In her book A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety, and Radical Transformation, Stephanie Brown, PhD, highlights a fascinating element of recovery, one that I have also spent a lot of time thinking about in more than three decades of recovery. Brown argues that in recovery, "independence involves a paradoxical acceptance of dependence—a sense that we can't and don't survive alone—along with an understanding that we ultimately stand alone." Practicing healthy, mutual dependence is about acknowledging and acting upon the need that we all have for connection with other beings.
Out of those connections and related support, we learn to practice healthy ways of living that allow us to take responsibility for ourselves, and that turns into us creating our independent, autonomous, and separate selves. One of the taglines of the She Recovers movement is "You don't have to recover alone." For those of us who have experienced trauma, learning to rely on others as we regain our sense of self is difficult work.
We approach it tenderly. From I to we and back to me, this is the brilliance of recovery.