For me, recovery hasn’t just been about breaking free from addiction—it’s been about finding peace within myself.
That journey really began to take shape in Step 11, which says: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
Learning to calm myself through my connection with a higher power has been the most transformative part of my recovery. I’ve found an inner strength I never thought I had. I would’ve never seen it within myself if it wasn’t for this practice. Step 11 gently, and with open arms, allowed me to explore my relationship with meditation, with myself, and with my higher power.
I didn’t always have a great relationship with faith. I was raised Roman Catholic, and it was all fire and brimstone. That made it hard to feel any real connection. Now, I identify as Wiccan and practice smudging and other Wiccan traditions. I feel comfort in knowing there are goddesses to look up to. When I need to centre myself, I put on a meditation to help me connect with them, with something bigger than myself.
My time working in the funeral industry also shaped my spiritual path. I was involved in a lot of Buddhist funerals, and that gave me a different perspective. One time, I assisted at a funeral led by a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. He taught me to meditate in a way I’d never considered before. Instead of treating meditation as an action, I learned to become the meditation—to clear my mind and let myself be part of it.
Now, I’m excited to come back to meditation and prayer and reconnect with something I view as good in the world. It’s something I do every morning. I wake up, use a meditation app, and start my day with it. At night, I put on another one to help me sleep.
Meditation has also been a huge help in stressful situations. Recently my partner, who has a pattern of losing things, lost the laundry card I’d just loaded with money. I was so frustrated – and in the past, I would’ve been screaming. But instead I put on a meditation, took a deep breath, and came back to earth. It helped me calm down and get my breath back to normal.
This practice has been essential to my emotional sobriety, something I struggled with at first. I spent the first year of recovery just trying to keep my head above water. I was a “dry drunk”— I was doing all the right things, but truthfully I wasn’t really feeling it. But now, with this practice, I’m in it all the time. I’ve come to realize that everything has beauty in it if you just look for it. And that’s been one of the biggest gifts of Step 11.
One thing I’d say to anyone working through this Step: don’t judge your practice. Your Step 11 is yours, just like your recovery. If your meditation isn’t perfect, that’s okay. It can be whatever you want it to be.
It’s what you make of it.
