A.a. Recovery Quotes & Sayings

Slowly, inch by inch, I felt myself recovering. After a few weeks, the darkness began to recede; my appetite for life returned. Haven was wonderful; she understood and nursed me through these weeks until I felt strong enough to go out in public, to get on my bike again. — Tyler Hamilton

In ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, legend has it that he was sometimes trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him, " Memento Mori": Remember you will die. A reminder of mortality would help the hero keep things in perspective, instill some humility. Job's memento mori had been delivered by his doctors, but it did not instill humility. Instead he roared back after his recovery with even more passion. The illness reminded him that he had nothing to lose, so he should forge ahead full speed. " He came back on a mission," said Cook. " Even though he was now running a large company, he kept making bold moves that I don't think anybody else would have done. — Walter Isaacson

That night, when the creature sleeps, when he sleeps, the mother escapes into her daughters' room. She tells her daughter that the creature's afraid of her having too much love, too much heart. She takes a tube of lipstick and drags it across her finger like a knife, marking it across her daughter's cheeks, red, blood, war paint. — Elijah Noble El

We like recovery stories to move quickly through the dark so we can get to the sweeping redemptive ending. I worry that this lack of honest accounts of overcoming adversity has created a Gilded Age of Failure. — Brene Brown

admitted I was powerless over food,
that my life had become uninhabitable.
Sure, there are folks who speak of lives
unmanageable, but my life was always that!
It took more to push me to the admission.
I had a Hell Year when I turned 50
and it took me another ten to reach the crevice,
to fall off the edge, to give up and go
where a counselor had directed me for years,
to the rooms of recovery. I knew she was right
but I wasn't broken enough to go. Unmanageable,
I could life in. Uninhabitable I couldn't.
I fought it for nigh on sixty years
but when I finally couldn't keep on pretending,
continue making do, I found what I needed,
what I could finally accept, and soar out of there
to recovery. — Barbara B. Rollins

Scripture says: "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted." I call on every American family and the family of America to observe a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, honoring the memory of the thousands of victims of these brutal attacks and comforting those who lost loved ones. We will persevere through this national tragedy and personal loss. In time, we will find healing and recovery; and, in the face of all this evil, we remain strong and united, "one Nation under God." — George W. Bush

We are not the only ones affected by our recovery. The spiritual awakening heals the world one person at a time. — Marta Mrotek

Participation in the dance was entirely voluntary, a mental vow to worship the Mystery in this manner being expressed by a man ardently desiring the recovery of a sick relative; or surrounded by an enemy with escape apparently impossible; or, it might be, dying of hunger ... since some inscrutable power had swept all game from forest and prairie. Others joined in the ceremony in the hope and firm belief that the Mystery ... would grant them successes against the enemy and consequent eminence at home. — Edward S. Curtis

Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy. — Colum McCann

Let me tell you how at one time the famous mathematician Euclid became a physician. It was during a vacation, which I spent in Prague as I most always did, when I was attacked by an illness never before experienced, which manifested itself in chilliness and painful weariness of the whole body. In order to ease my condition I took up Euclid's Elements and read for the first time his doctrine of ratio, which I found treated there in a manner entirely new to me. The ingenuity displayed in Euclid's presentation filled me with such vivid pleasure, that forthwith I felt as well as ever. — Bernard Bolzano

It was indeed not very sound. However, those who had taken it, were in a fairer way of recovery than the others at the end of the fortnight, which was the length of time all these different courses were continued, except the oranges. — James Lind

I cannot stand the words Get over it. All of us are under such pressure to put our problems in the past tense. Slow down. Don't allow others to hurry your healing. It is a process, one that may take years, occasionally, even a lifetime - and that's OK. — Beau Taplin

Life is a funny thing. We claim it to be our own; but the truth is, it's not. It belongs to something much bigger. We, like everything else, are transient. This life is temporary and everything about us is temporary. What we call our life is nothing more than borrowed energy from something much bigger--nature, the universe, God--whatever floats your boat. And one day, when we pass, we will give that energy back to the world we borrowed it from in the first place. — Leanne Waters

Alcoholism or addiction is a disease because it fits the definition of disease. It is progressive and chronic, and left untreated, it will kill. — Irene Tomkinson

