An awesome short animation from the RSA involving one of my favourite ladies, Brené Brown.
‘What is the best way to ease someone’s pain and suffering? In this beautifully animated RSA Short, Dr Brené Brown reminds us that we can only create a genuine empathic connection if we are brave enough to really get in touch with our own fragilities.
Voice: Dr Brené Brown. Animation: Katy Davis (AKA Gobblynne) Why not check out Brené’s full talk The Power of Vulnerability at the RSA?
Treatment for addiction involves a number of different processes. What are the most important? Who better to tell us than the people who have used treatment to help them recover from addiction.
During the next week, we’ll look at the views of some of those people who have so kindly given us insights into their lives through their Recovery Story. We’ll start with my close friend Michael from Perth. Let’s look at some of his experiences from the moment he decided to stop drinking over 35 years ago and his views on treatment.
‘I made the decision to stop drinking on April 10th, 1978, three years after my parents had died. My last drinking session took place at the Shenton Park Hotel. I finished my last drink and slammed the glass down, saying to myself that this was it! “No more drinking!” I have not had a drop of alcohol since then.
I have a high regard for the work of the psychiatrist Peter Breggin. Here is an article he wrote on forgiveness for the Huffington Post earlier in the year. Forgiveness plays a key role in recovery.
‘Early in 1865, in his second inaugural address, little more than a month before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln stood before the bloodied, fractured United States to speak about forgiveness, the letting go of hatreds, and the binding of wounds. He implored the people of America:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
An inspirational blog from WITR, written mid-2009:
‘The reason I write, “Today is the best day of my life”, is yesterday has gone and tomorrow is still to come. It it comes at all?
I awoke at 7.30 this morning and I’m in recovery from the disease of active addiction. I had no desire to use and there was no obsessing over what was my drug of choice. Today, I am FREE to make self-caring choices.
My day begins with me having a conscious contact with my Higher Power, who I ask to guide and direct me throughout the day and help me to stay safe.
Stories of people recovering from a serious substance use problem are an important tool for understanding the processes involved in recovery, showing people with a problem that recovery is possible via a multitude of different pathways, and helping communities create empathic environments in which recovery can flourish.
More about the book >>
Available now as a downloadable eBook
Connection uses ‘faces’ and ‘voices’ of the past to take you into a world where Aboriginal children rise above great adversity to create beautiful landscape drawings that are acclaimed on both sides of the world. Connection is a story of trauma, and the overcoming of trauma. A story that resonates in today’s world of the oppressed and their oppressors. A story of Hope, Heart and Healing.
‘… the book is nothing short of incredible.’
Carlie Atkinson, CEO, We Al-li Programs
