Rokelle Lerner – Staying Home in Recovery

Hello everyone. My name is Rokelle Lerner and I am the senior clinical advisor for Crossroad Centre Antigua. Crossroads Centre is a world class treatment center that has a fabulous combination of compassion and real clinical excellence and it’s been my privilege to advise them for the past five years.

I want to speak to you today about some issues regarding staying home and recovery during this pandemic of COVID-19. You know, those of us who are in recovery, we’re not strangers to unmanageability and chaos. We’ve lived with chaos in our lives that almost destroyed us and we’ve learned, I think through working the 12 steps, about how to walk through difficult days with a level of grace and equanimity. We’ve also learned to accept and embrace challenges as part of our spiritual growth, and we have found in our recovery that embracing those challenges has ultimately led us to a happier, more resilient existence. We’ve learned that while helplessness makes us feel like a victim, we also know that surrender gives us hope.

There’s a quote from Thomas Keating that goes, “I release my desire for security, and control, and affection, and I embrace the moment as it is.”

Let me read that again. “I release my desire for security, and control, and affection, and I embraced this moment as it is.”

Folks that’s called acceptance, acceptance. And there’s a level of surrender to that. We can’t control this virus, but we do have some control over our behavior and the way we spend our days. You know, surrender opens a path so that we can take the next right action. And the next right action might be getting up and getting yourself a glass of water. It could be organizing the kitchen, reaching out to a friend, making a plan for the day, you know, doing some work from home, taking one step at a time. The next right action. It could be getting dressed, it could be exercising.

Surrender brings us back into the moment where we see that doing the next best thing in front us with the best attitude we can muster brings us peace and it can bring us wellbeing.

So, let’s embrace this statement again by Thomas Keating. As we take a deep breath and relax our bodies, you might want to close your eyes and repeat after me, “I release my desire for security, control and affection, and I embrace this moment as it is.”