“Just when it looks like life is falling apart, it may be falling together for the first time.” …Neale Donald Walsch
I was a little more than a year into recovery when I broke my leg. I remember thinking, while I was lying there waiting for the ambulance, ‘This is going to change a few things!’ I ran my own business (a Bed and Breakfast Inn) and did most of the work myself. A couple of weeks later my relationship that had been limping along for several years finally ended. I thought, ‘What the hell, is this going to continue?’ My ‘go to’ for keeping myself somewhat sane was going to about 12 meetings a week and driving my motorcycle to out of town meetings. That wasn’t going to be happening for a while. The final thing was that I had already started the process with my doctor of weaning myself off of anti depression medication so I was ‘phasing’ every once in a while
For the first month or so I was pretty much confined to home. I hired two people who were also in recovery to help me do all the work at the B&B. My mother and my ex pitched in when they could as well. And it was all working out fine. My sponsor came to visit as did other program friends. We had meetings around my bed at first, and later in the living room. Friends lent me some recovery literature. And I survived.
I also learned several things. I learned that I didn’t have to do anything alone if I didn’t want to. I learned again of the generosity of people. I learned that things didn’t have to be done ‘my way’ to be done ‘properly’. I learned that my ‘perfectionist’ ways could be a whole lot more flexible. I never heard one complaint that I didn’t make the muffins or that the bed was made wrong or the bathroom was dirty. Everything got done just fine.
I learned that while I wasn’t all that happy with how my life was at this particular moment, I was learning in recovery to play the ‘long game’. I might not see exactly what was happening or why it was happening, but I could trust the process and know that all was happening as it should. And I learned that I could survive and stay clean and sober even when the wheels fell off of the cart, or in our case, the wagon. Finally, it was at this point in my life that I began my journey deeper into spirituality and awakening.
In the time since that epic month of August in 2012, everything that came apart, came back together. After a couple of operations, a hard cast, a soft cast, walkers, crutches and canes and a month of physiotherapy, my leg healed. A year later the business sold and I moved full time to Costa Rica, which had been a dream of mine. I haven’t had the need to return to medication for depression and I am still in recovery. There was a lot of change in a short time and a new me emerged from the ashes.
Other momentous things have happened since in recovery. I now tend to look at them as stepping stones on the path. Some I have liked and some I would have preferred to avoid, but if that’s the next right step, then I take it. I’ve learned to trust my Higher Power and the process. My life fell back together in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I am grateful.
Recovery river 