It is a beautiful and scary thing to sit open-handed and let all your plans float away like dust. — Anna White

In 2011 India's Test team was crowned as world cricket's leading side for the first time in its history. The foundations for this global domination can be traced to a decade earlier, when a career-defining performance by VVS Laxman helped to turn a whole series on its head as India, in the face of a seemingly unassailable deficit, staged an unbelievable recovery to go on and overpower what many considered to be the finest cricket team ever assembled. — Dave Wilson

The significant difference between Proust and Faulkner, for Sartre, is that where Proust discovers salvation in time, in the recovery of time past, for Faulkner time is never lost, however much he may want, like a mystic, to forget time. Both writers emphasize the transitoriness of emotion, of the condition of love or misery, or whatever passes because it is transitory in time. "Proust really should have employed a technique like Faulkner's," Sartre legislates, "that was the logical outcome of his metaphysic. Faulkner, however, is a lost man, and because he knows that he is lost he risks pushing his thoughts to its conclusion. Proust is a classicist and a Frenchman; and the French lose themselves with caution and always end by finding themselves. — John McCormick

He had spent a lifetime cleansing his mind of poison. He had searched his heart, found the corruption, and removed it. He had torn away the lies - lies he'd been told and had believed, and lies he had devised and used against himself. This was his mastery - the purification of the mind and the recovery of authenticity. This scene symbolized the mastery of death, the awakening. — Miguel Ruiz

It is a childish notion that once established, our boundaries will never be transgressed again...We shall have to stand for ourselves repeatedly for the rest of our lives. As we practice doing this, we come to greater ease...Eventually it may float over entirely into the positive realm - becoming only another chance to demonstrated our worthiness. — Maureen Brady

And we can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra. Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot. But through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans. — Barack Obama

Three half-mile repeats on the track at 5-K race pace with a short recovery jog in between shouldn't scare anyone away-and it will improve your speed. — Frank Shorter

Healthy and non-shaming mirroring is an important part of the process. We can gain this from a highly emotionally intelligent and effective peer group that has our best interests at heart. — Christopher Dines

your abuser tried to map your life for you. But he does not own you, and you have the freedom and the power to overcome and transcend the (negative) associations. You deserve to be happy, to be free of any feelings of shame or guilt or fear. You have the right to a completely satisfying sexual life. You are a righteous young woman. If you can get in touch with the feelings and consciously change the awful associations, you can re-map your life. — Patti Feuereisen

No. Depression is the unseen, unheard, silent killer. It is the pain that is too much to cope with, too hard to deal with and never understood. It is something that you can't escape, no matter how hard you try it ALWAYS swallows you again. It constantly follows you around, like black smoke choking you from the inside out. Like a lion clawing at your heart and mind, eating pieces of you until there is nothing left. — Astrid Lee Miles

Like all human beings, Bob [Crane] had feelings and emotions. He danced on the moon, jumped for joy, laughed in ecstasy, and leapt in triumph. He also cried in grief, mourned losses, threw his hands up to the sky in frustration, and felt desperate, scared, sad, and alone. Bob's flaws - the mistakes and bad choices he made, the most difficult moments he faced, and his descent into the jaws of a powerful addiction - were all but a part of his whole life journey. His flaws were merely the specks, like the specks on the Parthenon that comprise any person's entire time on earth... In spite of his flaws, he was a kind person, a joyful person, a talented person, a courageous person - a whole person. — Carol M. Ford

Never underestimate the grace of bouncing back from a fallen heart. — Angelica Hopes

After a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, the federal government has a profound obligation to help those in need, .. Right now, the victims of Hurricane Katrina need our help. Entire communities have been destroyed. Families have been torn apart. Many are still missing. Tens of thousands remain homeless. As the recovery proceeds, we in the Senate pledge to do everything in our power to help rebuild the shattered lives across the Gulf Coast. — Dianne Feinstein

My mother was a good mistress to her servants, taking care of them in their sicknesses, not sparing any cost she was able to bestow for their recovery. — Margaret Cavendish

Everything is, the way it is, for a reason. Or it isn't. Or neither. Or both. It's so hard to tell. It's so hard to tell you're a mile away by the Luke in your eye. — Alistair McHarg

