Empty Shell
Living gratefully today, I appreciate opportunities to transform and better know my own emotions. I am also grateful for the uncomplicated nature of the love I have for our dog Oliver.
Transformation is a beautiful thing, an ongoing experience of becoming who we are. It is some of the hardest work that I do, and it is also some of the best work that I do. I couldn't have described it this way then, but as a child, a teen, a young adult, I felt like an empty shell.
Not my physical self so much, though I didn't have a very good sense of that either, but my feeling heart, my spiritual soul, my thinking brain. This was a deeper emptiness than the immaturity of childhood, the natural growth process. I was stunted, held back.
I started drinking at age 14, and drank alcohol to excess to try to fill the emptiness. It only left me more void, depleted. If I would have kept drinking, I would be dead or simply existing.
It is one of the reasons I start each day grateful and with practices that help me maintain my recovery. I continue to fill out that shell and have become a much more complete, fuller self.
And yet, there is so much more to learn, so much more transformation possible. Pain can be a motivator, and some of the most painful times in my life have brought the most meaningful growth, the most substantial filling of my emptiness.
Today, I am far from that empty shell I used to be. And I am far from done filling it.
Transformation is a beautiful thing, an ongoing experience of becoming who we are. It is some of the hardest work that I do, and it is also some of the best work that I do. I couldn't have described it this way then, but as a child, a teen, a young adult, I felt like an empty shell.
Not my physical self so much, though I didn't have a very good sense of that either, but my feeling heart, my spiritual soul, my thinking brain. This was a deeper emptiness than the immaturity of childhood, the natural growth process. I was stunted, held back.
I started drinking at age 14, and drank alcohol to excess to try to fill the emptiness. It only left me more void, depleted. If I would have kept drinking, I would be dead or simply existing.
It is one of the reasons I start each day grateful and with practices that help me maintain my recovery. I continue to fill out that shell and have become a much more complete, fuller self.
And yet, there is so much more to learn, so much more transformation possible. Pain can be a motivator, and some of the most painful times in my life have brought the most meaningful growth, the most substantial filling of my emptiness.
Today, I am far from that empty shell I used to be. And I am far from done filling it.
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