The holiday season from Thanksgiving to New Years and including Christmas has always been a hard time for people dealing with addiction. The holidays portray picture-perfect families , happy memories, and peaceful loving relationships. Most of us have slightly different human experiences. So for the month of December, 2008, in tribute to my 32nd year of sobriety and the beginning of my 33rd year from Nov. 24th, I will be posting about healing, spiritual experiences, and life changing events.

I first want to begin by reposting about my spiritual experience–“The Moment That Changed My Life”.

“Each life has defining moments. The moment that changed my life happened in a home for alcoholic women in 1976. I was in a discussion with Lois, another alcoholic from Brooklyn, and she was talking about her life. Midway through her talk, I felt intense warmth toward her and compassion flowed through me. The miracle was that I had had a very sheltered life and she had had a very tough life, but in that moment we were sisters and kindred spirits.”

“When I got up and walked outside, everything was different—trees, cars, the street—I saw everything with new eyes. It took me much searching to find out what had happened to me. In a book by William James entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), I found that I had had a radical conversion.”

“Did I answer a calling? I don’t know what happened to me except I knew that God had given me that compassion and love that I felt that day. I know that someone with an experience is never at the mercy of someone with an argument.”

“From that day until today, I have tried to accept the guidance that God gives me and it has been the most amazing journey. I don’t believe that God does more for me now than He did before that day. The difference is that I now can see the daily miracles. “Once I was blind and now I see.””