Service

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When I first began CoDA, in order to stay out of my addiction to helping, I held on to the steadfast clarity I received from the phrase 'My recovery is my service.' I focused on myself.

My second sponsor added that, to them, being of service means never being depleted. If they're depleted emotionally, financially, physically etc, they're not really being of service, they're numbing a feeling. This gave me a much-needed way to check in with myself and explore saying no.

As I moved through the CoDA program, I found I began to do service because I wanted to, not because I needed to, and my want came from a free place, not from fear or from endlessly needing reassurance that I'm a good person.

I truly receive when I give from this state-of-heart, and usually without guilt.

I have the ability to say no now, even if I have the time to help. The cycle of over yes-ing, until I get sick or hurt and then isolating to recuperate, is mostly an old memory.

I've felt what it is to not help compulsively and learn I'm still safe, loving and loved. I've experienced leaving space open for the unknown, accidentally creating room for intimacy with my life. To me, the words 'recovery' and 'service' have new meaning.

-Anonymous

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When I discovered I was co-dependent I discovered how my disease pretty much centered around caretaking anyone who would, or wouldn’t let me. It was a sobering reality that I had and still have to come to terms with in my evolution in recovery.

When they idea of service kept coming up I was triggered deeply because the very thing that I was attempting to heal from was now being offered as a recipe to my recovery. The concept was oxymoronic, to say the least.

Yet, as I began to work with a sponsor and began to heal my relationship with my Higher Power, and my relationship with myself and others I soon understood the more healthy reasons to being of service in this program.

The concept “you can’t keep it unless you give away” began to ring true for me. The recovery, or understanding, or insight into their own trauma through my share in a meeting may not only serve as a healing for me, but also spark a healing in someone else. That’s being of service.

Sponsoring someone else will give me a mirror perspective into my own disease as I assist someone else in their recovery journey. This act of service agains levels up my own personal recovery, but also someone else’s recovery journey. It began to make more and more reasonable sense. I suddenly moved it out of the oxymoronic pile and into a eureka recovery moment.

And finally, after finishing the steps, Step Twelve made so much sense to me. From a grounded and spiritual place, which had no ounce of codependency attached to it, I could clearly see the significance of this powerful tool of recovery. A sincere, and loving act to be able to do for someone else what has been done for one’s own self. One day someone may not feel like reading. I got energy, let me help out. No one wants to host?

Now, service, without a motive to receive anything tangible, except the possibility of deepening my own recovery, is what lends me to love the act of being of service in this program. And I’m happy that I have a clearer understanding of the difference between service, and caretaking. Taking someone’s care is caretaking. Helping someone on the recovery journey and participating to ensure the success and flow of the meeting is recovery. It’s service.

It benefits all.

DB