Choice for Today

Today I choose to honor my body in this way...

what is one thing you can choose to do today to honor your body?

I Am Beautiful

Today, my mom gave me the most beautiful little gift book called I am Beautiful: Affirmations for Women (Thank you mom!!) Great to carry in your bag, your pocket or to give as a gift!! I am going to carry it in my bag. Here are a couple of quotes from it...


...I am beautiful when my hair is a mess
and I haven't put on my makeup yet.
Perfection is overrated.
If everyone in this world were perfect,
we would all be exactly the same.
It is the very things that make me
different that make me beautiful...

...Sometimes I lose myself
in what the world expects of me.
I will not try to conform
to what "I should be."
I will create my own box
and step outside it as I wish...

...Today I will write five things I like about myself...

~ I Am Beautiful, Affirmations for Women by Diane Mastromarino

Get It?

Pain can turn our focus inward and we then spend our days and our lives thinking and saying to ourselves: Why me? Why me? Why me? If we live self-absorbed in negative thinking patterns, we will miss what is going on around us: opportunities to heal, to grow, to help others, to be happy, to be free, to learn to live life to the fullest...

I saw this video online today, and wanted to share it with you...

May you give yourself permission to learn to live outside of yourself. There is a whole world out there waiting for you.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

The Hurricane Post

I spent the day at home yesterday..Tropical Storm Fay was on its way to South Florida.

For the last 14 years I have lived in South Florida, every summer I have heard a lot about Hurricane Preparedness. It is important to be ready for the storm. We have to be prepared.

These hurricane preparedness tips from The American Red Cross Website can teach us a lesson about staying in recovery and recognizing the warning signs of a possible relapse:

1) Know what a WATCH and a WARNING is. If you find you find slipping and falling into old /unhealthy habits. Learn to recognize warning signs of relapse. You might want to write down in your journal what you feel like physically, cognitively, emotionally, spiritually when you are in a "good place" with your recovery and refer to that list to make sure you are still on track.

2) Prepare a PERSONAL EVACUATION PLAN. I often hear people in group express fear about ending back up in the hospital, of relapsing. Having a plan for when you feel that you are struggling / might be heading for relapse can help relieve the anxiety and fear of relapse. Have a list of people that you can reach out to for support. Know what coping tools have worked for you in the past and consider going back to the basics of recovery for a while. Ask for help. Listen to those that you trust, are experienced and trained to help.

3) Assemble a PREPAREDNESS KIT. that you can use in case you feel the storm. approaching. These are some of the items in my preparedness kit in early recovery:

• Therapist appointments
• Nutritionist appointments / meal plan
• Personal Journal
• Food Journal
  
• Support groups
• Medicine prescribed by my doctor
• God, Prayer, Faith
  
• Family and Friends
• Nurturing / doing something for myself
• Books on recovery

So can you recognize warning signs that there might be a storm coming? Do you have a personal evacuation plan? Do you have a preparedness kit to help you stay in recovery and prevent relapse?

Something to think about during this hurricane season.

Stay safe.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Quotes for Today

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

~ Carol Burnett







We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.

~ Harrison Ford

Cognitive Distortions

I know I have posted these before, I just think it is so important to be aware of them...

"We all tend to think in extremes...and when traumatic events happen we think that way even more. Here are some common cognitive distortions. Take a look and see if any of them are getting in your way.

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3. Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

4. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5. Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

• Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don't bother to check it out.

• The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

6. Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."

8. Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9. Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, "He's a damn louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10. Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible."

source: HealthyMind.com

From: Burns, David D., MD. 1989. The Feeling Good Handbook. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.

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Do you see any of these getting in the way of your recovery? I know these used to be my stumbling blocks. This is part of what our professional support system (psychiatrists, psychologists, nutritionists, etc.) are trying to help us understand, so we can substitute these cognitive distortions with healthier ways of thinking and being.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Peace and Courage

Here are two words often misunderstood....

PEACE













Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.

~ Unknown

COURAGE









Courage. It does not mean the absence of fear. It means moving forward in the presence of fear.

*********************
These are two important concepts in the world of addiction and recovery. Feeling numb, isolating, avoiding risk, does not bring peace of safety. People engage in addictive behaviors looking for a sense of peace, pleasure and fulfillment that is never enough and never lasts...

Many times addicts stay in their addictions because they are afraid of what might be on the other side of recovery...they think others that achieve recovery are somehow fearless, more courageous, different. The truth is, we all experience fear...We have to choose to move forward in spite of it...

May you take your next step in recovery in spite of fear and may you find true peace in your journey towards freedom.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Quote for Today

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

~ Ben Okri

Functional MRIs and Eating Disorders

I found some interesting research in Aimee Liu's book Gaining. Recent research shows that anorexic thinking, as it relates to food, can be mapped by functional MRIs.. Janet Treasure and a group of researchers at Maudsley Hospital in London have watched the brain "in action" while subjects watch images of food.

