series begin with the book, “Still Life” and go from there.

Valentines Day in Recovery

Even after all these years of recovery I catch myself having expectations for Valentine’s Day. How many resentments it has caused. Dates, boy friends, husbands. Even knowing that Valentine’s Day is a commercially created day, the cultural pressure exists.

How do recovering people practice loving kindness for ourselves and others on Valentine’s Day?  How does sobriety guide me to make a Happy Valentine’s Day in or out of a romantic relationship?  What does love really mean in the context of recovery?

One of the joys of sobriety is watching other people grow. For me, it has been particularly moving to observe sober men as they change their lives and beliefs.

Early in recovery—just shy of two years --and at that point where the fog is clearing, a man named Fred who was in his early 60’s came into my home group one morning. It was his first day out of treatment and he was in pain. His “bottom” involved devastation at both work and home. He hurt.  I listened as he spoke and I recognized his grief. Then, after the meeting ended, I watched as the men in our group surrounded Fred, gave him phone numbers and insisted that he come to breakfast with them. I watched as the men gathered him, taught him, and loved him.

Even though others in the group had had done that for me, it was then, with Fred, when I was just sober enough to understand that I was seeing love in action. I hold that moment as one of my sobriety treasures. It was the day that I could also see the love that surrounded me and I felt my heart open enough to want that love to surround another person.

Maybe it’s because one of my own wounds is about my father that this touches me so deeply.

This week at my home group I heard men talk about how recovery changed their lives. Tough guys were softened, fathers recommitted, lost men were found, partners tried again, new romances began and they were trying to do it all differently.

It makes me happy to see men change. To know that under different circumstances my father and my brothers might have changed too. To know that there is an endless supply of love in these rooms and that we are changed by that love.

In early recovery I used to hear, “Let us love you until you can love yourself.” It felt like a puzzle, a bafflement. I didn’t think you could love someone into change. Hadn’t I tried that all those years before with disastrous results?  I know now that I didn’t really love; I was just trying to control someone or to make him take care of me. In romantic relationships, and sometimes as parents, we mistakenly try to love people into changing. It generally doesn’t work.

But in AA it does. We can be loved by our AA fellows until we can love ourselves. And when we have learned to love ourselves, we can then truly love others.

The Short Version

I ate, I drank, I shopped, I “dated”, I worried, obsessed and I began to recover. All the addictions were and are about not feeling; trying to fill that hole inside. And what is that? I think it’s this:

Someone, somewhere, a long time ago wounded me. The fear it left in me remains as anxiety and a desire to seek and then control love, and as a blind spot to the love that is all around me.

Hymn of Gratitude for Recovery

For more than 25 years, always alone in my car—blasting the radio, tape or CD-- I have sung a hymn of gratitude for my recovery. It goes like this:

Your love, is lifting me higher
Than I've ever been lifted before
So keep it up--
quench my desire,
And I'll be at your side, forever more.

You know it’s your love that keeps lifting me
So keep on lifting me Higher and Higher
Yes your love keeps lifting me
So keep on lifting me
Higher and higher.

Now once, I was downhearted
Disappointment was my closest friend
But then you came, and it soon departed
And he never
Showed his face again.

And your love keeps lifting me Higher
So keep on lifting me higher and higher

I'm so glad, I've finally found you
Now a one-in-a-million girl
And I whip my loving arms around you
And I can stand up, and face the world.


The original lyrics were by songwriters Jason and Miner. First performed by Jackie Wilson and later, a second platinum record, when performed by Rita Coolidge.

What is your recovery song?

Valentine's Day

This morning at my regular meeting I heard men talk about how recovery changed their lives. Tough guys were softened, fathers recommitted, lost men were found, partners tried again, new romances began and they tried to do it differently.

It makes my heart happy to see men change. To know that my father and my brothers might have changed too. To know that there is an endless supply of love in these rooms and we are changed by that love.

In early recovery I used to hear, “Let us love you until you can love yourself.” It felt like a koan, a bafflement. I didn’t think you could love someone into change. We mistakenly try to do that in romantic relationships and sometimes as parents. It doesn’t work.

But in AA it does. We can be loved by our AA fellows until we can love ourselves.

That is quite a Valentine.