Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

Nothing hurts more than when a seemingly supportive person inadvertently ceases to support you. Tough love is one thing, but when you reach out for support from someone who has always been there, and you are met with unwanted suggestions and a plea of conversion to their wishes for your life, it is very difficult to feel supported by that person.

Support (in my terms) means understanding that my journey in recovery includes certain components and I expect my supporters to accept my decision to satisfy the need for these things in my life. It does not matter if my supporters can understand why I seek this path or why I need these things in my life... what matters is that they find a way to show you compassion and understanding even when their own ideas do not conform to your ways. Support means empowering an individual to do what THEY DREAM to do and showing them that all of these dreams seem impossible but can very shortly become a reality with hard work and determination. Support means validating an individual's concerns and expressing empathy for any situation - irregardless of how it was manifested. Support means recognizing that an individual may not value the same things as me, they may have different priorities than me, but that is not a "selling point" for my advice.

I should not see an individual's dilemmas as an opportunity to convert them to my way of thinking. Rather, I will listen and understand that their needs, wants, perceptions, values, and desires are completely independent of my own and try to support their search for peace of mind and stability within the structure of their own reality. Let me never be the person that tries to convince someone that their noble decisions toward a better future and their attempts at self-reliance are NOT as important as the attempts I want them to make. Let me always be the person that is truly an encouragement and speaks with the words that God would have me to speak positivity into their life so that they would want to continue reaching for the seemingly unreachable goals. THAT is being supportive.

Society tells us that the only way to support a person is to make sure they are going about life in a manner which is logical to the majority. I recall this wise quote from Wade Davis: "The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you. They are unique manifestations of the human spirit."