The Recovery Act is working, but it's going to continue to work. It's not over. A lot's going to happen this summer. And even after the summer, there's more to come with the act. — Joe Biden

Fathers who initiate their sons' first sexual experiences by taking them to prostitutes might as well deal them a crack pipe. — Birgit Waldschmidt

I don't feel it is right that I'm playing knowing that I'm not 100% and I cannot currently operate at the level I have done in the past. My priority now is to take a break from cricket so that I can focus on my recovery — Jonathan Trott

Sam held one of the mice up by its tail over the box and then hesitated. "Her, you want to have a go?"...
If Sam thought she was going to squeal at the sight of nature in the raw, he had a lot to learn.
Bella fed the owlet, cheering as he gulped down his food with a greedy intensity that bode well for the little guy's future recovery. And she grinned to herself when she heard Sam mutter under this breath. "This has got to be the weirdest first date in history. — Deborah Blake

Alas! this is the crying sin of the age, this want of faith in the prevalence of a man. Nothing can be effected but by one man. Hewho wants help wants everything. True, this is the condition of our weakness, but it can never be the means of our recovery. We must first succeed alone, that we may enjoy our success together. — Henry David Thoreau

Alcoholism is above all a disease of denial. — David Stafford

A night of sleep is as much preparation for the subsequent day's activity as it is recovery from that of the previous day. — J. Allan Hobson

My family and friends were definitely the key to my recovery. One thing that I do suggest is that anyone dealing with a life-threatening illness like cancer choose a point person for people to call to find out how you are doing - a sister, brother, mother, father, daughter, son, or close friend. — Olivia Newton-John

In a condition of struggle and of failure we must be able to say "I must try harder" or "I must try differently." Both views are essential ... A change in either makes for a change in outcome.
When we say "I must try harder" we mean that the most relevant variable is something within us - intention, will, determination, "meaning it" .
When we say "I must try differently" we mean that the most relevant variable lies in the situation within which intention is being exerted, that we should look to the environment, to the ways it pushes and pulls at us, and in this study find the means to alter that interaction. — Allen Wheelis

Soul recovery, I think, is much richer and more helpful. Instead of having a shaman retrieve our soul for us, we help each other to become the shamans and healers of our own soul. — Robert Moss

a fatal recovery from a promising illness — Thomas Boston

Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world may at any time be superseded and decease. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

And this pleasure, different from every other, had in the end created in him a need of her, which she alone, by her presence or by her letters, could assuage, almost as disinterested, almost as artistic, as perverse as another need which characterised this new period in Swann's life, where the sereness, the depression of the preceding years had been followed by a sort of spiritual superabundance, without his knowing to what he owed this unlooked-for enrichment of his life, any more than a person in delicate health who from a certain moment grows stronger, puts on flesh, and seems for a time to be on the road to a complete recovery: - this other need, which, too, developed in him independently of the visible, material world, was the need to listen to music and to learn to know it. — Marcel Proust

Public truth telling is a form of recovery, especially when combined with social action. Sharing traumatic experiences with others enables victims to reconstruct repressed memory, mourn loss, and master helplessness, which is trauma's essential insult. And, by facilitating reconnection to ordinary life, the public testimony helps survivors restore basic trust in a just world and overcome feelings of isolation. But the talking cure is predicated on the existence of a community willing to bear witness. 'Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships,' write Judith Herman. 'It cannot occur in isolation. — Lawrence N. Powell

I've learned to recognize, a lot of it forced through the process of recovery, that I'm wired wrong in certain ways; the chemical balance of my brain is off in terms of depression a little bit. — Trent Reznor

Not maybe. Definitely! We have an expression back home in Haiti, which says something like 'a man who is thinking with his penis.' That is what you are Michael. That doesn't mean that you are addicted to sex or pornography. You are not a pervert of any kind. Contrary! You are just too sensitive with women. You fall in love at the blink of an eye and all your decisions are based on your passions towards a particular woman. Your mind gets blurry because not enough blood goes to your brain. And your heart pumps all the blood back to your penis and that is why you are a man who thinks with his penis." (Ch.7) — Stevan V. Nikolic

Resentment is like a drug. Once you pick it up, it will only get worse and worse until you surrender and do the work to let it go. — Samantha Leahy

