I am a recovering alcoholic… and, for my sanity, I need to do shadow work, and work the steps. So, if you want to see my journey and my vulnerability, come along with me on this journey.
2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
This is oddly accurate currently. I remember the first time I worked the steps and I got stuck on this one. I was so disconnected. I didn’t even believe in anything anymore. I didn’t think anything like that even existed. It was a hard time. 2 years after dad got cancer and I lost true love. A slow and steady destruction of self. I lost friends and lovers and even my own family looked at me in disgust when I’d stumble home, bloated, with red eyes, drunk at 2 am. The slight curl of their lip, the disappointment in their eyes, when I curled over my McDonald’s and aspirin: my hangover cure. I choked on the words of Step 1, but I got them out, eventually. Step 2? That was harder, even, than step 1. I recall sitting in the coffee shop with my sponsor, J, her blue eyes filled with wisdom and light. She asked me to try. I wanted to tell her I’d given up on God or Goddess or the Universe long ago, but that wasn’t entirely true. Still… I couldn’t move past this step. I knew that some people used AA as their higher power, or something like that, but that didn’t feel right either. And so I told her I needed time. She was so… kind, and understanding, even with the snarl in my voice. I didn’t understand how these woman I’d met in that very first meeting, that first women’s AA meeting, were so damned tranquil and resilient. That felt a million miles away from me, if I could ever achieve it at all. We parted ways with a promise to meet soon. I couldn’t understand the emptiness inside of me.
And then, one night, it happened.
I was sleeping on the couch, and the moonlight brushed my cheeks with a nurturing touch. I was half asleep when I felt a presence there with me, like a fond mother watching over her child. And suddenly this profound feeling of peace and belonging stole over me. My whole self was filled with a tender and loving light, and I knew, somehow, that I would be ok. Salty tears fell down my face and into my mouth. Was there magic in those tears, like moon goddess adoration? I felt wholly changed. I was able to work the steps so clearly after that night. I was reinvigorated with purpose.
I still lost myself though. For a long time, I forgot who and what I was. I did the work, I did heal, but I had only scratched the surface and I didn’t see that. It took a divorce, losing my father, moving, getting into and out of a tumultuous relationship, and basically watching my whole life crumble before my eyes before I went: this isn’t who I am. And this isn’t the life I want. So I began the work in a new way. I found a therapist who changed my entire life. M, if you’re reading this, you shook me awake and opened my eyes. I invited magick and witchcraft back into my life, in a way I never had before. I studied, I meditated, I spoke to the gods and goddesses, I cried at my altar, I did shadow work, I started dressing up as a faerie and taking photos, I wrote as often as I could. I realized that I was a wounded and toxic empath that had been in a victim mindset. I realized that I’d lost the strange little Fey girl that I’d been, and all that made me unique. I saw how fear had been corroding my heart and soul, ruling my entire life. I healed.
I’m still healing.
Winter is a time when I go deep into the ground. My body is here, above, walking and talking and smiling. But my soul is curled within the sleeping soil, waiting for spring. I’ve felt disconnected for months, waiting to emerge, a shy peony blushing at the sun’s advances. A few days before the anniversary of my father’s death, I sat at my altar, anger burning within me, fire lit within my eyes, teeth clenched tight. And all at once, an old quote came to me: “I sat with my anger long enough that she told me her true name was Grief.” I began to cry, tears streaking down my face; messy crying, blotchy cheeks, shaking from the inside out with sorrow. It was at this moment that my guides chose to communicate with me, via the oracle cards, in a stunningly accurate way. I could not stop crying, but that weeping had turned to joyful weeping. I was not alone. I was never alone. I knew dad was there, too, his hand on my shoulder; a steady and warm presence that further soothed me.
Lately the signs have become clearer again, and I’ve been waking up slowly, blinking my sleepy eyes at the sunlight as I emerge from my cave of hibernation. I am loved. My guides are with me. My life is so precious and beautiful. I am never truly alone.
We are never truly alone.
Elisabeth Writing 
One response to “Step 2, And I’m not alone.”
Hey,
I’ve kinda been in a big elsewhere place, as you know, just lately…
but this resonated in so many ways with my own journey…
like a rain of hugs cascading from a giant waterfall.
Hugs and blessings
LikeLike