Last night when I was doing group therapy, we were exploring what is called a Family Sculpture. This technique is to help the clients explore issues when they were children or teenagers that shaped who they are now. This exploration always stirs up a lot of emotions and past memories. I have never met a person with a substance abuse problem in over 30 years as a professional who came from a totally healthy family.

That means that most addicts or alcoholics come from families who were substance abuser, physical abusers or sexual abusers. All these wrecked lives had a start in incredible dysfunction. They learned to use and abuse from those that used and abused. Breaking the cycle of use and abuse is very challenging.

As a person counseling the damaged person, I sometimes feel flashes of anger at those who abused them. Too often however the abused feel so poorly about themselves that they in some way think they deserved to be treated in such terrible ways. That is faulty thinking and the heart of one wounded by trauma.

So here is this person struggling in therapy because they have no idea what a healthy function person even looks like. Their models for healthy adults may not have existed in their lives. How could these people turn out to be ok if they mainly experienced abuse?

So what is amazing to me is to hear their stories and to see that the positive possibility in most still exists. Despite the hurt, anger, abuse, shame and self-destruction, there sits a person who in this moment can begin another life. These clients are survivors, they have weathered the storms of abuse that led to self-abuse and still there is this innocent child who wants to be loved, who wants the caring every child needs from their parents.

If the past can be released, and the shame of their own lives can be forgiven, then there is hope for a recovery of the self that came into this life to be more than the pain and suffering they have endured. If even for a moment they can make contact with their original innocence, with their purpose, with their belief in who they can still become, then a light comes on and things start shifting and a life can be rescued and revived.

A life in search of self can be beautiful thing when the light of insight comes on. Then who they came here to be can shine forward into the expression they will become.

It is wonderful to watch that light come on, to in some way assist an awakening, a reclaiming of a life that will now be expressed more fully. In those moments gratitude fills the room and true joy knocks at the door of what can be.