God helps me for sure every day and at every contest. I broke my hand and had to get surgery on it. The recovery was really frustrating because I had to skip three weeks at the beginning of the season. But I flipped it around and took it as a blessing. I said a lot of prayers and just asked God to do His thing. I did other things to compliment the recovery like getting the right sleep and taking care of my body. But I went back to the doctor after four weeks and he was ecstatic about the recovery of my hand. I take that as a tribute to my faith and my belief in doing the right things. — Nick Goepper

An engaging examination of a painful subject, with a focus on healing and forgiveness. - Kirkus Review — Robert Uttaro

Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March.
...
I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world ... I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.
I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness ... Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.
I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.
I am thawing. — Laurie Halse Anderson

This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us ... to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on. This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us ... to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on. — Oswald Spengler

Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive. — Gail Caldwell

Recovery is not only fun, it is simple. It is not always easy, but it is simple. It is based on a premise many of us have forgotten or never learned: Each person is responsible for him- or herself. It involves learning one new behavior that we will devote ourselves to: taking care of ourselves. — Melody Beattie

Anita Johnston, Ph.D., author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, taught me to look in the mirror with curiosity rather than fear. So I may look at my reflection and think, 'That's interesting. I wonder why my body seems bigger today than it did yesterday. Maybe it's water weight. Maybe it's my outfit. Or maybe my eyes are just playing tricks on me.' I know it's not possible for me to gain a noticeable amount of weight overnight, so I will go no further than that. I move on with my day without skipping a beat - and definitely without missing a meal. — Jenni Schaefer

I loosened my grip on my opinions. I entered recovery for being such a know-it-all. I stopped expecting everyone to experience God or church or life like I thought it should be done. In fact, I stopped using the word should about God altogether, I sought God, and he was faithful to answer me. — Sarah Bessey

It is as though a special, zestful spice seasons my work and days," RBG said after her first recovery. "Each thing I do comes with a heightened appreciation that I am able to do it." That — Irin Carmon

There's a whole generation of young people who are faced with the so-called 'jobless recovery.' Necessity is the mother of invention. They are out there, all around the world, creating new companies. — Don Tapscott

Who am I? What am I doing here? Who are these others? This trilogy of spiritual conundrums is as practical as it is philosophical. Mindful inquiry devoted to these three questions is as spiritual as it is material and as obvious as it is unanswerable. Knowledge isn't to comfort our souls; it is to enhance awareness - that is what some call an awakening. Some things have to be believed to be seen. Feelings articulate truth in ways that our brains cannot. We may have a sense about who we are, what our purpose is and how we relate to the rest of the world even without the vocabulary to articulate it. Recovery is visceral as much as it is intellectual. The Eleventh Step is our spiritual barometer, feeding back sensations, feelings and thoughts as we observe our life. — Joe C.

If a person can turn from predicting illness to anticipating recovery, the foundation for cure is laid. — Bernie Siegel

Dedicating some time to meditation is a meaningful expression of caring for yourself that can help you move through the mire of feeling unworthy of recovery. As your mind grows quieter and more spacious, you can begin to see self-defeating thought patterns for what they are, and open up to other, more positive options. — Sharon Salzberg

If one looks at a balancing scale putting "fear of change" on one side and "status quo" on the other, they are often in balance. Change is hard. We tend to accept our condition and no matter how painful, we will not change until the balancing scale is tipped - only when the discomfort becomes greater than the fear of change does the scale tip. — David W. Earle

no one can recover if they won't admit the wrongdoings.
i won't recover if i pretend it was all sunshine.
i have to remember his vindictive temper and realize that sheltering the house from the storm wasn't actually going to make a difference if i still got damaged in the process. because then it's just another broken house with no one to tell its story. — Taylor Rhodes

The doctor knows that it is the prescription slip itself, even more than what is written on it, that is often the vital ingredient for enabling a patient to get rid of whatever is ailing him. — Norman Cousins

I had prostate cancer that, for me, was debilitating. I didn't touch a guitar for two years, but when I realized I was seeing the light at the end of the recovery tunnel and was going to live pain-free, I realized again that it was a fun little instrument to play. — Ronnie Montrose

A little bit of something beats a lot of nothing. Break the largest of difficult tasks into the smallest of steps and it can be done. — Dan Millman

