Do you remember how you felt as a child when you thought about the future? Did you have big dreams? And if you did, have you worked toward fulfilling them?
The first dream I can remember having was in my late teenage years. I thought I would like to join the Peace Corps. At the time, I didn’t really understand why that idea appealed to me. I didn’t yet recognize that I had a deep desire to help others or know how that desire would eventually find its way into my life.
Recovery helped me discover that part of myself.
Early in recovery, I found that I loved sponsoring others, even though I didn’t have much confidence in what I was doing at the time. I simply knew that helping someone else find their way in recovery meant something to me.
Since then, to my surprise and delight, I have found many different ways to pay it forward. Through sponsorship, teaching inner-child work, supporting women, and sharing what I have learned along the way, I discovered that helping others was not just an idea I had as a teenager. It was a desire that had been waiting for the opportunity to grow.
Looking back, I wonder how many of our dreams and desires get buried along the way. Sometimes life takes us in directions we never expected. We may set aside the things that once excited us, or we may not yet have the confidence or understanding to pursue them.
But perhaps a dream doesn’t always have to happen in the way we originally imagined.
Sometimes it finds another way to come alive.
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