These are some of their findings (paraphrased):

1) For people with no history of eating disorders, the sight of food (i.e. strawberry cheesecake) excited the lateral region of the brain responsible for apetite.

2) For people with a history of anorexia and bulimia, the "dominant response" to food came from a region in the frontal lobe of the brain associated with making decisions and the regulation of anxiety.

3) The longer a person has been ill, the stronger the response of the frontal lobe.

4) When subjects return to normal eating, multiple areas of the brain respond in order to override the brain's disordered response to food. These multiple responses (patches) are meant to prevent the person's impulse to suppress appetite.

5) The longer the time passed without relapse, the stronger the response of these multiple areas of the brain to prevent the disordered response.

6) The brain cannot produce a completely normal response to food even decades after the subjects last used ED symptoms. Subjects in recovery from ED respond to food with a mixture of "attraction, resistance, guilt, calculation, permission and release".

7) The Good News: The brain seems to continually rebuild/heal itself in order to allow the mind to gain control over even many years of affliction.

**************************

I have been in recovery for close to eight years. Sometimes, when I eat, I experience, as the author says, a mixture of "attraction, resistance, guilt, calculation, permission and release".

Next time I feel that way, I will be thankful because it means that my brain continues to heal and find different ways to override old behaviors that were not healthy for me.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Life

"May you live all the days of your life."
~Jonathan Swift
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May we always remember that life is a precious gift and not take it for granted.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Stand Up 2 Cancer

In honor of Jayne (one of the bravest ladies I know)
and in memory of her husband Tim.

In memory of Guy Tobin (1955 - 2008)





peace, hope and love,

Lily

On Fear, Being Stuck and Possibility

Hi All,

My sister in law Flora (Thanks Flora!!!) sent me a very interesting article on Fear today, and I wanted to share a couple of quotes from it with you:

"When we stop going for it—when we step back, play it safe, or say we can’t do something—we might avoid the experience of fear for the moment, but at the same time we are reinforcing where we’re stuck. We’re limiting our freedom, and cutting off possibility. Being alive includes risks, threats, and danger—the possibility of “bad” things happening is always there. But in planning our life to avoid those things, we’re essentially avoiding life—obviously not the wisest way to be alive.

(...)

There’s a big difference between being realistic about what happened once, and being resigned or stuck that things have to continue to be some way now or that they just are some way or they’ll be that way again. Instead of wishing we could change our past experience—a futile exercise—we have the freedom to choose our relationship to whatever it was, and that’s the beginning of building power. That’s the beginning of creating possibility."

~ Nancy Zapolski / Fear, Survival and the Courage to Be

********************

Is fear of "what was", "what is" or "what might be" keeping you stuck and unable to move forward?

Remember, we cannot change our past, what happened to us will always be what happened to us but we have the power to change what it mean to us. Learn from your past, forgive yourself and others and move on....Your future does not have to be an extension of your past.

Today is a brand new day. The past is no more...

peace, hope and love,

Lily

We Are All Practicing Something...

Hi All,
I was just flipping through Joel Osteen's Become a Better You Calendar and found an amazing quote.

I often say in group, on this blog, and to those that ask me...there is no mystery or magic bullet in recovery...it is a process.

The following concept, amazingly powerful, yet amazingly simple has been a very big part of my recovery and growth...

In Joel's words:

"Truth is,we are all practicing something...and the way to develop good habits is by practicing the right things. You might be good at loosing your temper because you practice it a couple of times a week. Some people are good at being impatient because they practice it every morning on the way to work. I know people who are good at negative thinking because they constantly practice negative thinking. Remember, repetition is what forms a habit. That's what puts us on autopilot. So we have to make sure we are practicing the right things."

~ Joel Osteen, Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving You Life Every Day

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

So what are you practicing? What new habits do you need to practice in order to begin, continue or get back on your road to recovery?

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Through Their Eyes

In times when we doubt ourselves, may we always remember to see ourselves through the eyes of those that care about us and can remind us of our potential...



peace, hope and love,

Lily

The Train Station and The Windmill Stairs

Hi All,
I spent 10 days in Europe recently and had the opportunity to visit Spain and The Netherlands. Here are two pictures that got me thinking...

This first one is inside the Memorial to the 3/1/04 terrorist attack at the Atocha train station in Madrid, Spain. It is an empty room, completely sound proof, with blue walls and a clear white cylinder that goes up to the street, filled with messages left by visitors in the days after the tragedy. It is very touching.



It made me think...despite the suffering, the emptiness and the silence that might surround us, there is always a way out...



This second picture is of a set of stairs inside a windmill in the village of Kinderdijk in The Netherlands.