Suddenly, she doesn't want to die. She has no real reason not to, no sudden revelation, except that it's equally pointless to die as not to die. Why doesn't she die? She lives because she's meant to live, because she's already alive and it's comparatively easy to stay that way. She lives because, even though she doesn't know what it is, there must be a reason why she's here in the first place. She lives because either she's not as brave as all the dead girls who've gone before her, or she's actually braver - it's hard to tell. — A.M. Homes

The Bible does not deny that we were various things - addicts, homosexuals, hateful, prideful, pornographic masturbators - but that is what we were (past tense) (1 Cor. 6:9-11; Titus 3:3-5). The emphasis in Scripture is on what we are and what we are called to be. The Christian does not say, Hello, my name is _ and I am an X Y or Z." The Christian says I was dead, but now I am alive. The Christian says I am a struggling sinner, yet I am a saint. The Christians says I am a new creation; I am transformed. — Paul O'Brien

There must be a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. — Bernie Sanders

Putting labels on others creates a black hole of disregard where judgment thrives and schisms deepen. — David W. Earle

Denial protected us, screening out certain experiences & feelings until we grew strong enough to relate to them...Yet it also dropped a curtain over our experience, obscuring it, leaving us with a sense of missing pieces. For instance, when we achieved something, we felt like an imposter. Or, though we had a relationship with a significant other, we often felt alone and unrelated to anyone. — Maureen Brady

There are resurrection themes in every society that has ever been studied, and it is because not just only do we fantasize about the possibility of resurrection and recovery, but it actually happens. And it happens a lot. — Sherwin B. Nuland

Historical experience shows that a crisis causes either a recovery or catastrophic consequences. — Sergei Lavrov

There may not be any romance to mental illness but who needs romance when the preferable route is agency? The prevailing conversation around mental health issues is agency and the lack thereof on the part of the mentally ill. But what do you do if you're a paid-up member of the mentally ill populace in question? Do you curl up into a ball and give up? No, you look for solutions. Ultimately, it's about keeping despair at bay and sometimes simple things like running, taking up a hobby, doing charity work, painting or, in my case, writing can be a galvanizing part of the recovery process. Keeping the brain and the body active can give life a semblance of pleasure and hope. This is what writing has done for me. I took every traumatic element of my condition and channelled it into something useful. — Diriye Osman

Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness.
Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream,
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.
Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive. — Neil Gaiman

I'm training to become a giggle doctor. It's a kind of hospital clown who changes the atmosphere on the ward and helps recovery. It's about making patients laugh but also much more. — Nina Conti

While in the clinic, I discovered I had problems with concentration, motivation, attitude, and temper. I have found a new way of life through the clinic's program and a 12-step recovery plan. — Albert Belle

What a recovery of the wisdom of the Mother brings to all of us is the knowledge of inseparable connection with the entire creation and the wise, active love that is born from that knowledge. — Andrew Harvey

The journey to true happiness and to happiness now is not a journey of physical distance or time; it is one of personal "self-recovery," where we remember and reconnect consciously to an inner potential for joy
a paradise lost
waiting to be found. — Robert Holden

Thank you," she whispered, sending up a quick prayer for his continued recovery.
"You're welcome," Marcus murmured.
Honoria let out a little shriek of surprise, jumping back nearly a foot.
"Sorry," he said, but he was laughing.
It was quite the loveliest sound Honoria had ever heard.
"I wasn't thanking you," she said pertly.
"I know." He smiled — Julia Quinn

To call this a recovery is an insult to recoveries. — Mitch McConnell

Personal growth is not like the development of a skill. It does not take place in observable increments that can be measured and charted. Indeed, as we have seen, when we're growing in sensitivity, generosity, and compassion, we're not aware of it, because we're not focusing on ourselves. The recovery of emotional freedom simply does not have the quality, for most of us, of a controllable sequence of transformations. It's more a career of discovering futher and further weaknesses and shedding them in turn. — C. Terry Warner

Few, as I have said, are the humorists who can induce this state. To master and dissolve us, to give us the joy of being worn down and tired out with laughter, is a success to be won by no man save in virtue of a rare staying-power. Laughter becomes extreme only if it be consecutive. There must be no pauses for recovery. Touch-and-go humour, however happy, is not enough. The jester must be able to grapple his theme and hang on to it, twisting it this way and that, and making it yield magically all manner of strange and precious things. — Max Beerbohm

