This September, I’ll have been in recovery for 31 years.
When I first began this journey, there was an overwhelming amount to learn. I needed help—lots of it. And God, in His wisdom, seemed to know exactly how much support I needed.
There was therapy. There were meetings. There was twelve-step work. I was even promoted to office manager at a treatment center. My life became immersed in recovery.
Looking back, I can see that I needed every bit of it.
There has never been a shortage of work to do. Recovery taught me that growth doesn’t end just because we’ve been on the journey for a long time. There are always deeper places to look, old beliefs to uncover, and new lessons waiting to be learned.
And now, I find myself standing at the bottom of another mountain.
This time, the mountain is my health.
For the past several years, my body has taken me places I never expected to go. There has been pain, uncertainty, doctors, tests, treatments, and moments when fear has felt bigger than I knew how to handle. And underneath all of it is the temptation to believe the frightening stories my mind tells me about what might happen next.
But perhaps this mountain isn’t here to defeat me.
Perhaps it is here to teach me something, just as every other mountain has.
Recovery taught me how to face what is in front of me one day at a time. It taught me that I don’t have to understand everything before I take the next step. It taught me that asking for help isn’t weakness. And most importantly, it taught me that I am not alone.
Thirty-one years ago, I had no idea where this journey would take me. I certainly couldn’t have imagined all the mountains I would climb—or all the valleys I would walk through.
Yet here I am.
Still climbing.
And maybe this next mountain doesn’t require me to be fearless. Maybe it simply asks me to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to trust what I’ve learned, to be gentle with myself, and to remember that I have climbed mountains before.
This is simply the next one.
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