Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul Daily Inspirations (Chicken Soup for the Soul) (38 page)

Experiencing these qualities is a powerful medicine.

Hope, enthusiasm and wisdom are to the mind as food is to the body.

Everyone needs daily sustenance.

Brahma Kumaris
World Spiritual University

The trick to problem solving is to get to the root of the problem before the rest of it shows up.

Brahma Kumaris

Footnotes for Life

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EPTEMBER
7

T
o feel fear is human, but we must never allow fear to halt our forward momentum in the healing way. Sometimes the thing we must do is frightening. It’s challenging, difficult, different from anything we’ve known before. But rather than give up and slide backward, we do well to gather our little shreds of courage and forge ahead–fear or no fear–remembering the presence, goodwill and help of our Higher Power. We must do the thing, though we do it trembling. I will not let the emotion of fear hinder my growth. I will trust that I am being led and keep moving forward.

Rhonda Brunea

When I am afraid, I will trust in you.

Psalm 56:3, NIV

Footnotes for Life

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EPTEMBER
8

T
oday is a plowing day. I will dig deep within the soil of my heart and prepare the dirt for what is to come.

Even good seed cannot fulfill its purpose in hard, uncultivated ground, but when sown in dirt that has been worked, it will flourish and explode with fruit.

Don’t ask me about the harvest quite yet; I am still pushing the plow.

Barbara A. Croce

The real issue is not whether to grow, it is how to grow and for what purpose.

Unknown

Footnotes for Life

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EPTEMBER
9

S
top looking at things as endings, look at them as beginnings. Change is scary; the unknown is frightening but only because we can’t see what’s coming next. Take a step forward, one at a time, to build your courage. Soon you won’t hesitate. That one step may be full of fears but still you move forward. Open yourself to experiencing whatever it is life has for you at any given moment; a beautiful spring morning, thewonders of a gentle snowfall, the joyful sound of children playing in a schoolyard, the simple pleasure of just being able to draw another breath.

Aingeal Stone

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

Eden Ahbez

Footnotes for Life

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EPTEMBER
10

A
dmitting that I was an alcoholic was a difficult first step, but it was only a first step. The admission wasn’t enough. It felt flat. What was missing turned out to be acceptance.

Acceptance meant I had to move forward, tell others, ask for help, work on my sobriety.

Until I fully accepted and embraced this, I was emotionally paralyzed. Fear and shame held me captive. Acceptance has liberated me.

Deb Sellars Karpek

Life is what happens, after you make other plans.

Ralph Marston

Footnotes for Life

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EPTEMBER
11

F
ollowing a loss, how do you grow a new heart? You don’t. You work with the heart you have left. The missing parts can never be replaced. The bruised areas of the heart, however, have the ability to mend. It’s not an easy or quick process. The balm is patience, support, acceptance, understanding, love fromothers and fromoneself, aswell as the gift of time used wisely. Along the way, the sensitive, healing heart acquires wisdom and compassion for fellow travelers.

Not all broken hearts inherit these gifts. They only come with intention, inner strength, persistence, courage and openness to the grace of God.

Joyce Harvey

Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.

David Starr Jordan

Footnotes for Life

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EPTEMBER
12

A
lmost every day I see a young girl running along our backcountry road. She is nothing but bone, her face classically anorexic: all cheekbones and large eyes sunk into dark sockets. I’ve watched her run for nine months now, seeing her grow thinner and more fragile every day. She is not like the other runners, all rounded muscle, strong, sweaty, solid. My girl is grim and solitary, a slash on the landscape. I wonder who her family is and know they cannot stop her self-punishment any more than I. She started running and stopped eating because she heard some wicked voice inside telling her she wasn’t right, she wasn’t thin enough. You will grow old if you’re lucky, and being thin is no guarantee against misery.

Nancy Burke

The body never lies.

Martha Graham

Footnotes for Life

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EPTEMBER
13

I
never met my grandfather, however I did know his son and I knew that my father had very bitter feelings toward his father. According to the stories I heard, my grandfather drank himself to death at the age of fifty-two. During a breakfast outing with my five-year-old son my father looked at me and said, “Your grandfather sure wasn’t much of a father.” After a pause he let out a sigh and said, “But I guess the man did the best he could.” Eight years into his own recovery and thirty-one years after the death of my grandfather, my dad had started to make peace with his father. Sometimes it takes a long time for things to heal.