Lisa Ferguson

​At my first meeting, the complexities of every soul revealed a world I wanted. I was terrified and elated at the same time; terrified that people might get to know me and elated that they also seemed to accept me. Of course, I hadn't uttered a word yet. While reading was out of the question for me when I first stopping drinking, I still thought I had become suddenly calm and peaceful and gentle and would stay that way. But I didn't know yet that there is no match for the shame of addiction, so to find an entire room full of people that left shame at the door, well, that was certainly the work of some defiant genius. Who could think that to bring suffering people together, to let them, without rhythm or reason, seemingly and simply heal each other? I completely visited a foreign country that first night, what an adventure! I would stay just for that!

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At that moment in time, I'd forgotten about growing up with AA. Now, AA certainly looked like a place where I could get a job as a speaker since I had carefully watched the basket get passed around and land at the front table where the speaker was. What a great idea, they choose one among us who was financially strapped and they got the job to speak that night. I wonder who to ask about how to sign up for that gig.

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AA has been organizing the illogical mind and healing the damaged body successfully for 80 years. With recovery also came along a new world-I turned around my failing horse farm. There was no secret as to how, I simply started showing up every day. I slowly began to see the beauty in the moment and respect things, mine as well as others. Strictly a brain function, it was for me a monkey see, monkey do kind of thing. My brain was healing but I simply could not do more than step 1-admit I was powerless once I started.  As for Step 2, I thought I was too damaged to ever be made sane.  I still couldn't see the beauty in people or the sanctity of what transpires between us. I had made a shift while working the farm. In my early recovery—and in life—it’s natural to start with the rules. Of course, in AA there are no rules except rule 62, don't take yourself so seriously, but I made my own rules up and they tended to be harsh. I needed something to somehow give me shape. Structure. Guardrails when the road ahead felt uncertain. “Wake up by 8 a.m.” “No phones during meeting.” “Be honest.” "Shower and wear clean clothes". They’re weren't just rules—they were my scaffolding for survival. By the end of my first four years in recovery, I had charts for every action and labels for every single thing. I didn't know that survival wasn’t the endgame. I didn't know that transformation begins and never ends.  Where living only by the rules stops. It feels like boundaries. Which I avoided because I didn't see their intrinsic value.  Suddenly life started to come from within. I had always been raw with a hopeful kind of mania and, then, soon enough, I would feel a devastating hurt, sometimes at the same time. Structure was able to calm my chaos. My rules helped build rhythm where disorder once lived. They also created a collective safety net of people around me and held me individually accountable so I could finally feel good about something.​ 

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However, I was angry when I was first sober. Angry everywhere. At a gas station. My show of power, that's what being angry was, my theater at its worst and only got for me the opposite effect that I wanted. I was incredibly lonely I realized I needed a sponsor. Until I discussed it with my sponsor like the perfect victim I used to be and confessed that I had done some assaulting and managed to get assaulted myself. It was over a bumper sticker. You want to know what that thing said-"Shit Happens". Because the bumper sticker was reminding me that life did happen to me, not in a victim way, but in a "life happens" way. And a football player type of guy was arguing the opposite, that he was in control of his destiny. I walked away and got back up into my truck shaken and insulted.  After hearing for years that I was powerless over alcohol and drugs people, places, and things. I had gone into a literal gas station battle for the 12-steps. For years I had this fake sort of superior compassion for him, that he was still evolving and I was superior because I knew that everyone is powerless over people, places, and things. This scrimmage was still a war. My only evidence that I had progressed over the seven years I had been sober was that I had managed to stop the fight and walk away-a draw. The fact was that I was still going into combat over a bumper sticker and other mundane-level things in my life.  "How sober was that?" I asked myself.  While I was definitely making progress, it was certainly not perfection.   

