My search for 'inner-health' came from years of illness that led to thirteen surgeries and all sorts of down-spirals, which ultimately ended in 1997 because I got to a state of mind whereby I refused to stay stuck in the ill-person mode any longer.
The search for outer happiness came easier for me than the search for inner happiness did. One search was easy to arrive at and the other had to be faked until I made it. Years and years of going to 12-step meetings helped me to stop old patterns and learn the full meaning of powerlessness. Being able to be a podium speaker and teach others about recovery were miracles that began my spiral into inner happiness and from there my life led me to the family I am now with and the life I now live--a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a person who is able to return love given.
The authors I've searched out besides Bill W. and Dr. Bob, have been Charles Swindoll, Joyce Meyer, Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, Thomas J. Peters, Jewel, my favorite--Oswald Chambers (who I still read daily even after sixteen years because he's the only writer with a message that I never tire of) and of course, the Bible (which I do believe with all my heart.)
In the last five years there have been several books that I've read that actually provided me with a new 'awakening' and one was Baron Baptiste's incredible yoga journey: 40 Days to Personal Revolution, another was Expanding the Boundaries of Self: Beyond the Limit of Traditional Thought; Discovering the Magic Within by Oliver Jobson; and then there was Miami Phillip's BeDoHave, the Cure for the Great Unknown American Epidemic. All three of these books gave me something different and the very things needed at the time I read them. Each of them provided me an extra humph--even more gumption to take me to another level past the thousands of hours of life training that I've already invested.
 |
