Recovery Road

No one has been spared from loss or grieving this year, especially those of us in recovery who may also be experiencing the loss of our former coping mechanism, substance use. In his book Help for the Hard Times: Getting Through Loss, Earl Hipp tells us all about grief and what we can do to work through it while sustaining our sobriety.

In times like these, the pressure is on - but what can we do about it? In his book, 12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone, Dr. Allen Berger teaches us how to look inward and focus on our part of the problem.

Beverly Conyers, author of Find Your Light: Practicing Mindfulness to Recover from Anything, just published Follow Your Light: A Guided Journal to Recover from Anything. Here are two exercises from the journal about forgiveness, something we can all examine a little more closely in ourselves on our recovery journeys.

Autumn is here, and we are living through unprecedented times. But let's never forget that while we've never been in this place before, others have gone before us, and they've had their own challenges and strife during their recovery. Marya Hornbacher, in this excerpt from Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power, weaves a story for us about her own experience in the world of the spirit.

Whether we are essential workers, first responders, or health care providers or we live with people who face incredible circumstances on a daily basis, we need to know how to support ourselves and each other. Cynthia Orange helps us identify and manage stress and depression in this excerpt from Shock Waves: A Practical Guide to Living with a Loved One's PTSD.

Melody Beattie wrote 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact: Meditations for Connecting with God, Self, and Others to help us remove what's in the way of our serenity. Here is week 18, where Melody helps us with the concept of "easy does it" so we can walk through recovery - challenges and all - one step at a time.

Many of us are survivors, and many of us are facing recovery not only from a substance use perspective but also from a place of trauma. Jennifer Storm helps us examine our recovery—honestly—from both perspectives at the same time in Awakening Blackout Girl.

Those of us who've been in recovery for a little while might wonder if we could use a check-up for our recovery. Fred H. looks to Step Ten to give us these spot checks—these recovery aerobics—in Drop the Rock: The Ripple Effect.

Humility helps us approach what we do with an open and curious mind, and no time is better to practice humility than today. Beverly Conyers, author of Find Your Light: Practicing Mindfulness to Recover from Anything, explains how humility will only serve us in our recovery.

Sometimes the problem isn't the problem - the problem is how we cope with the problem. Sometimes, we need expert advice for how to cope with our problems, as explained by Dr. Allen Berger in his book 12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone.