AWAKEN today

AWAKEN today: daily perspectives from my journey embracing the 12-Step way of life

Two people walking along a long wooden boardwalk through green marshland.

AWAKENING on 

The Long Walk

bell hooks’ love ethic reframes a long walk as an ordinary practice of care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

Two chained hands resting on the ground, lit deep red.

AWAKENING on 

Whack-A-Mole

When the old escape route changes shape, recovery asks a harder question: am I coming back to life, or only finding a cleaner way to disappear?

Bare farm field at first light, parallel furrows leading to a single bare hardwood tree on the horizon, soft rose-grey pre-dawn sky, mist at the horizon.

AWAKENING on 

Fallow

A field left fallow looks the same as a field abandoned. Depression brought the silence. Substitutes filled the empty space. But fallow is not failure. It is what soil does when it has been giving for too long. Coming back is its own work, and each return teaches what the last did not.

Illustration of a figure in red in the foreground, a small pale figure and a pair of legs in the distance.

AWAKENING on 

The Cavern

Internalized homophobia forms before awareness, shaping how desire is interpreted. What feels instinctive is learned. By making that structure visible, recovery allows inherited shame to be questioned, loosening its hold on intimacy, identity, and self-perception.

A hand holding a keycard to a hotel door lock while the other turns the handle.

AWAKENING on 

New Beginnings

New beginnings cannot be forced or decided. William Bridges shows that they emerge from the interior work of transition, arriving sideways through quiet signals when the inner reorganisation is finally complete.

Recent AWAKENINGS

  • Two people walking along a long wooden boardwalk through green marshland.

    The Long Walk

    3 Min Read

    bell hooks’ love ethic reframes a long walk as an ordinary practice of care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

  • Two chained hands resting on the ground, lit deep red.

    Whack-A-Mole

    5 Min Read

    When the old escape route changes shape, recovery asks a harder question: am I coming back to life, or only finding a cleaner way to disappear?

  • Bare farm field at first light, parallel furrows leading to a single bare hardwood tree on the horizon, soft rose-grey pre-dawn sky, mist at the horizon.

    Fallow

    4 Min Read

    A field left fallow looks the same as a field abandoned. Depression brought the silence. Substitutes filled the empty space. But fallow is not failure. It is what soil does when it has been giving for too long. Coming back is its own work, and each return teaches what the last did not.

  • Illustration of a figure in red in the foreground, a small pale figure and a pair of legs in the distance.

    The Cavern

    4 Min Read

    Internalized homophobia forms before awareness, shaping how desire is interpreted. What feels instinctive is learned. By making that structure visible, recovery allows inherited shame to be questioned, loosening its hold on intimacy, identity, and self-perception.

  • A hand holding a keycard to a hotel door lock while the other turns the handle.

    New Beginnings

    4 Min Read

    New beginnings cannot be forced or decided. William Bridges shows that they emerge from the interior work of transition, arriving sideways through quiet signals when the inner reorganisation is finally complete.

  • Retro illustration of a figure on a starship bridge looking out at a starburst and asteroids.

    The Neutral Zone

    3 Min Read

    In the neutral zone, the period between an ending and a new beginning, nothing seems to be happening. William Bridges shows that this apparent emptiness is where transformation actually takes place, if we can resist the urge to escape it.