Obviously this is a new blog and I’ve been spearheading the movement, but I really wanted the staff here at Spirit to get involved in blogdom as well.  Our staff is passionate and committed to our mission and I’d love for visitors to our site to get a sense of that.  After a conversation about the blog, our office manager/insurance liaison/admissions coordinator/go to gal for everything, Katrina, sent me an email sharing some things she’s been thinking about so I asked her to share in blog form. She has worked in the A&D field before Spirit Lake and has a huge heart for this work.  Below is her post.  ~Ginger

So this will be my very first blog……not the first blog for Spirit Lake….my first blog EVER; needless to say, I am very new at this.  I just had a few thoughts on my mind that I wanted to share.  I worked in Outpatient before God pushed me down my path to Spirit Lake.  In Outpatient, I saw people(….clients, as we refer to them at work….family, as we think of them personally)……every day, 4 times a week.  I came to know and love these people like they WERE my family.  I still talk to several of them to this day, one of them being one of my very good friends or BFF’s, as we would joke (though meaning it deeply).  But to see these people every day, all day is a new world for me! 

It is amazing to me to see our clients/family after getting sober.  You originally see them, the trouble they have encountered, the pain they have felt and caused, the shame they feel like they will never get over…….but you give them 40 days of sober time, 40 days of the hardest work you will never know if you have never been in that situation, 40 days of accomplishments, of accountability, of FREEDOM……you see a different person.  You see them talking, and laughing, and sharing…..HEAD HELD HIGH.  They learn to embrace these things they did, the people they hurt, the lies they told; not PROUD of them, but ACCEPTING them.  They realize that those things don’t make them a terrible person, those things are just something they did while struggling with a disease!  And there’s much more to them than the negatives and they start seeing the good in them.  All those things make you better able to help the next person.  Those things make you a story to save the next person’s life.

So imagine…..if 40 days could give you a sense of hope, a sense of “maybe I CAN do this”, a sense of “I am NOT alone in this disease”…..just imagine what 60 days or 90 days of sobriety can give you……..I guess what all this babbling is about is this: IF YOU DON’T HAVE IT, YOU CAN GET IT…..& IF YOU HAVE IT, YOU CAN HOLD ON TO IT……JUST FOR TODAY!

Katrina