   

Here’s the thing: I was playing my membership in 12-step like a role and roles have rules and rules are external. They govern my behavior, not belief. They say, “Do this,” but not, “Be this.” And they only hold as long as I believed someone else was watching. In being part of AA that held true for me and now I made another turning point. I went from obedience to ownership. Somewhere along the journey, something shifted. I was doing the steps but shame had stopped me from stepping away from myself to see myself and I just couldn't trust anyone, like a sponsor to look at my behavior with me. I had trusted my various sponsors up to a point, so me, I used a therapist to help me step out of my self-imposed, rule-ridden, protection-my little bubble. I often see people in 12-step, I was one of them, change their lives, change their titles, seek a challenge but what I finally grew to identify with, is simply that it is within me to burst the bubble. I can expand myself into my authentic self. Some people have an upbringing that put them a couple decades ahead of me on that and that's okay with me. I can't get rid of the shame around me and grow any faster than I can grow. 

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My new definition of authenticity is that I play by my rules, not yours. I wake up early not because it’s required, but because I crave the clearness in my brain, the internal "HA" with my step into the morning air. The sacred quiet of my morning ritual. I return my cart in the grocery store lot, I park my bike just so in the garage, I make my bed and keep the sheets clean for no reason at all, I accompany my friend when she's scared, I take the phone call—not out of duty, but because I'm actually someone who likes to hear what people have to say and I honor sharing space, time, and hearts.

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Which means, that the most telling part of my sober life is that I look forward to surprises and I don't run from conflict. Not because I am old and I've experienced a bunch but because I have confidence in myself to handle it but only when everyone gets to keep their dignity. And, believing with all my heart that my HP invites into my life only whatever is for my best. It may be a keeper, it may be a hard lesson. 

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Here's the story of another inflection point.  Outside, peace. The trees swayed in their own ignorance of the quiet war inside the house. The mug didn’t fall, I threw it. It was an instant reaction, it flew, at a raw and ancient hurt, not toward him — he wasn’t even there — he was the excuse at the moment.  It went at something unnamed, toward the edge of my darkside.  He had said something sharp that cut my heart out on the phone. I replayed it but I didn’t want to. My daughter didn’t flinch. The mug missed her by a margin that could be written off as my higher power, maybe her higher power. She kept playing, unaware because her world hadn’t cracked. I watched as the moment unmade itself — no blood, just me understanding, me rupturing as I realized I had been given a reprieve. Suddenly the danger he had posed was quiet and the love for her was loud. I could not easily name or describe what clicked inside me, maybe gratitude, but after that I am not just following the rules of respect or motherhood or friendship— I'm someone who is respectful, who is a mother, friend. That’s the inflection point. Recovery becomes identity. Living an identity means Internalizing the why-to be the gently predictable one instead of the scary, violent one. Living an identity isn’t about perfection; it’s about shaking so much that the sadness, the badness, the anger can no longer be present. It is about letting myself accept others at all times and understand like an adult would, not a child, that trust isn't broken on a whim, nor is it built over dulled repetition but that's like everything else, it has to be nurtured, daily.

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It means values aren’t just written on a wall—they’re felt in your choices. You’re no longer avoiding consequences—I 've been shaping my values, living up to the character I thought I wanted to be , I embodied the version of me I like, no love. It’s the difference between:

• Not drinking vs. choosing to live awake and that means messy emotions and mistakes

• Attending and going through the motions of my group vs. showing up for my people

• Complying with structure vs. co-creating community, learning that most of life is a negotiation not the unilateral demands I once lived and died by

• I had never thought I was anyone else other than what my mother had told me. That was way too limiting. It was a role I played well but then I became who I wanted to be. She didn't have to do anything that was even remotely not good for me. To stop listening to the voices in my head, that's the real sober deal.  

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Why This Matters for Long-Term Healing

Rules can keep you safe, but identity makes you sovereign. When life gets hard—and it will—external rules may fall away. What endures is who you’ve become. This is why we don’t just encourage recovery behavior at Right Path—we cultivate belonging, accountability, and embodied transformation. Because when you live from identity, your choices flow from alignment—not fear.

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A Final Word

Rules are a powerful beginning. Identity is where the real freedom begins.

At Right Path House, we walk with people as they move from compliance to embodiment, from imitation to integration. Because sobriety isn’t a set of rules—it’s a way of being.