A thoughtful and practical guide based on the author's experiences of building her spirituality by examining (and changing) her own motives and actions in daily life in order to get and stay spiritually fit in twelve-step recovery. Those interested in becoming more spiritually fit can utilize this book, and the easy-to-perform actions it presents, in their everyday lives. Enhanced with examples of the spiritual principles exercised by the actions and with first-person author accounts of her journey from spiritual sickness to spiritual health during her first years in recovery. We know what physical fitness looks like and what it takes to achieve it. Spiritual fitness is a bit tougher to define, but it's actually not so tough to achieve. Like its physical counterpart, it just requires some willingness and a little coaching. The latter is what The Soul Workout provides. The began this by learning, practicing, and thinking about small, everyday actions, such as, "return your shopping cart," "have cash-register honesty," "don't put the empty milk container back in the fridge," etc. There's a saying in many recovery programs, "while I was in here trying to recover, my disease was in the parking lot, doing pushups." That saying applies to more than just those in recovery. While most people are trying to live their lives as decent, spiritually-fit human beings, life itself is "out there" doing pushups. So many small, everyday life events can distract individuals from their spiritual ideals. The guy who cuts off people in traffic or the woman with twenty items in the "ten-items-or-less" aisle can make one tear up all those lofty spiritual principles and throw them away with both hands. The Soul Workout provides easy-to-implement exercises to help readers build and maintain the spiritual conditioning they aspire to, but too often fail to achieve. It will help strengthen spiritual "muscles," so they are not as easily overpowered by life events.

Fills a vital need-that of the child whose parent is undergoing treatment for addiction and who is overwhelmed with the mixed emotions and uncertainties of a problem that affects millions of American families, but which no one wants to talk about. This book offers encouragement to children of a father (or mother) in recovery that there IS hope, that their family is NOT strange or bad, that they are NOT ALONE, and that a happy life in recovery is possible for their family, too Likeable Gabe makes the journey from being an almost-friendless, unhappy, and skeptical young boy reeling from mistreatment at the hands of his addicted father and the effects the disease of addiction has had on his family, to a hopeful, happy youngster who takes pride in his dad's greatest accomplishment: recovery. The shame and isolation felt by the family members of addicts are explored as Gabe learns important lessons about the disease of addiction, its widespread nature, and its solution. Peppered with Gabe's insights and enhanced with charming and evocative illustrations, The Secret of Willow Ridge: Gabe's Dad Finds Recovery addresses the emotional and social issues children of addicts face through an engaging and contemporary story. With a foreword by Claudia Black, Ph.D. written specifically for the target reader.

Poems for grown-ups by one of America's favorite children's poets.