<\/p>\n
When we see a member experience real change with 20, or 30, or more years of being clean, we can see that, truly, recovery never stops.<\/strong><\/p>\n Living Purely, Chapter 7, \u201cLove\u201d<\/p>\n As a twelve-step program, stairs are an easy analogy we often use to describe the recovery process. We rise from the darkness and despair of active addiction to the light of recovery. Some members say that the higher we climb the ladder, the more we have to lose if we fall back down. Living Clean describes recovery as a spiral staircase: \u201cDo we end up at the same view over and over again, only seeing it from a different perspective each time? One member shared with a laugh, \u201cMy staircase looks more like one of those tripartite optical illusion paintings where the stairs go back to each other and the laws of physics don't apply.<\/p>\n The more we stay clean, the more life we experience. And when we actively work our program, we experience life deeply and continue to encounter more and more truth about ourselves. Finding a new way of life takes on a different meaning when we've been clean for decades. We discover ourselves, redefine ourselves, lose ourselves, find ourselves, reinvent ourselves \u2013 again and again and again. The ladder rotates by itself.<\/p>\n When we remain pure in all this and still active in SE, a large part of our course is visible to those around us. It can be messy. We may grow in ways that cause us to distance ourselves from some friends in recovery. We may form new bonds with other members that we never thought we would come close to. We may have moments where we feel foolish or slow to realize something about ourselves so far down the path, only to have our friends say, "Oh, yeah - we knew that about you a long time ago."<\/p>\n When we first get clean, few of us end up having the lives we hope to have\u2014or even being the people we hope to be. Sisterhood members love us through it all. No matter how far along we are, when we share our new discoveries, we share our hope.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My journey may not look like what I expected\u2014or what I thought others expected. As my horizons expand, I will relish every discovery and freely share what I have learned so others can see how my journey continues.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"template":"","class_list":["post-11581","spad","type-spad","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.na-greece.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spad\/11581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.na-greece.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spad"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.na-greece.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/spad"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.na-greece.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}