What the Heck is Living ALIVE Anyway? Part 1

 A Little Backstory, the Short and to the Point Version

In 2016, Dale Childress (1962-2023) and I began what we called "Table Talk." The purpose was to figure out the best way to reach hurting people and actually help them. We had each considerably impacted people. Dale through Catholicism and motivational speaking, and I, through work in women's ministry and recovery.  We found out quickly that our hearts were drawn to people who were hurt by religion or someone with an influential position in religion, so religion recovery became a big focus for us. At the time, I was the Ministry Leader for a Celebrate Recovery Group in a church and most of our local "secular" programs such as AA and NA were also meeting in church buildings. We wanted to reach people that would not be willing to go to a church building.

We started writing material that would be good for anyone no matter what your struggle might be. Struggling with money, religion, alcohol/drugs, divorce, grief, depression, sexuality or anything else we wanted to support you. We wanted anyone to be able to use the material no matter what, faith, religion, or spirituality you may or may not practice. We knew first and foremost love and hope had to play a huge part because we felt like that is what kept humans moving forward.  We wanted a name or acronym that supported what we were trying to do.  It started out as LIVE then evolved into ALIVE.

In June of 2018, I totaled my Harley Trike and in July 2018, Dale's Metastatic Prostate Cancer had come out of remission with a vengeance. Life is short and there are no guarantees, so from this point, we chose to become life partners and continue our mission. We continued writing, blogging, and mentoring off and on depending on his health. We never stopped talking and dreaming about our passion to live ALIVE and to help others find their own way to live ALIVE. Dale died at home on October 22, 2023 leaving me to continue our legacy.

What You Really Want to Know

#liveALIVE

We figure that 85% of humans on this earth, especially in the United States of America die long before they are dead.  We do this by choosing to do what we think we should do instead of what we really want to do. We strive to keep up with the Joneses or beat the Joneses and end up tired, stressed out, depressed and have no options. We are anxious, depressed, and choose hundreds of things to change the way we feel or to not feel at all. 

But what do we do with all of that? We choose to live ALIVE!

When we have trauma in our life, when we struggle with addictions, when our plans don't pan out we tend to blame ourselves. When we are unhappy for any reason we can generally track it back to how we feel about ourself.  "I'm angry with myself because I allowed my friend to move in and live here without paying anything for two years."*  "I set a boundary that there would be no alcohol in my house but I didn't uphold it. I said nothing. I thought I was mad at my husband for drinking in the house but I was mad at me for compromising and not doing what I said I would if I found alcohol hid in the house again." "I made bad choices in my marriage and now I don't feel I deserve to be happy and respected by a woman."* So the L in ALIVE stands for Love. Loving yourself is the key to living a happy, healthy, healing life. Loving yourself is hard and takes time but love is always the answer.

We must have hopes and dreams to have a desire to grow, heal, and move forward. I’ve personally seen individuals with no hope.  The only way they have improved emotionally is by finding something to hope for or dreams to aspire to.  To have hope or to dream you must be able to imagine. So the I in ALIVE stands for Imagine. Did you daydream as a kid? Do you still daydream as an adult? Do you make vision boards? I’m working on mine for 2024 next week with a couple of close friends that want to see growth in their lives too.

Enough for today...Continuing with V, E, and A in Part 2.

Blessings,

Chris 💜

* - Names are omitted for confidentiality purposes.