About Wolf.
( she / he / they )
My Personal Journey of Healing, Therapeutic Interests, & Practices
“Turn your wounds into wisdom.” — Oprah Winfrey
These words have become a mantra for me recently as well as why I have decided to hold a steady gaze on being a person that expresses hope and healing into this world. We all have had experiences in life that have traumatized us
A gradual shedding of worldly perceptions
I wish I could say that coming home to myself was an overnight miracle but it was more of a gradual shedding of worldly perceptions and a painful chiseling away of egoic beliefs and survival methods that I adopted in order to create a false sense of safety in a society that I had to live in.
Journaling
On Saturday, January 5, 2019, after a decade of unfaltering sobriety, I received a shiny 10-year medallion and listened to an honorable speech about how I was a shining example of spiritual perseverance and grit despite the suffering I had endured. I accepted the medallion, with tears in my eyes. These salty drip drops were not tears of joy but of absolute exhaustion and defeat.
It’s just that after a decade of working a program with fervent dedication, why did I still want out? Why did I wake up every morning feeling like I was cloaked in a straight jacket of fear and panic? The medallion laid in my palm, felt like it was burning my flesh. If I’d known I was still gonna be this miserable after 10 years, maybe I would have kept on using. Besides, I had it all. A beautiful home in Germantown, a partner of 5 years, a successful design career and a job at a Fortune 50 company, friends in AA, 2 cats, and I was on speaking terms with my mom and dad, I engaged in acts of AA service. I went to my meetings. I had worked the steps, again, and again, and again. I did my fear inventories. I read the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous. I said the 3rd step prayer. I sponsored people. I took my meds. I even added another 12 step program, Alanon, to my list of to-dos, Why wasn’t I happy?
On Saturday, January 4, 2020, I accepted my 11-year medallion. Still feeling like I was up to my neck in mud. But this time, my acceptance statement went more like an invoking than a thank you. For my 11-year chip, not only did I state that I was sick of feeling stuck, but I called out (I don’t even know where the words came from) to the Shamans, the Therapists, the Psychiatrists, and I declared that I would stop at nothing to shed this weight of fear and resentment. At that point, I did not know the power of words. I did not realize I was setting an intention of healing. I was not ready to burn out. And I had heard enough stories of people with many many years of recovery trudging through misery, some killing themselves, some going back out, and also seeing many of these oldtimers act just as abusive as their early abusers.
I’m not knocking the recovery program, just sharing my experience and mindset, and walls that I ran into. Basically, I hit a ceiling in AA. A spiritual plateau. As I jumped into therapy and began investigating my psyche, 5 therapists (3 in AA) looked me in the eyes and admitted that Alcoholics Anonymous could not treat trauma. Couldn’t touch it. So all these years I’ve been in AA, claiming to be “just a sick alcoholic,” trying to look at myself and figure what I did wrong in every situation and battering myself with more guilt and shame. You know, like we’re taught to do in the rooms.
I also began to find out that what was happening was old programming and beliefs that had become cellular were