You know how they say that once an addict, always an addict? That it’s really all about recovery? Like, even when you’re no longer drinking, you’re still once and for all a “recovering alcoholic”?

Hi, my name is Rachael, and I’m a recovering powerlessness addict.

I like the phrase, ’cause it’s kind of a catch-all.

It includes things like months on end smoking pot daily, followed by months on end leaving everything “up to the cards”, followed by months on end dating someone who wasn’t nearly as committed as I was–and knowing it, feeling it, and still claiming there was no good solution, followed by months on end of dreaming and dreaming and dreaming (and doing nothing and nothing and nothing), followed by months on end of waiting for work to come to me, followed by months on end of … you get the point.

The thing with being a powerlessness addict is it can change form.
A lot of addicts know this to be true for them, too, no matter their fave flavor of addiction.

Caroline Myss says that “any behavior motivated by the fear of internal growth qualifies as an addiction.” 

The good and bad new is…

What we do to ourselves we do to the whole.
Because everything is connected.

This is why I’m really not ashamed to talk about addiction to powerlessness; because we live in a culture of addiction. Plain and simple.

We live in a culture comprised of individuals devoid of the framework and structures to encourage internal growth. Instead, we have frameworks and structures that obsess over external success, and as a result, have stripped our souls and the Earth bare of their authentic healthy power.

Let me spell this out for you:

Set up in a system that encourages endless external growth, at the cost of health, cooperation, connection, and holy expression… in a system that warns us that if we leave it, if we stray, we will never ever ever have safety or belonging… Why would we choose to leave it? Why would we choose to stray from our addiction to the lie that we are separate?  

There’s only one reason:

The Truth resonates, no matter how deeply down it is buried. What we do to ourselves, we do to the whole–because everything is connected. 

• When we avoid our aliveness, we withhold aliveness from the whole of the world.
• When we numb the night away, we damper the stars of the Universe.
• When we click, buy, click, buy, without ever stopping to ask ourselves, Why? or Who? or How? We perpetuate a culture of thoughtlessness.
• When we repress our divine will to live aligned to the Truth, we compress the health in our bodies and become tense and crooked as a people.
• When we hide the parts of ourselves we’re not proud of–the ways we’re racist, or oppressive, or addicted to the myth of victim and perpetrator–we perpetuate a culture of implicit racism, oppression and victimization.
• When we shame our sensuality and sexuality, we induce a great feeling of worthlessness as a species–of being cut off from that which creates our most joyful regeneration.
• When we withhold our honest need to wail, and laugh loudly, and dance wildly, and orgasm for all the neighbors to hear, life becomes quieted in the isolation of repression and shame.
• When we reject our own and each other’s whole range of what it means to be human–with shadows and fears and agony and ecstasy–we shut down our capacity for compassion to heal and open the heart.
• When we refuse to forgive ourselves or others, we remain at war with the Truth… the Truth that given the correct circumstances, we can all submit to doing things we’re not proud of. Each and every one of performs sin.
• And when we deny our passage into the dark, the passage that would move us closer and closer to the Truth, we never allow ourselves our grand opportunity to transmute into something new.

And, still… I get it. I get why we don’t take this spiritual passage. We’ve been born and raised in a culture that breeds us against it. That’s devoid of framework for spiritual passages. But instead warns us, and often even proves to us, that we will be cast aside, alone, without the comfort of love, belonging or safety, if we take this road toward Truth.

That risk is real. I won’t pretend it’s not. Truth is a direct threat to the people and culture living addicted to lies. This could include your parents, your partner, your kids even, your co-workers, or your whole group of friends.

But our collective soul is asking for a cleanse. Uncomfortable and illuminating. A way to travel home to health of our wholeness.

We don’t get to know who will meet us on the other side or exactly how they’ll get there. But in my experience, after excruciating darknesses, there has been more light and love than I could’ve imagined. More coming together and bringing others along than all the fears I ever had of being left completely alone. This didn’t happen within the convenience of my plan, timeline, comfort, or vision. It happened (and is still happening) within the parameters of Grace.

Do you know the story of the Ugly Duckling who turns into a Swan?

It goes like this:

The Ugly Duckling is so downtrodden with her life, that she goes to the Great Mystery Lake and asks the Dragonfly if she can have access into the Dreamtime. Dragonfly questions her. “But will you really allow the Dreamtime to work it’s magic on you, Ugly Duck? Or will you resist the Truth you meet there?” “I will have total faith in the unknown,” says the Ugly Duckling.

Pleased with Ugly Ducklings response, Dragonfly grants her access to the Dreamtime, where she is swallowed whole by the foggy darkness of the lake, and spends a timeless amount of time shedding a life of addiction to lies, letting them fall away, one by one, as she swirls and spirals under water.

Then, and only then, when her mind and body have surrendered deeply to the often uncomfortable flow of releasing and cleansing, she rises with Grace from the darkness of Great Mystery Lake, as a beautiful, trusting Swan.

We are all connected.
What we do to ourselves, we do to the whole.
May we live boldly and bravely, with faith, according to this Truth.

May we become more Swanlike, both alone, and together.

Are you with me?

I love you no matter where you are.
Totally true,
Rachael

PS–If what you want to do to yourself, and our whole, is dance in creative divinity, I invite you to take the plunge with me into a 10 day digital Creators Completion Camp at the end of July. Or if you want a loving Dragonfly to peel back the layers of your addictions, that’s me, ya know. 1-off breakthrough sessions and 6-month holistic commitments are both available.

PPS–The new Rising Appalachia. Pure love, inspired. Enjoy it.