Transform Yourself
Up until a few months ago, I was ashamed of my age. I never wanted to tell people how old I was. I worried and wondered if people could guess that I was in my 40s by looking at me. I hoped that I looked younger. Then in February I went on a Tinder date …
July 15, 1998, is twenty-three years ago today. Almost half my life has gone by since then. Still, I remember it every year. Here’s why. In late 1997 when I was twenty-one, I hatched a cowardly suicide scheme. I was too afraid to take direct action to kill myself, so I came up with an …
In the photo on the left, I weighed 160 pounds/73 kg. Now, in the photo on the right, I'm 123 pounds/56 kg. I have not weighed 123 pounds since I was a teenager. I thought it was impossible for me to be at this weight ever again without some drastic measures. But here I am, …
A year ago today I was in an AA Big Book study with my sponsor. We were reading page 31 of the book. I read the sentence "Through every form of self-deception and experimentation, they would try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore nonalcoholic." My sponsor asked me if I had been deceiving …
I'm dying. We all are. Yet most of us live under the illusion that we're going to live forever, caught up in the day-to-day grind of bills and jobs and responsibilities. Consider this: what would it be like to be on your deathbed, looking over your entire life with a bird's eye view? What would …
On December 21, 2020, at 12 midnight, my job of 12 1/2 years gave me shocking news: that if I did not move back to the US from overseas where I'd been working for 8 years, that I would no longer have a job. On top of that, they wanted me to start working in …
I have spent the majority of my life in the meeting rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. Since I was first sent to rehab at 17, Twelve Step programs have been a backdrop of my life. In 1999, at the age of 22, I put down alcohol and drugs for good. When I was in the early …
When the phases of lockdown first started rippling throughout the world, I downplayed it in my mind. I listened to early reports of the virus saying that the situation was being overblown, and felt assured that this was something I could watch go by, a blip on my radar, and that things would soon return …
There is a space between an event that occurs and how we interpret the event. This gap is imperceptible for people that are living unconsciously. You know the type: they go stumbling around their lives, bumping up against things unwanted, and react to everything. They take everything personally, internalizing everything in their outer world. It's …
All types of love share common themes, whether it is romantic love, familial love, or love between friends. One of the biggest themes is expectation. Where there is love, there is expectation due to the roles people take on when the label of love is applied. However, expectation is the opposite of love. Expectation binds, …
Continue reading "“Even though” and “Still”: A Path to Unconditional Love"
Natalie Speakman 