In honor of Recovery Month, we asked you to send us your stories about the impact community, nutrition or environment has had on your life since you put down substances and picked up life. Winners are not only receiving copies of our book, The Miracle Morning for Addiction Recovery, but are also being published here on the site.
This week we have T. Rose.
I was 15 years into my recovery and my second year writing my first book. I had tapped the best minds and learned all there was about writing and started looking for a literary agent to make my dreams come true. To have a big publishing company pick up my story and carry it to the world so I could be among those making a difference in the world of addiction and recovery. Sadly, it was not the warm reception I had envisioned.
That old addictive instant gratification, lack of patience thing emerged. So I just did it myself—built my business to be able to publish under it, bought all the things that big publisher was going to do in order to own my work and away I went. However along this path, I would need to market and sell my work and that is where social media entered my life. I began to build a following on Facebook, mostly to gauge the areas of demand and how I would target it. I found that the urgency for someone to lead others was far greater then I had ever imagined. I thought to myself as I read story after story of people crying out for help and direction. I was lost just like that!
I began posting things that related to my life, which included a cool picture with a quote. I built my own website to inspire others to believe in themselves and choose recovery. The response was overwhelming, I was helping people and they were thanking me for my words of wisdom. These people could now find a new perspective for their own lives. I have used the knowledge gained by years of repeated rehabs and therapy, and those two stays in the mental ward. The courage it took me to overcome a 25-year addiction, childhood abuse and toxic relationships, all of which addiction feeds from. Helping others grow was also helping me.
Both my book and advocacy work was busy furthering my reach. My following now a year later has grown daily, my book bought globally and my life’s tragedies have been able to give others hope when they were lost in despair. Every day I’m inspired to post something about recovery or how addiction will continue to tear your world apart—that finding a way out is the best thing, no matter what you may face as you climb your way back to the world of responsibility and accountability.
The people I touch with my very honest and direct approach thank me for not sugar coating it, because, as I tell them often, after my second time through rehab I had all the knowledge I needed to stay clean; it was the follow through I lacked. This disease now labelled by the medical community to pay for treatment still comes down to the same thing. Will you engage the solution? Your treatment plan is your recovery plan.
