Recovery

As I was driving home two days ago, I was listening to ‘Canada Reads’ on CBC Radio.  The person who was supporting the book, February, was discussing the personal journey of the main character as she was dealing with the loss of her husband who had been aboard the Ocean Ranger.  He said that recovery is a process and I started to cry as waves moved through me.  There I was, breathing and crying as I was driving on the 401.

I came home and looked up ‘recover’ and ‘recovery’.  And each definition I found was about getting something back, bringing something back, finding or saving or regaining that which was lost.

I used to wonder why therapy or the courses I had taken or the books I had read or the journals I had written had not worked.  I wondered why my life was not fixed and I was not all better.  Like each thing I had done would magically make my life make sense.

Each time I would find myself feeling lost and angry and confused, I would blame myself for not ‘doing’ the cure correctly.  Or I would blame the ‘cure’ because it wasn’t working.  I never, ever thought of coming to know mySelf and feeling comfortable in my own skin and being true to the person I truly am as a process.  I always saw it as – I was messed up and then, take the cure and I should be all better.  A dichotomy – sad/happy, unwell/well, messed up/in order.  And my inability to know mySelf in the world view I held of ‘all or nothing at all’ only fuelled my anger and confusion.

And in a moment, driving home two days ago, I knew that my entire journey to this point has been one of recovery – of finding mySelf and claiming mySelf.  I know that I am never ‘done’.  I am constantly finding more about mySelf and moving into the fullness of mySelf.  I know that who I AM is constantly changing and morphing and transforming and becoming more.  I know that who I AM today will not be who I WILL BE tomorrow.  There is no finish line.

Life, living, being, choosing from a platform of being true to who we are meant to be is a process.  And it is never done.  That realisation has made such a difference.