Mythical creatures are my thing. With my life of recovery, I've gone down a path of the unknown and cryptic. Looking into the origin story for the tooth fairy, from the Vikings believing that baby teeth bring good luck in battle, the ancient muslim nations having their children throw their lost teeth at the sun for Allah, or the many other cultures who had a mouse that traded kids' teeth for money... I realized the tooth fairy was a fable shared by cultures all over the world.
This was interesting to me. 🤔
Fun fact, my brain is constantly connecting strings on a crazy looking bulletin board of things I have rolling around in my head, not unlike a conspiracy theorist that hasn't slept for days or a detective working tirelessly to solve a case.
See, I often have things like Bigfoot, fairies, the Loch Ness monster, aliens, an honest government, and other mythical creatures on my mind. It's fun to ponder their existence while taking a break from the normie shit I process on a daily basis. This multi-cultural origin situation the tooth fairy finds itself in connects one of these strings for me.
It all started in early 2023. I haven't structured my recovery journey around attending 12-step meetings and I know next to nothing about the multiple pathways, at this time. I just started on my career path in the recovery community with 217 Recovery and my incredibly awesome and hardworking/gracious boss asked me to facilitate a recovery meeting. Uh, I hadn't been to an AA meeting in almost 12 years and had no idea how to run one. His suggestion was to go to some meetings, hit up some Zoom meetings online, and then start a meeting at the 217 Recovery Center with my own little flare to it.
That's where I found the 319. If you're interested in online recovery meetings, I'd recommend checking out what we have available at 217 Recovery or check out the 319 here. (click the links) The 319 is a 24/7 online AA Zoom meeting. It was neat seeing how meetings were evolving in a post-COVID world, but what I really liked about it was there were people from ALL OVER THE WORLD sharing their lives and struggles living a life of recovery.
"When you have a strong support system, you have the freedom to express yourself in whatever capacity you can." — Shweta Menon
One minute you're hearing a share from a guy in New Jersey, 5 minutes later a lady from Fort Myers Florida, a guy from Austin Texas, a lady from SoCal, and then it got interesting. The following shares came from places like: Great Britain, New Zealand, and India. What struck me was that these people from other sides of the planet are sharing and having the same struggles that I AND the other people that shared were experiencing. It was eye opening and comforting seeing this web of support reaching around the world.
I had no idea the recovery world was as vast as the whole world itself. Now, you may be asking yourself... "Did Mitch just compare the global recovery community to the tooth fairy?" Yup, sure did. After seeing all those tooth fairy origin stories, I just had to connect that red yarn. Realizing that I'm not alone, and not alone at a global scale changed my perspective on the disease I recover from every day.
Thank you for coming to my Tedd Talk, the fae thank you. 🧚♂️
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