I hear that this is key to my recovery, but what is a spiritual awakening and why is it so important? 

For me, awakening means becoming aware of something. I’m waking up, or becoming conscious. What do I need to become aware of? At first it was that I was an alcoholic. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. From there, I needed to learn what it meant to be an alcoholic and why that understanding is important to my recovery. As I went along in my sobriety, I realized that part of my problem is that I don’t know what I need to know. I didn’t know I was an alcoholic. I had no idea I had a disease. And for most of my life, I didn’t know how to be human (i.e. I felt like I was missing something the other humans had when it came to how to live life). This baffled me and often lent itself to life changing behaviors and fear based choices. 

For example, when I graduated college, I couldn’t wrap my head around writing a resume and getting a job based on my degree. It was like a stop-gap in my brain. I was on the outside looking in. Rather than ask for help, I just went on waitressing and bartending because it was comfortable. I lacked basic life skills or the ability to ask for help. And I wasn’t conscious of it at the time. Its not like I thought “oh I must be missing something let me find out what that is.” I just pivoted into what I did know. And this very minor example is still something that altered the course of my career life. 

And this kind of thing was happening all over the place. I didn’t know how to feel my feelings. I didn’t know how to be a friend or daughter or girlfriend. I didn’t know how to live life. 

So then I get sober and I start to unclog this channel to the seat of knowledge – my gut instinct or that presence of a higher power. And I start becoming aware of what I didn’t know and needed to know. Now that I’m aware, that I’m awake in my own life, I can start to live from a place of love (gut instinct or higher power). I even know when I need to ask for help and have the willingness to do so. I am finally present in my own life. 

And that, to me, is what it means to have a spiritual awakening. The part of me that was covered up with booze, resentment, trauma and character defects is now free. I am aware of my spirit. The essence of who I am. The part of me that I was missing or disconnected from for so long. 

It’s my job now to keep that channel clear. I do that with prayer and meditation, working through resentments quickly and recognizing my character defects. It’s not always clear and I still need to ask for help quite a bit, but I know I need to ask for help. And it’s more like affirming what I already know. 

Living from a place of love (higher power) versus fear is life changing. It doesn’t mean I don’t have fear. I still do, but now I ask myself what I would do if I wasn’t afraid and try to do that. Everything changes with that simple decision, which I also think is what my higher power’s will for me is – do the best I can to live from love. 

Awareness is the key to my recovery. It allows me to recognize the voice of my disease and choose not to listen to it, or to tell someone what’s it’s saying to me. It also allows me to recognize when I’m stuck in my own head wrapped up in myself and make moves to get out of self and into life.