When we hear the same, what we like to refer as cliches, over and over we sometimes have a hard time understanding why people say it, but mostly we wonder if they actually believe it. In most cases, people who say them mean them. But more than likely they had to endure some a major event that brought them to that AHA moment; a life-altering moment that forced them to read between the lines.
Here are some quotes that when you see them, you may only see words. They may have no meaning to you, at least not yet. You may never see anything but words when you see them. You will however, have a moment in sobriety, in addiction, in life when something will jump out at you and you can finally read between the lines and see the message that you never realized was right in front of you. It won't read or mean the same for everyone. Each person has a unique AHA moment and the moment comes in many different forms. What you see now as ordinary and cliche, may make the difference between today and tomorrow and very well may bring you to that AHA moment. But it must be said that you will have more than one AHA moment in your life. You will read between the lines more than once in a lifetime. So keep your eyes, your heart and your mind open.
Change
“If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime.”
– Benjamin Alire Sáenz
“You can’t defeat the darkness by keeping it caged inside of you.”
– Seth Adam Smith
“Rising from the ashes, I am born again, powerful, exultant, majestic through all the pain.”
– Shannon Perry
“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.”
– Zen proverb
"It's going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
--Joseph Campbell
"Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny."
--C.S. Lewis
Self-Worth
“One of the hardest things was learning that I was worth recovery.”
– Demi Lovato
"The goal isn't to be sober. The goal is to love yourself so much that you don't need to drink."
-- Anyonymous
"I understood myself only after I destroyed myself. And only in the process of fixing myself, did I know who I really was."
-- Sade Andria Zabala
"All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for."
--Jon Kabat-Zinn
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."
-- Alice Walker
Faith & Hope
“I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.”
– Charlotte Brontë
“Listen to God with a broken heart. He is not only the doctor who mends it but also the father who wipes away the tears.”
– Criss Jami
“Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell.”
– Carrie Fisher
"Recovery didn't open the gates of Heaven and let me in. Recovery opened the gates of Hell and let me out."
-- Anyonymous
Courage / Strength
“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.”
– Napoléon Bonaparte
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.”
– Mark Twain
“In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.”
– Drew Barrymore
“I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done.”
– Robert Downey Jr.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
– Helen Keller
"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power."
-- Jim Morrison
Recovery
“My recovery must come first so that everything I love in life doesn't have to come last."
– Anonymous
"Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."
-- J.K. Rowling
"You will face your greatest opposition when you are closest to your biggest miracle."
-- Shannon L. Adler
"You is kind. You is smart. You is important."
-- Kathryn Stockett, The Help
“Recovery is hard. Regret is harder.”
– Brittany Burgunder