Personal Phoenix Rising

Good morning, Dear Reader,

I want to share with you a few thoughts on recovery and the mythical bird—the Phoenix.

Many of us who arrive at the doors of recovery have lost all or nearly all. Broke, alone, and sick in both body and soul. I remember sitting alone in my apartment, drunk and on the verge of losing my job.

For people like me, we had to come close to the ashes before we were willing to reach for help. Bill W. describes it with clarity and grace in A.A. Comes of Age (p. 46):

“Such is the paradox of A.A. regeneration: strength arising out of complete defeat and weakness, the loss of one’s old life as a condition for finding a new one.”

From that place of near-ruin, something remarkable can begin. Tolkien wrote:

“From the ashes, a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring…”
— The Fellowship of the Ring

And Jennifer Weiner reminds us:

“Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you, the thing you think you can’t survive… it’s the thing that makes you better than you used to be.”

In my own life, I testify that I was living in a state of what the Big Book calls incomprehensible demoralization. But by letting go—and letting a Higher Power, whom I now know as my Heavenly Father—take over, my life today is something beautiful, rising truly from the ashes.

The Book of Mormon expresses this transformation powerfully in Mosiah 27:25–26:

“Marvel not that all mankind… must be born again; yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state, to a state of righteousness… becoming his sons and daughters; and thus they become new creatures.”

This rebirth is not limited to me. It is offered to all.
As Jesus taught:

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” — John 3:14–15

There is hope beyond defeat, life beyond the ashes. Like the Phoenix, we can rise—not through our own power alone, but by surrendering to something greater.

With love in recovery, steve