power of our voice

Speech, the spoken word, is important to our recovery:

“We must be entirely honest with somebody if we expect to live long or happily in this world.” (Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, pp. 73-74)

The power of our own voice forces us to communicate truth about ourselves and what we’ve done. We admit things so we can feel them again and be reminded of what we don’t want to be. We don’t want to be an addict anymore. We don’t want to continue damaging our life or the lives of others. It’s through our own admittance that we begin the healing process. Our own voice can bring healing into our life.

Carefully choose your words, because they have the power to hurt or to heal.

Even the 1st step in recovery includes the phrase, “We admitted…” Before any other step can be made, we must first speak out loud the truth of our situation, “…we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Later on, in Step 5 of the recovery steps, “We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” And in Step 7, “We humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings.” Then finally in Step 9, “We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

Making direct amends to people implies we’re talking to them. We’re saying something to them, typically asking for their forgiveness or us telling them we forgive them. In other words, we must speak in some of the steps in order to heal in recovery.

I had the honor and pleasure of sharing my testimony and lessons learned on the power of our voice. Check out the video and learn how you can begin changing the way you talk to deepen your healing in recovery.

#powerofthetongue #speaklife