The Soul Workout. Helen H. Moore
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THE
Soul
WORKOUT
Getting and Staying Spiritually Fit
By Helen H. Moore
CENTRAL RECOVERY PRESS
Central Recovery Press (CRP) is committed to publishing exceptional materials addressing addiction treatment, recovery, and behavioral health care, including original and quality books, audio/visual communications, and Web-based new media. Through a diverse selection of titles, it seeks to impact the behavioral health care field with a broad range of unique resources for professionals, recovering individuals, and their families.
For more information, visit www.centralrecoverypress.com.
Central Recovery Press, Las Vegas, NV 89129
© 2010 by Central Recovery Press, Las Vegas, NV
eISBN-13: 978-1-936290-36-9
eISBN-10: 1-936290-36-7
All rights reserved. Published 2010. Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
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Publisher: Central Recovery Press
3371 N Buffalo Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89129
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a true story of my life and my recovery experiences recounted to the best of my memory. All opinions expressed are my own. All names have been changed to protect privacy and anonymity. Characters, places, and incidents are composites. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely unintentional.
Cover design and interior by Sara Streifel, Think Creative Design
DEDICATED TO THE MEN AND
WOMEN OF MY HOME GROUP,
TO MY SPONSOR, N J,
AND TO KIM CATALANO.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A WORD ABOUT SPIRITUALITY (NOT RELIGION)
Finding a God of My Own Understanding
Looking at the Truth of My Life
LOVE
Embracing a Power Greater than Me
POWERLESSNESS
Accepting My Freedom to Be Me
EXPECTATIONS KILL
Letting Go to Grow
INTEGRITY
Taking Responsibility for My Actions
RESENTMENTS
Seeing My Part in Things
RIGOROUS HONESTY VS. SELF-INDULGENCE
Checking My Motives
SPIRITUALITY
Filling My God Hole
GRIEF AND LOSS
Learning to Heal through Tears and Love
YOU'RE READY WHEN YOU'RE READY
Stumbling toward Recovery
GRATITUDE
Mending My Spirit
WHAT I “CAME TO BELIEVE”
Opening My Cage
With gratitude to Stuart Smith, whose wholehearted dedication to the cause of recovery gave me the opportunity to share my “experience, strength, and hope” in these pages. His vision and commitment have helped many in recovery.
I would like to thank my editor, Nancy Schenck. Without her willingness to embrace my ideas and her kindness, insight, diligence, and expertise, this book would have remained merely an idea in its author's head.
Thank you to Daniel Kaelin, Valerie Killeen, and Dan Mager, my industrious colleagues at Central Recovery Press, for their patience and hard work.
At a meeting of my home group one morning, I looked around at all the members. These were the strangers whose kindness I had once depended upon for my life, the strangers who had become my friends and my teachers. In this room, I heard an old-timer say, “Put back your shopping cart.” I heard a member say, “Don't tell me how much you love your kid; just pay your child support.” I heard a woman say, “Do good and don't get caught.” I also heard, “Making amends means standing in their driveway with their money in your hand.”
This dingy church hall, I realized, was the gym that we came to in order to exercise our spirituality, taking time every day for what I came to call “The Soul Workout.”
I was sitting in that hall listening to the others because I was trying to save my life. I have the chronic, progressive, and fatal brain disease of addiction, which affects me physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. In recovery, I began to get better in this order:
