Happy New Year, my friends! I hope that the holiday season was good for each of you.
For January, we’ve been given the theme “Recovery”. Recovery is defined as (via Oxford Languages):
1. a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength
2. the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost.
Those are great definitions, but I have to question: WHAT is a normal state of health, mind and strength, and DO we really want to regain possession of all the things we lose? Personally, the only recovery I like is that of recovering lost data.
When recovery involves addiction, of course we want the person recovering to return to their state BEFORE they became addicted, or non-addicted state, and when someone goes through a health crisis, we’re eager to return to “normal”.
Likewise, when we have things stolen from us, or we lose something, we get angry, or even desperate, to recover what was lost. Sometimes, though, we shouldn’t go back to how we were before, because maybe who we were before led to the crisis which needs recovery. Sometimes, a major health crisis changes us, and we are never going to recover all that we had- strength, ability, etc.- and that’s okay.
But-and hear me out-what if what we lost was for our benefit in the long run, and are we truly meant to return to our “normal” states after a crisis- whether it be health or life related?
I’m certainly no expert, but in my own life I’ve learned that there are many things that I can’t fully recover from, nor do I want my recovery to mean going back to how I was before. Moving forward is important to healing, and recovery sometimes means looking and handling life in a new “normal” state- and that goes for mental and physical health, and maybe some things we lose are for our own good.
Here’s a poem I’ve written that addresses recovery and healing:
Recovery Discovery
We move like a threaded needle
Under, over and through our lives
Sometimes the stitches get stuck
And sometimes we need to re-stitch
There is no timeline
To a completed work
As we are always
A work in progress
Even when we leave
The seeds we planted
And the stiches we so careful placed
Are grown and used
Through future generations
Don’t tell me to
“Get over it”,
Nor ask me to go backwards
For your sake
I will keep stitching
And moving forward
Recovery is in the healing
And healing is in the stitching-
With each move of the needle of life
There is progress
There is progress