From Rehab to Real Life: The Prayer That Stayed With Me
It was late spring when I checked into a 28-day treatment center for alcohol addiction. It was a nice place, actually—clean and open, surrounded by trees and the kind of quiet you notice when you’re learning how to hear yourself again. Not at all like the places you see in movies or imagine when you hear the word rehab.
We had some structure and some free time—mornings full of classes and meetings, afternoons spent occupying ourselves, walking the grounds, reading, socializing, or in quiet reflection. In the evenings, we’d load into a van and head to a local AA meeting or stay in to play ping pong or spades in the main building. There was an open-door policy (with rules) and a thread of hope woven through everything.
It became a very safe place.
On one of those early days—before I felt grounded enough to believe I belonged there; and really didn’t want to be there—someone handed me a small card with just a few words on it. It was the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
At the time, I repeated those words like I was learning a new language—slowly, clumsily, thinking they were just words on a card. But I said them anyway, while I also learned the meaning behind them and how to have faith in the power of those words. You see, by the time I arrived in rehab I had given up on there being any sort of higher power. Something that had always played a roll in my life.
However, in those first fragile days of sobriety that prayer became a life preserver. When I didn’t know how to deal with the withdrawal shakes, or the anger, or the fear, I’d quietly whisper it to myself. It wouldn’t solve my problems, but it reminded me some things are outside of my control. And that there’s a difference between surrendering and giving up.
Now, more than 20 years later—sober and standing in a very different life—I still say that prayer. Not always out loud, and rarely for the same reasons. These days, it has less to do with alcohol, and more to do with being human.
I’ve said it in my car before walking into jobs when I wasn’t sure I could face the day.
I’ve said it at 2 am, lying awake while my mind pin-balled between past conversations and imagined futures.
I’ve said it when cancer became part of my story.
And I’ve said it on days when I couldn’t put my feelings into words—so I put my hands into clay instead.
That prayer, when I call it back, is a gentle nudge towards center when the world feels too loud or too much. I no longer say it to stay sober—I say it to stay sane, stay soft, stay present. Because there’s still so much I can’t control. There are people I want to fix (or yell at), problems I want to solve, pain I want to erase, and outcomes I wish I could orchestrate.
But what I can do is this:
Remember when to hold on and when to let go.
Listen—to my own needs, and those of others.
Recognize what “belongs” to me and what doesn’t.
And I can remind myself that serenity, courage, and wisdom aren’t one-time lessons. They’re daily choices.
So no, I don’t carry that little card in my pocket anymore, but I carry the words. I carry them into traffic. Into stressors. Into art. Into healing. Into life.
And if you’re reading this, maybe you’ll find a place for those words in your own life too—not because you're struggling with the same things, but because, in some way, we all are. We all want to feel peace. We all want to believe we’re doing the best we can—with what we know, with what we have. And sometimes, a simple prayer is the reminder we need to keep going.