Author Shares More Help and Hope™ in Spirituality Webinar
September is National Recovery Month, and today, September 30th, is International Recovery Day. This month and day are set aside to promote, support, and celebrate recovery practices, the recovery community, and the dedicated providers and community members who help make recovery possible. The goal is to remind people in recovery, and those who support them, that no one is alone in the recovery journey. Everyone’s path is unique, and recovery is possible.
Accompanying others on their journey, whether that journey is with a loved one who lives with a disability, substance use, or mental health challenge, is a driving force behind Help and Hope™: From Families Who Have Walked the Walk. On September 23rd, 2021, Voice and Vision, Inc., with the support of The Bucks County Rotary Club of Doylestown and Plant A Seed Foundation, held our LIVE Zoom Webinar Many Paths Towards Wholeness: Discovering Authentic Spirituality on the Road to Recovery. The recorded webinar featuring content from the second in our book series, Substance Use: The Growing Need to Know, is now available. The series will continue throughout the coming months to illustrate content utilizing the advantages of webinar technology and includes Question & Answer opportunities for participants.
Many Paths to Wholeness: Discovering Authentic Spirituality on the Road to Recovery
WEBINAR RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE AT https://voiceandvisioninc.org/events/
In this first installment, one of the book’s contributors, and seasoned speaker, Nina Marie Corona, shares her passion for the topic of spirituality as a support for recovery in this 90-minute presentation. A delight for the senses in addition to containing solid research supporting the evidence-based importance for spirituality in recovery and its historical context, Ms. Corona’s style is thoughtful and compassionate. Whether an individual in recovery or someone who supports him/her, participants learn the meaning of authentic spirituality, the connection between substance use and spirituality, and practical approaches and techniques for integrating spirituality into a recovery journey and overall personal health.
A powerful moment of her presentation, creating understanding, empathy, and connection, came when Nina shared the following anonymous poem that illustrates how substances are a deceitful substitute for genuine spiritual states.
We Drank . . .
We drank for happiness and became unhappy.
We drank for joy and became miserable.
We drank to be outgoing and became self-centered.
We drank for sociability and became argumentative.
We drank for sophistication and became crude and obnoxious.
We drank for friendship and made enemies.
We drank to soften sorrow and wallowed in self-pity.
We drank for sleep and awakened without rest.
We drank to make conversation easier and slurred our speech.
We drank for warmth and lost our cool.
We drank for coolness and lost our warmth.
We drank to feel heavenly and knew hell.
We drank to forget and were forever haunted.
We drank for freedom and became slaves.
We drank for power and were powerless.
We drank for strength and felt weak.
We drank for sex and lost our potency.
We drank “medicinally” and acquired health problems.
We drank because the job called for it and lost the job.
We drank for relaxation and got the shakes.
We drank for confidence and became uncertain.
We drank for bravery and were afraid.
We drank for certainty and became doubtful.
We drank to stimulate thought and blacked out.
We drank to erase problems and saw them multiply.
We drank to cope with life and invited death.
For more information about Nina Marie Corona and her work, visit https://www.apeopleafire.org/ and https://www.wethirstseries.com/.
For a FREE download of Substance Use: The Growing Need to Know or to donate to future Help and Hope™ webinars, visit https://voiceandvisioninc.org/resource-guide/.
For more information about National Recovery Month, visit www.nationalrecoverymonth.org/.
This blog was written by guest author, Maria Miller. Maria is the editor of the “Help and Hope: From Families who have Walked the Walk” book series. She also works as a Team Leader for Independent Monitoring for Quality. Maria is a wife and the mother of three. She has written two previous blogs, “9 Lessons from the Farm,” sharing what she has learned from her daughter’s 10 years of riding lessons on a farm, and “A Chance to Grow,” which was about her experience working on our second guide, “Help and Hope: From Families Who Have Walked the Walk, Substance Use: The Growing Need to Know.”
Cover photo courtesy of Nina Marie Corona
