Our Promises and Sober Living Philosophy of Care
When someone says “I promise,” many of us have sadly been conditioned to expect less than, or nothing at all, from the extended hand waiting for your shake. Many promises don’t come to fruition. FIREBIRD Transformations offers a Sober Living Philosophy of Care that is a promise to you, and we’re not doing it lightly. Yet these are simple promises and reflective of our virtues. In offering a promise to an incoming Member and their Family, we ask for an exchange of simple promises back. Healing the torn sense of personal self-worth and broken valor are among our top priorities, and the foundation of the following:
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Honesty in all affairs
Equal treatment in home life
Answering any question we have permission to answer
Leading by example, openness, and life lessons
Inspiring at every chance
Never letting a good deed go unnoticed
Gratitude as a way of life.
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If you haven’t noticed by now, we’re big on acronyms, a great memory technique. So remember, while we promise H.E.A.L.I.N.G., we cannot promise recovery, or a cure for addiction We see addiction as a very multifaceted and complicated individual, familial, and societal issue. An onion is an excellent illustration of our philosophy regarding addiction: what we see is the ragged, outmost layer. When we cut into the onion, we cry, often causing us to want to use shortcuts around having to make the slice, or even just to peel it. Yet once that slice is made, the layers are evident, and the core is revealed. There’s a source a which leads to that exterior to which we’ve become accustomed. Where did it come from? Furthermore, why does society just look at the skin (the substance addiction condition) and not the wholeness of the person (not only all the layers underneath, but the soil our metaphorical onion was grown in).
Getting to the core of the onion is the core of our mission, and the core of our sober living philosophy of care. Leading a recovering man to discover where the addiction began is essential to ensuring an enduring transformative process. By use of area clinicians, resources, and diverse yet well-understood techniques, our promise is to help lead recovering men to understanding the “Whys” behind the “Whats” and the hopeful epiphanies that follow. We can’t promise that the horse led to water will drink, but to paraphrase a well-known clinician trainer with Crossroads Education, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can can’t make them drink… but you can make them taste salt.”
We also promise education, fun, and the essential sense of community. Most importantly, we promise compassion. Based on the work of and to paraphrase Dr. Gabor Maté, we encounter our Members with compassions of human suffering, understanding of the uniqueness and validity of their personal experience, of recognizing the comprehensive “sameness” we share, and a compassion of possibility- by not mistaking outward appearance and behavior as a foreshadowing of their human potential.
The only promise we ask of you, at the very beginning, is to try. Once you try, than we both know you can do.
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