Quotes about Healing

I want to thank each person who has the courage to push through and past the set of coping behaviors we've come to label as codependency—who learn what it means to take care of themselves. "Nobody taught me how to take care of myself," a fifty-year-old woman told me recently. "I didn't have enough money to go to therapy, but I had enough to buy a book.

Recovery is not only fun, it is simple. It is not always easy, but it is simple. It is based on a premise many of us have forgotten or never learned: Each person is responsible for him- or herself. It involves learning one new behavior that we will devote ourselves to: taking care of ourselves.

People and things don't stop our pain or heal us. In recovery, we learn that this is our job, and we can do it by using our resources: ourselves, our Higher Power, our support systems, and our recovery program.

God, help me let go of my need to deprive myself of being alive.

I don't think love has to hurt as much as it did in the past. I don't think we have to allow love to hurt us as much as it has. We certainly don't have to let it destroy us.

Don't give up hope. It took many of us twenty years or more to acquire these protective behaviors we umbrella with the word codependency. It may take as much time as that to let go of them.

Today, God, help me to know that it is okay to allow myself to be human. Help me not to feel guilty or punish myself when I need to "fall apart.

Even recovery brings losses, more changes we must struggle to accept.

We go back . . . and back . . . and back . . . until we discover the exuberant, unencumbered, delightful and lovable child that was, and still is, in us. And once we find it, we love and cherish it, and never, never let it go.

Do you know you have a right to become as healthy as you want, no matter what your family does or doesn't do? Do you know you can love

Surrender to love, without allowing people to control us or keep us from caring for ourselves. Start by surrendering to love for yourself.

We don't have to punish ourselves by feeling guilty to prove to God or anyone else how much we care.7 We need to forgive ourselves. Take the Fourth and Fifth Steps (see the chapter on working a Twelve Step program); talk to a clergy person; talk to God; make amends; and then be done with it.