Many people living in one day at a time recovery know the reality of kindness and grace. Without being recipients of kindness and grace many us believe that we wouldn’t be alive today. Kindness, especially kindness with boundaries, has gotten us out of many scrapes and binds. Grace, well grace is a God thing. Should we be able to extend grace to someone we are just extensions of the work of God, the spirit, or the universe. Often such powers work through people. It is not a monopoly extended only to people living with addictions, in recovery from addiction and/or affected with mental health disorders. Grace is extended to everyone and anyone. When we think of kindness we think of the days, the weeks, or the years we have put into practice to strengthen our recovery. We will be kind to others seeking recovery but our boundaries are that they too are seeking recovery. Many of us have spent a lot of time trying to help people who didn’t really want to be helped. We don’t do this begrudgingly but we need to have boundaries. The people who we are helping need to stay abstinent. Otherwise we cannot help no matter how kind we are. Sometimes the kindness thing we can say is that we cannot help them and we suggest that they get outside professional help. This is a necessity for some people. It could be harmful or dangerous to try and do more. This is reality. Grace is a given but we often need to set boundaries to be kind. We have learned this from experience. Peace.
