Mid Year’s Freedom Dream
We are at the end of Pride month as I write this. A month to Celebrate! who you are and who you want to be! It gets me going as I reflect back on the years.
In Pre-covery, I was waaay prideful, strutting around the city trying to be the me I wanted everyone to see. I often checked to see who was looking and more often than not, TWiCE! after tripping over my two left feet.
It was quite the debacle which was affirmed by someone I knew in the Lower East Side community that I was a part of at the time told me two years into my recovery that I used to “run rampant” around the neighborhood. So much time spent running away from and running to the imaginary oasis.
Every time I reached that proverbial mountain top, I would disparage it and realize it wasn’t what I wanted at all and again found myself defeated by an abyss of uncertainty, longing to find myself and (truthfully, it didn’t feel very prideful) a colossal lack of what I was looking to show off most. It didn’t feel much like pride, did it?
This all came to a halt as the daydream was intervened by Jimi Hendrix singin’ in my head:
Freedom,
That’s what I want now
Freedom, that’s what I need now
Freedom to live
Freedom, so I can give
Right on, straight ahead
Stay up and straight ahead
Freedom, so I can live it
Freedom, ’cause I’ve got lotta to give, baby
Freedom, so I can live, freedom
(Keep on pushin’, straight ahead)
And then I realized, it’s my Anniversary! That’s NOT my story today. I get to dream a new dream! Today, the dream is for me to keep stretching. Not just my body, but also my mind as well as my spirit. Continue growing into the next best version of me. What that looks like, I’m not so sure, but I am excited to find out! Now this sounds a little more Prideful !
A few days later, it’s about to be the Fourth of July and they say we’ve got freedom. At times I question this as it looks very different for all of us from time to time. At this moment, the simpler I keep it, the freer I seem to feel. How about you? What does your Freedom Dream look like?
We also have our Quarterly trainings beginning next week. Over 70 CE hours available on top of the base CCAR Recovery Coach Academy and Ethical Considerations for Recovery Coaches training, all supporting CARC, NAADAC and RCP Certification as well as Re-Certification credits.
If you want your skills to make a great impact on your community, we got you!