Have you ever felt like you are on the edge? Like just one more step will take you back to a place where you should not be? If you find your recovery challenged and are on the edge, please remember to reach out to your support system and what you know works before you fall...

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Quote for Today

Life is not the way it's supposed to be, it's the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.
~ Virginia Satir

Support Group Meeting This Weekend

Hi All,

There will be a meeting this Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 7:00 PM at our regular meeting place:

Flamingo Road Church - on the north west corner of Flamingo Road and Stirling Road in Cooper City, FL (Room 127 - Volunteer Central) on the 1st floor of the main auditorium building.

Join us for an hour of support, education and encouragement.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Note: Nikki Kramer and Sarah Greene will be at the meeting this weekend! :-)

The Train Station

Hi all,

I have been out of the country for the last several days. Just getting to a computer tonight for the first time since last week. Greetings from Madrid, Spain. Today I visited El Museo Nacional del Prado . In order to reach the museum, we traveled by train.

Looking at the train station and maps, I noticed there were several different ways to get to the same place amd some routes that looked like the way, but could potentially lead us in the opposite direction of where we needed to go. We were very fortunate to have my cousin Gaby (she lives in Spain) leading the way and helping us reach our destination.

This just got me thinking...in recovery, there is more than one way to get to were you want to go. Some paths might seem like the way can lead you in the oposite direction. Were are you today? Are you on the right train? Do you know where it is taking you? Are you heading in the right direction?

peace, hope and love,

Lily

It's Only Life

Thought this was a great song and wanted to share with you all...I heard music by Kate Voegele on Jaime's blog, and looked up more Kate Voegele songs on iTunes. Thought "It's Only Life" was awesome!!! You can read Jaime's blog by clicking HERE. Thanks for sharing your favorite tunes Jaime!!!

So here is "It's Only Life" by Kate Voegele...Enjoy!



peace, hope and love,

Lily

Quote for Today

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
-- Bernard M. Baruch

Now Playing

I love TiVo. Since I bought it, I do not have to run home to watch a show...When I first got it, my intention was to make "prime time" hours, "my time"....and have more time for other things....but if I am being completely honest, I watch more TV now than before I had Tivo.

I am not going to blame TiVo. It is the choices I have made about Tivo and how I spend my time that have gotten me to where I am with it....I am going to be away for the next twelve days. no access to TiVo or American TV...that's got me thinking...What are 5 things I could do if I was not spending so much time with my friend TiVo? I intend to spend the next twelve days figuring that out...

How about you? Is there something in your life that is taking up too much of your time...are you blaming that "something" instead of owning up to the choices you have made up to this point? What are the top five things you would like to make time for? It is all about the choices we make. It is never too late to start making better ones...

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Quote for Today

I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.

~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

Celebrating Freedom

According to Dictionary.com, Freedom is the power to exercise choice and make decisions without constraint from within or without; autonomy; self-determination.

One of the gifts of recovery is the possibility of living in freedom from the chains of addiction, fear, anxiety and obsession.

The purpose of treatment, and working towards recovery, is so you can one day, be FREE!

Today, in the United States, we celebrate Independence Day.

Whether you are just starting or well on your way to recovery...take the time today and everyday to be thankful, remember and celebrate that you are on your way to freedom!

Happy Fourth of July!

Recovery is possible. You can be free!

peace, hope and love,

Lily

On The Corner

I was standing across this street today (on a sidewalk) with a group of people, waiting to cross a street.

All of a sudden, I felt a hand pull me back. A pick-up truck had turned in front of us and drove onto the sidewalk. Its tires passed by very close to our feet. The hand was that of a stranger. Someone I did not know. The lady pulled me back along with her right before the truck got on the sidewalk.

I didn't get a chance to thank her. It was so fast. As soon as the truck passed, the whole group of us crossed the street and the stranger's hand was lost in the crowd. Like an angel.
What a God-send!

Is there someone in your life that is leading you towards safety? People like this come into our lives sometimes. Don't resist, don't ignore them, accept the help, and be thankful they came into your life at just the right time...

Thank you so much to the lady in Coral Gables today. You came into my life at just the right time.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

The Glass of Water and The Ambulance

I receive a daily motivational quote/story email, and the following was one that made me stop and think. The author is unknown. The analogy so true and powerful. Here it is:

"A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, 'How heavy is this glass of water?' Answers called out ranged from four ounces up to twelve. The lecturer replied, 'The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it.

"'If I hold it for a minute, it's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.'

He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden, if we feel we must.

"'So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment. Relax. Pick them up later after you've rested.'"


— Author Unknown

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I know there have been times, even recently, when I have held onto something for too long until it becomes unhealthy for me and I have to remember to let go...how about you? have you been holding on to something for so long that you might have to call a figurative or literal ambulance soon? Let it go and ask for help if you need to...

peace, hope and love,

Lily