Back when my 14-year-old son called me from school and said he knows he should be happy and he is a lucky boy, but he feels like he wants to die, I truly panicked. It was as if I wasn’t hearing the right words coming out of his mouth. I knew I wasn’t equipped
Unfortunately, slips and relapses are relatively common in early recovery. The good news is that they are not the end of the world. Rather, these temporary setbacks are learning opportunities and chances to reaffirm and hopefully strengthen one’s commitment to recovery, sobriety, and living a better life. The simple truth is the majority of recovering
Maiko is 33 and lives in Germany. He has had some really tough times and has been in recovery from PTSD for 11 years. He started singing and playing the guitar in 2002. Check out his work at his website here
As we slam into the end of the year it seems we can’t avoid the bombardment of messages telling us to buy buy buy. Yet, by next year it’s likely whatever was bought this year will either be broken, out of fashion, not the Apple 8, or lost and forgotten. But there is something you
I remember when my first spiritual teacher told me that love was the most important thing there was, that it could transcend and heal all things. I thought he was crazy….not the love I was familiar with. The love that I knew was learned from those perfect families on TV and any of that
In October I was invited to visit Alpine Horizons, a new rehabilitation facility in Switzerland that deals with addiction treatment and preventative programs for those at risk. I was given access to some of the program activities and taken through the program structures, all of which are impressive. Their team of international experts is headed
Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff. — Catherine M. Wallace — Listening
Are we there yet? This was the persistent refrain from the backseat of the blue Chevy impala with no air- conditioning, in August, where my sister, brother, grandmother and I sat, fought and slept for the three day, 1179 mile road trip between Miami Beach and Dayton Ohio to visit our cousins.
We’ve all heard it—from yoga teachers, from therapists, from ministers, from other holistic practitioners: “You’re in a safe place.” Many guided meditations directly write this line into the scripts with the intention of setting a tone for safety and security. The LGBT and other socially progressive movements also like to make use of phrases
I spoke to Dawn Clancy recently, creator of Growing Up Chaotic, a community for friends and families of addicts and survivors of abuse. Dawn and I met originally when we both wrote for AfterPartyMagazine. She shares some of her story with us and gives us some great advice on how to live a functional life, despite
