Deciding to Bloom

and the moment you've been gifted

Hello dear friends, colleagues, and folks who’ve moved to this glorious place from an earlier email list and community.

I hope you continue to stick around.

This week, I’ve been thinking about flowers and stories.

You may not know this about me, but I usually wait until later in the gardening season to adorn the outside of my home with flowers.

Why?

1. Deer love to eat all of the flowers I plant in early spring.

2. Flowers are expensive and use a lot of water.

3. Tennessee gets hot in the summer.

4. Did I mention it gets hot?

This week, I walked through the blossoms and bees and found $10 baskets of sleepy flowers waiting for a home. The blooms aren’t perfect and they have that shadow of an early fall about them, and yet they make me smile. That is enough.

Today I can make decisions (that I hope I don’t take for granted too often) like when I’d like to look for discounted flowers. What to cook for supper. If I make my bed. What story to guide my kids to read before bed.

Are there simple things that you choose to do today that make you stop and sigh in awe and gratitude that this is your life? That this is the moment you’ve been gifted to decide?

In recovery, we decide to bloom.

It’s never easy.

And always worth it.

We make the choice that we are ready for something new.

Beautiful.

Verdant.

[verdant = a fancy word that means the greenest green, which I’ve always loved]

Of course, this can’t be done alone.

Lush growth is a movement of community, hope, and faith.

What does growth mean to you?

If you look really close at these pictures, you’d notice that there are dead buds that need ripping off and mold on the deck that needs scrubbing and when the nights get cooler, the verdancy will fade and a new season will knock, ready.

The beauty of this moment is fleeting.

And yet - we get to decide again and again to continue to walk a recovery journey.

To bloom.

Here is a beautifully curated list of other recovery blogs (or bouquets) coined “SoberStack” by a lovely new friend at Sober Soulful.

SoberStack: Substack Newsletters on Addiction Recovery & Sobriety

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Feel a calling to tell your story? I’d love to feature your story on Circle of Chairs. If you’d like to share a recovery story (or another story of hope), reach out today and check out some of the guest stories on my home page.

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Here are a few of my favorite opportunities I’ve had to share my story over the past couple months:

Wisconsin Public Radio: The Morning Show

Faith in your Recovery Podcast

Dr. Lee Warren Podcast: Everyday Hope

Writing for Your Life Book Interview

I’d love to share my new book with you. Downstairs Church: Finding Hope in the Grit of Addiction and Trauma Recovery is out now anywhere you buy books.