What does your egg look like?

There’s a lovely man who goes by the member name @behind-the-sofa here at Living Sober and also leaves comments at my ‘old’ blog (which I still post in regularly) under the name ‘Mr Tea’. He’s a top bloke who I have also had email exchanges with, he paints beautifully and recommends lovely music like this.

Anyhoo.. he left this comment on my other blog today: “I have this half-formed idea that my sobriety is like a gift that I carry around with me. And while it’s beautiful it’s also fragile like an ornamental egg and there are plenty of people who want to take it away from me. It gives me great pleasure but I have to be constantly vigilant and careful not to drop it or let someone else break it… Now that I’ve had it, held it and experienced life with it I’m not sure I could go back to life without it.”

Wow.

I just love this so much. The image of all of us sober people walking around gently cradling precious beautiful eggs. What’s the brand name – faberge? We get sober and slowly we craft a beautiful ornamental faberge egg, unique only to us.

As we grow stronger in recovery and more robust we smooth the surface, as we slowly heal our emotional selves and find our authenticity we add decoration, colors, textures, jewels. And we walk forever more cradling this precious piece of us. We hold it close, we respect it, we care for it. It looks fragile but that just means we respect it and care for it. It’s up to us to make sure it never gets broken.

I think this is what being ‘in recovery’ means. It doesn’t mean we spend the rest of our lives feeling diseased or damaged, far from it. It means we feel blessed, healed, grateful, proud and special.

Like a beautiful, fragile yet very protected faberge egg.

My egg is a deep forest green with rows of gold thread wrapped around it and priceless pearls dotted here and there.

What does yours look like?