Even in the midst of our child’s relentlessly painful and grief filled addiction we have the possibility of discovering moments of spiritual freedom for ourselves.

The question is what does spiritual freedom look like? I’ve identified seven signs of spiritual freedom. Here’s one of them.

As parents of an addict , or as an addict in recovery, we may have an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. We may be weighed down by our sense of failure.

The Poet Walt Whitman wrestled with his own feelings of inadequacy and all of his failures. Believe me, he had quite a few. In spite of these, I like it when he was able to love himself including the “inner leper “ within and write:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself…. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.

In part, this surely is what it means to be free spiritually free. This I think, is a telltale sign of an spiritual person so enthralled with the day and the mission of life that he or she is able to “celebrate myself and sing myself…Hoping to cease not til death.”