Ross A. Laird

I spent most of today at The Orchard on Bowen Island. I met with the clients as well as the staff. Much of the day was spent talking about the relationship between childhood development and addictions, and the relationship between nervous system imprinting and recovery. It was, therefore, a day of ideas, personal process, and engagement.

I find such days to be immensely fulfilling and fun. My involvement with clinicians as well as clients is restorative in a way that’s always surprising — though, after all this time, perhaps it shouldn’t be. I feel at home in such settings, I feel that I belong in those environments of challenge, healing, and redemption. As I told the group today, this is likely connected to my own early experiences of exile and disconnection. Also the environment of addiction is familiar from my early life, and working in the field of recovery allows me now, all these years later, to complete what could not be completed in my own family. So, perhaps, the world of addictions is another kind of family, and perhaps, in this sense, I have made my professional life into a journey of return from exile, a means of carrying on what was passed to me by the uncompleted hopes and dreams of my mother (of whom I have written extensively in my books, and who seems always to be a source of unintentional inspiration).

It was a good day. I am happy that I do meaningful work.