David Brisbin Podcast

Dave Brisbin 8.9.20 When I first began working in recovery, I heard an AA oldtimer emphatically say that he was grateful to be an alcoholic, and I couldn’t process that statement. How could alcoholism be a good thing? But now a couple decades later, I see how for him, the pain and trauma of his alcoholism created a hinge moment, a point in his life, because of his choice for recovery, that angled the trajectory of his life in a new direction, like an alternate timeline in those time travel movies. Hinge moments are usually only seen in retrospect, years later, but what if we could get a sense of them when they are actually happening? How would that help us step up to the challenges we face and put purpose behind the pain that allows us to overcome? If we consider the shape of the Hero’s Journey—the one story plot we’ve been telling ourselves since we’ve been painting on cave walls—we can get a sense of the shape of our longest journey from birth to death. But we can also begin to see that life is a series of