Recovery

1^st March 2025

First day of spring is a good day for a beginning. I am not quite sure why now and why in this form, but I just felt the urge to talk about things that have been on my mind on and off for years, and years. I am new to this, and I might be a little clunky with, perhaps, too much prose in my writing. So, please, bear with me and be forgiving while I am finding my voice in the process. After all, it is part of my recovery to dare being imperfect, to learn to not be scared of judgement and to allow myself to try without fear of failure.

I want to start with talking about Recovery.

Physical recovery seems to be finite in the way of having a start, a progression and an end-result. Emotional, psychological or mental recovery, however, seem to not follow such lovely set patterns. Depression, anxiety, eating disorder, addiction, can haunt one and hover around for ever. And ever. Dependency, bad choices, wrong decisions seem to follow one around like long shadows. Wrong boyfriend, wrong husband, wrong job, wrong friends. Drinking, drugs, binge eating, not eating, self-harming, self-medicating. Wrong life?

At what age can you know who you really are? When do you realise who you have become? And have you turned into your mother, your father or your sister? And when or how do you actually find out who you are meant to be? And is this the same as who you can be?

These are a few of my personal silenced questions. Silenced because I repeatedly squash their persistent noise in my head. 

Avoidance is king! 

I want to talk about what recovery means for each of us. Mothers, daughters, sisters, wives. Women, others.

Is recovery for you healing? 

Is it breaking free?

Is it leaving or is it staying? 

Is it finding strength and courage or is it becoming vulnerable? 

We are unique and so are our strengths, weaknesses and dependencies. Our vulnerabilities and ghosts. Our prisons and our poisons. And, so, to find recovery do we not first need to identify our addiction? Our dependency? Our very own barriers that hold us down, back and under? Our very real or imaginary limitations?

Let me go first. After decades of suffering, of being ‘discontent’ and ‘frustrated’ and of not being able to ‘realise my full potential’ (all male diagnoses and characterisations by the way), I believe that my recovery will truly begin when I break the cycle of tyranny, judgement and blaming.

The cycle of Tyranny...

For me, this was (and still is) a culture of judgement, criticism, and guilt-tripping through blaming, from a very early age -practically from as early as I can remember having a sense of Self. As one could have guessed this can only mean one thing: Family. A father, a mother, a sister.

My question to you all is do you think it is right or possible to break free from this type of toxicity and tyranny? Your father? Your mother? What if it is a husband, a sibling, or, what if it is a child? Your child?

Can you break free?

Let us embark on a discourse on trauma, barriers, exclusion, inequality, bravery, resilience, recovery and freedom. A discourse on the female experience.

And perhaps we will get some answers...