She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, and said nothing about it, and prayed for the power to forgive, and did forgive. But he can't have found living with her forgiveness all that easy. Breakfast in a haze of forgiveness: coffee with forgiveness, porridge with forgiveness, forgiveness on the buttered toast. He would have been helpless against it, for how can you repudiate something that is never spoken? She resented, too, the nurse, or the many nurses, who had attended my father in the various hospitals. She wished him to owe his recovery to her alone - to her care, to her tireless devotion. That is the other side of selflessness: its tyranny. — Margaret Atwood

Completing a recovery session the day after a game is just as important. I like to go for a walk or a swim and have a stretch — Rebecca Bulley

This is the strongest I have ever wanted a family. Other people to worry with. I am the only person worrying for her and it feels to me like this diminishes her odds of recovery. To have many people praying for you suddenly seems like a necessary thing and I consider telling the woman next to me what is happening, if only to have another person thinking about my Mom. — Liz Moore

Reflecting on this, Albert LaChance recognized an opportunity - what if the work he and so many others found so fruitful in the 12-Step recovery programs could be expanded to an ecological, a global, or even a cosmic level? — Albert J. LaChance

Recovering is a process of coming to experience a sense of self. More precisely, it is a process of learning to sense one's self, to attune to one's subjective physical, psychic, and social self- experience. These woman's core sense of shame and their difficulty tolerating painful emotions had led them to avoid turning their attention inward to their internal sense of things. In recovering, they "came to their senses" and learned to trust their sensed experience, in particular their sense of "enoughness"". — Sheila M. Reindl

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre. — Andy Behrman

An atheist may, of course, also feel clean after taking a bath and dirty without one, but the mikveh ritual, associating outer hygiene with the recovery of a particular kind of inner purity, like so many other symbolic practices promoted by religions, manages to use a physical activity to support a spiritual lesson. — Alain De Botton

Years ago, a wise friend told me that no one ever changes until the pain level gets high enough. That seems entirely true. The inciting incident for life change is almost always heartbreak - something becomes broken beyond repair, too heavy to carry; in the words of the recovery movement, unmanageable. In — Shauna Niequist

I am small.
So are stars from a distance. It's all a matter of perspective. — C. Kennedy

I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy ... — Laurie Halse Anderson

There was a moment of hesitation in which Joe looked into her eyes, and she looked back without flinching. Many a time, he had been at the same game with her, and she had always crumbled, bowing to his will. Now, he must have realized he was looking into the eyes of a stranger. She was someone he could not recognize, a foreigner inhabiting the body of that old Clairey, the girl he had abused, intimidated, and broken. Clairey decided then and there she would no longer cower before him. It was almost as if she were daring him to strike her in their unspoken exchange. — Tracy Winegar

Today I share about my addiction and recovery journey as often as possible because I don't want to die all alone in a dark closet, shrouded in shame beside the decomposing skeletons I tried so desperately to hide. I want to live. — Shannon Egan

The Recovery plan will put money in the pockets of the American worker, create and save millions of new jobs and invest in crucial areas such as health care, education, energy independence and a new infrastructure. — Valerie Jarrett

You are a warrior in a dark forest, with no compass and are unable to tell who the actual enemy is, So you never feel safe .. — Anonymous

We're saying the story doesn't end here, that the air in your lungs is there for a reason. — Jamie Tworkowski

What's glamorous is being a good father, a good husband, a good fucking dog owner. That's what I care about today. That's what matters. I will devote everything to that. And I will succeed. Because I cannot fall down again. I will not fall down again. I mean, I don't have to fall. None of us have to fall. We don't all fall down. We don't. So I'm over this drug shit. It's done. And this is my last recovery memoir ever. — Nic Sheff

But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was going to be really tough to juggle the two as far as rehab and strength training, getting the shoulder back to where it needed to be and also worrying about the weight cut. We thought as a team that the best option for me right now with the recovery was to stay at middleweight, for this fight at least. We'll see what happens after this. — Dylan Andrews

The stimulus legislation, technically known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was a mixture of tax cuts for families and businesses; increased transfer payments, like unemployment insurance; and increased direct government spending, like infrastructure investment. — Christina Romer