Reading Affirmations for the Inner Child by Rokelle Lerner, I came across this affirmation: “I belong to nature, and I live within the order of nature.”

Growing up in the country in Ireland just before a neighbor bought a combine harvester and before television, I loved the hands-on work in nature. Dad dug the potatoes, and I picked them, put them in the bucket to bring home. I’ve walked behind my uncle as he cut the corn with a scythe, picked up an armful and then took a handful and tied it. When possible, I took my brother’s bicycle and rode around the country as the hay was being cut and I loved the aroma of fresh cut hay. Animals died, stray animals were shot or drowned. Such was life in the country of the time. 

I do not recall thinking of myself as a self. Instead, I knew only too well I was “Annie D’s son” and I had to live up to that image – a happy, loving family. I was different from others but not in a healthy manner.

Then I went to seminary and got my head into books. I became acquainted with Jack Daniels et al. I got a motorcycle, then a car and these instruments of travel put distance between me and nature.

As a priest, I have celebrated Mass at the seaside, on a rock on the side of a mountain, by a stream or river. I got out into nature, but it was only a location, a place with which I no longer had that sense of belonging. Somehow, Jack Daniels and friends were hiding me from myself and nature.

As Lerner points out in her Affirmation “I did not learn about my body and facts about the natural world. Nature reproduces, but sex was a shameful secret in my family.” There were a lot of secrets in the family, and I learned early not to talk about the family to outsiders. We were a churchgoing, hard-working family.

 “You are a child of the Universe, no less than the stars and the trees. You have a right to be here.” This line from the poem Desiderata was something I loved to quote to clients in counseling but in private it made me cry. I did not belong. I was an outsider. I had secrets which I could no longer tell the trees.         

Then came recovery. Initially, it was a long slow process because I couldn’t admit to myself the secrets I spent years burying. Living up to the expectations of another was difficult to change.

Finally, after some four years of a dry-drunk, working the program for all the wrong reasons- just to look good to others especially my boss- I hit bottom. I admitted I am an alcoholic, I am powerless over alcohol, I have an addictive personality, I am an adult child of a dry drunk,  and my life had become unmanageable. What a weight to be lifted off my shoulders. Now what? The journey of recovery had just begun.

Everything I learned over the years had lodged in my head. I could give a good talk, teach, make you think you knew me and all the while hiding, even from myself, in plain sight. Now, all that I learned was trickling down into my heart, and, like the Skin Horse in The Velveteen Rabbit, I was beginning to feel love and loved.

“I belong to nature, and I live within the order of nature.” “I am a child of the Universe no less than the trees and the stars; I have a right to be here.” I became free to be who I am, free to be, become and feel alive, free to splash in the ocean and the ocean of emotions within me. 

Today, I love being in recovery, I love the feeling of being a child of God and a child of the Universe. I love to drive into the swamps and smell the sensuality of this land, to see the variety of animals, to feed an alligator from a boat. I love to see, to hear, to smell, to taste and to touch nature and be alive again.

Séamus D is an Episcopal priest in recovery and lives in New Orleans