New Life Cycle

I think the life cycle is all backwards.
You should die first, start out dead and get it out of the way. Then you wake up in a nursing home, feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, then, when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day.
You work 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement.
You drink alcohol, you party, you're generally promiscuous and you get ready for High School.
You go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, you have no
responsibilities, you become a baby, then, you spend your last 9 months floating peacefully with luxuries like central heating, spa room service on tap, larger quarters everyday, and finally you finish off as an orgasm.
I rest my case.

A new sober lesbian is emerging from within me.

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.

Sometimes we get caught up in wishing we were different.
It's like we have a bad case of the "If only's": if only we had her gifts or looks, if only we had her ability to make friends, if only our relationship hadn't ended that way; if only the boss had given us a second chance; if only we had gotten sober sooner.
The "if only's" keep us spinning our wheels, running in place. They hold us fixed in an in-between place, unable to move forward toward healing and growth.
The truth is, we are all we have. What we are today is really all that can be counted upon for sure. What we do with ourselves today is how we create a new tomorrow. Daring to truly be ourselves, proud and unafraid, is the essence of recovery.

Today I will risk being myself, saying and doing the things that reflect the new and sober lesbian emerging from within me.

Can we give Peace a chance?

The question of violence and danger in society occupies a lot of time, breath, and printer's ink. The possibilities of peace and safety take up very little. It is common for us to think of containing violence by greater violence: the violence of weapons, of prisons, of riot squads. And yet the teacher whose wisdom we prize above all others tells us that one cannot answer force with force; that only peace and detachment can meet violence and draw out its poisons.
No sane person wants war. Yet we are so locked into violent patterns of thinking that many of us believe we should prepare for it. How would we go about preparing for peace? What are the first steps we could take? What is peace, anyhow? We seem to know very little about it.
A world that is safe for mothers and daughters would be safe for fathers and sons as well. Let us search our hearts to discover what we know of peace, and let us talk to one another, work together to realize our knowledge.