The Winding Way Home

Recovery is one of those words that looks so clean on paper. It's often said with confidence, framed in timelines and milestones, as if healing were something that happens in neat stages — as if we graduate from pain the way one graduates from school.

But the truth is messier. Recovery is not linear. It's a phrase I’ve come back to again and again — not just as a reminder, but as a form of mercy. Because when your path has included addiction, mental illness, trauma, and spiritual disorientation, the road back to yourself isn’t paved in straight lines. It curves. It sinks. It circles around.

That’s the heart of my poem “Recovery Is Not Linear.” I wrote it to honor the real shape of healing — the peaks that take your breath away and the valleys that try to steal it again. The days when hope surges like a flood, and the nights when it dries up completely. The cycles of rising and falling, of believing and forgetting and remembering again.

There were years when I thought a setback meant failure. That if I relapsed into old thinking, or slipped into depression, or heard voices after a quiet stretch, it meant I was back at the beginning. But I know better now. Each return is not a restart. It’s part of the path. Even the detours are part of the journey home.

Recovery, as I’ve come to understand it, is not about arriving at some imagined finish line. It’s about learning how to walk with yourself, as you are, through shadow and light. It’s about recognizing the bravery it takes to try again. And again. And again.

It’s a mosaic. A patchwork of attempts. A holy collection of stumbles and small triumphs. It’s learning to find grace in the uneven rhythm of your own becoming.

And maybe the most important truth of all:
You don’t have to move in a straight line
to be moving forward.

You're reclaiming your life—
even in the spirals,
even in the stillness.
Even in the days when all you do
is whisper, “Not today, darkness. Not today.”

And every time you keep going,
you are proof:
this messy, magnificent healing
is real.

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Recovery Is Not Linear

Recovery is not a straight path,
but a winding trail through shadow and light.
It twists, it doubles back,
it climbs to breathtaking peaks
only to descend into valleys
that feel endless.

There are days when the progress gleams,
a golden thread running through the hours.
Hope swells like a river,
its current carrying you forward,
closer to something that feels like freedom.

And then—
a stumble.
The thread frays, the river ebbs.
The familiar darkness whispers,
pulling you into its arms.
You wonder if the peaks were a mirage,
if this is where you’ll stay.

But recovery is not a straight path.
It is a mosaic of effort,
of trying again
and again.
It is learning to find grace
in the uneven rhythm of healing.

It is the courage to stand after falling,
to see the valleys not as failures
but as part of the landscape.
It is remembering
that the journey itself is the triumph.

Every step matters—
the faltering, the firm,
the ones you take in joy
and the ones you take in tears.
Each one carries you closer
to the life you are reclaiming.

Recovery is not linear,
but it is real.
It unfolds in spirals, in waves,
in moments of stillness and motion.
And with each turn,
you are moving toward yourself.