A Native, mother wrote about how painful her grief had been when her 18-year-old daughter passed on. “I felt like throwing in the towel when the pain was too unbearable. It would knock me down every time I was weak from forgetting to eat or drink something. Every time I thought my heart was going to burst from anxiety, I felt my grief was so deep I could never recover. Then the hope of Fatherhood is Sacred®/MotherhoodisSacred® words were soothing to my soul. I re-read the manual again and again. I could face my other children and love them. I could function as a human being without the pain. Hope has given me strength.”
A life without hope is a life of misery and destruction. When anger, resentment, anxiety, and selfishness control our life, hope and gratitude is the only way to recover. When we are ungrateful and forget how blessed we are, we become resentful, bitter and angry. When we live a life of gratitude, then we have hope. Hope is feeling confident and sure and is founded in trust. To have hope is to know that we can change and that we can overcome addiction and the trauma of abuse. To have hope is to do today what we may want to put off till tomorrow. Hope gives us the strength to live.
When someone is living through a recovery program, many times they feel there is no hope. The thought of, “What’s the use of doing this program! My history tells me that I’m just going to go back to what I’ve been doing before”. Hope is one of the most important ideals we can instill in anyone going through recovery. Hope is the important ingredient that tells anyone going through recovery, that it is possible to live addiction free.
Hope is not just wishful thinking about the future. We may feel empty inside or alone and feel like quitting, but hope gives us the power to be forward thinking, forward looking and forward moving.
Holding onto hope by having gratitude always increases hope. We can focus on the positive. We can recognize the good in others. We can take responsibility and be accountable for our personal choices. We can celebrate other’s accomplishments and love life. We need hope.
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