Recovery Meditations: February 26th

~ MEMORIES ~

Some memories are realities ...
and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

Willa Cather

When one is young, the world is large and the thought of exploring it is exciting. Each year that we live we add to our memory chest ... and by middle age those memories are substantial. I have found as I have grown older that I remember more of the good things that have happened in my life than the bad. The good things seem to become sharper as time goes by ... and the bad seem less so. It's almost as though the memory has turned into a "feeling" rather than a specific event.

When I work on the fourth and the eighth Steps, my life flashes before me and, like one of those calendars from an old movie, time whizzes by and people who have been part of my life hurtle through space ... each triggering a memory.

Memories aren't made more poignant by time. One might think that a decade of recurring events might be remembered with more clarity than a year ... but I have found in the case of my own memories that it is the quality and intensity of time that produces the kind of memories Willa Cather talks about. A year or two or three, given the right circumstances, can produce the feelings we love our memories to trigger, more than those experienced during a lifetime. And a lifetime of memories can be dwindled into just moments.

One Day at a Time . . .
I will cherish my memories ~ Because I may never experience the reality of some of them again.

~ Mari ~
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One of the memories I cherish from childhood is being a part of the holiday festivities with my cousins. As an only child, I felt lonely & isolated much of the time.  But during the holidays, I felt like I belonged.......I felt like part of the crowd, and not lonely at all.

When I overeat compulsively, I sometimes think I'm trying to recapture the feeling I had at those gatherings so many years ago.

When trying to fill a hole in my soul, food isn't going to do it. When I need a hug, a bag of Hershey's kisses isn't going to fill the bill, either.

The memories that give me the warm fuzzies are the good ones, of course, but the bad ones aren't as dull and shadowy as perhaps they should be.

For today, I will take a trip down memory lane to recall the feelings I had during the finest moments of my life. The birth of my children, my marriage, my travels abroad..........and those moments in between the huge events..........the small & touching events that weave the fabric of my life.