Depending on the role of the people in my life, their whole person had to be focused on my feelings, my wishes, my expectations, my pleasure, and my pain. They were my rescuer, my sex object, my mind-reader, my care-taker, my ego-stroker, my source of affirmation and meaning, my "whatever-I-needed-at-the-moment."

If they weren't entirely focused on me, they didn't really love me.

Whew! No wonder no one wanted to be around me!

My false beliefs (i.e., survival mechanisms) were born out of a loved-starved, scarcity mentality. I had no self-esteem other than what others gave me. I had no self-love other than what others provided. I was a needy, wounded animal—savagely biting whoever tried to help me.

Sometimes I still wonder why God ever led me to recovery. It was certainly by grace. God loved me more than I loved myself. God willed to extend grace and mercy and compassion to me—at the point when I lost all faith and trust in life, people, and every other addictive thing I'd substituted for a true relationship with God and with myself.

Through the miracle of recovery and the Twelve Steps, God is showing me how to love myself, esteem myself, and be a unique, whole human being—I am learning to focus my heart on giving, rather than getting.

More and more, I find myself centered in God's will, totally surrendered to the serenity available to me for the asking. I am surrendered to accepting life, today, as it unfolds. I am able to let go of control, expectations, obsessions, and doing.

I am grateful for recovery. I am grateful for learning how to let go of my ego, for the opportunity to gain humility, and for the ability to focus on the process of being, rather than doing.

I am grateful I no longer need to merely survive. I am learning to live joyously, as God wills for me to live.

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