“We teach best what we most need to learn.”

— Richard Bach

This is a personal story of how I arrived here on these pages — in the hope that it might inspire someone else. My name is Jason. I’m a person living in long-term recovery from substance and process addictions. I am also diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar disorder and complex trauma, which have shaped both my struggles and my solutions. “Long-term” doesn’t mean perfect. I’ve stumbled, relapsed, and returned more times than I can count.

I went to my first treatment centre in Ottawa, Canada, back in 2006. That decision, born out of desperation, became the doorway to something I hadn’t expected — my first 12-Step meeting. And in those rooms, I didn’t just find people like me; I found what I’d been dying without: help and hope.

I wish I could say I never left, but that hasn’t been my story. I keep coming back, because every time I walk away, I forget how to live.

There’s a phrase in the chapter Into Action of Alcoholics Anonymous that says, “What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.” For me, this is the most powerful line in the book. If I don’t do something each day to connect — to people, to purpose, to this present moment — I start to drift.

For nearly four years, I struggled to come back from my last relapse. The cycle repeated — meetings, progress, then back out again. Each return felt like limping home, but each time I stayed a little longer. What finally shifted wasn’t one dramatic moment, but the slow accumulation of small practices: showing up, reaching out, and learning to ask for help before the crisis hit. Slowly, I began to understand what a daily reprieve really means.

Early in our relationship, my sponsor Dick showed me what a daily practice could look like. He sent out reflections from Lavender Light, a 12-Step meditation book for gay men first published in 1995. Those reflections helped me connect to my identity — not just as someone in recovery, but as a gay man trying to heal.

Watching how this practice grounded Dick, I began doing the same with Joe C.’s Beyond Belief — a secular 12-Step meditation book that draws wisdom from diverse sources. In my first year back, I read it every morning. I’d copy the day’s musing to a text and send it to friends in recovery. It became my morning ritual.

What drew me to Beyond Belief was the way it gathers wisdom from many traditions and offers it in a secular voice that made me feel included — part of something larger, without being told what to believe.

As I continued to send out these messages, my therapist mentioned that another client was using artificial intelligence to support their recovery. I had already been using AI extensively at work, and her comment lit a fuse in my head. What if I could combine the reflective practice I’d learned from Beyond Belief with the interaction AI offered? I began using it as a kind of journaling companion — a mirror that reflected my thoughts back with a clarity I often struggled to reach alone.

ADHD makes handwriting very challenging — my thoughts are often faster than my pen can follow. But the speed and structure of generative AI let me keep pace with my own racing mind, capturing thoughts before they scatter. I could finally witness the chaos of my thoughts settle into sentences I could trust. This approach became something I could sustain.

After a year of sharing from Beyond Belief, that habit of interactive journaling inspired me to start creating my own daily introspections. It became the foundation of these AWAKENINGS.

My spirituality today isn’t about fixed beliefs; it’s about connection — to people, to ideas, and to the routines that keep me grounded.

I don’t write these because I’ve figured it out. I write because I’m still figuring it out. Sharing these reflections each day is how I take them to heart — how I learn what I most need to learn. This discipline keeps me spiritually fit, or at least keeps me trying.

I call them AWAKENINGS because that’s what they are to me — little life experiences that impact and connect me each day to the path I have embraced. I draw wisdom from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across time and culture that I’ve encountered over almost twenty years in and out of the rooms.

And always, I try to relate it back to the language of the 12 Steps: my foundation, and the design for living I have chosen to follow.

It’s my way of being grateful each day for the many second chances to live a purposeful and meaningful life.

It is my gratitude in action.

If these words reach someone the way those early meditations once reached me, then this practice has already done its work. And if you’re reading this now, perhaps you’ll join me in this daily discipline — to wake up, to connect, and to remember that we’re never alone in this journey. One day at a time.