Live at Peace & Justice Memorial in Montgomery, AL!! Find Your Peace and Freedom, Heal from Our Past.

Live from Peace & Justice Memorial in Montgomery, AL!!  

Find Your Peace and Freedom.  Heal from our Past.  Embrace History and Your Story.

Chapters

• 0:00 National Memorial for Peace and Justice
• 1:53 Freedom from Addiction and Judgment
• 3:38 Acceptance and Vulnerability
• 6:33 American History and Memorial Day Reflections

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Here we are in Montgomery, alabama, at the National Center for Peace and Justice Memorial. This sculpture, the sculpture park, the museum, represents the inhumane treatment of African Americans that were suffered for hundreds of years. This part of the memorial represents the lynchings that mainly occurred over a 70-year period between 1880 and 1950. I'm gonna flip the phone around where you can see how everyone was depicted and, as you see, each block represents a county in a state. The states where the most lynchings took place were Mississippi, louisiana and Georgia. There was also many lynchings in Oklahoma, missouri, illinois, west Virginia. In Oklahoma, missouri, illinois, west Virginia, most of the states in the South will have a county depicted by a block and each block could have one name, two names, five names, 20 names, and it just shows the thousands of people who were lynched for no reason and taken from their families and, worst off, it robbed them to live a full life, a life of freedom. We talk about freedom from addictions, where a person can live their own life in peace, in serenity, to pursue the joy, the contentment, the happiness that they want for themselves or for their families. But when you are constantly terrorized or subjected to some unwritten rule or vagueness, or judged by a person and that is probably the worst is where judging another person can lead to death, and this happened over and over and over again in the South. The idea is to promote peace and justice and hope, because you don't want to live hopeless. Whether that's hopeless because of society or hopeless because of addiction, we can always have much more faith, love and hope. We want to constantly encourage that and, coming here to Montgomery, alabama, I I wanted to showcase where we can keep elevating the discussion on what needs to be done, what we can do as people whether your race is white, hispanic, black, asian man, woman, young, old On how you can grow, on how we can do better and really, how can we live much fuller lives.

Speaker 1: 3:38

The 1% in Recovery podcast is about helping people live a full life, not just to stop addiction, but to be free of judgments, to where you feel validated accepted, because a lot of times people say they want to feel loved. Yes, we all want to feel loved, but even bigger than that is that we want to feel validated. We want to feel accepted. That's why groups everyone wants to be accepted into a family, accepted into a group, accepted into an organization, accepted onto a team, because that can increase our identity, increase our self-esteem, where we can then continually to grow as people. Because, as a specific person, we all have facets, we all have talents, many talents, we all have gifts that we want to share with the world.

Speaker 1: 4:34

But we have to be able to do it where we feel unencumbered by other people, society, rules that make zero sense, where we can't move freely, we can't make certain risks, where those risks are in business, in love, in looking into your own spirituality, into God, in the ways to keep growing. So I want everyone to keep looking inside. Everyone to keep looking inside. Journaling is one way. Visiting places like this is another way. Talking and getting in groups where you can engage either other people or ideas, where you can open up, be vulnerable. Vulnerability is so necessary to have a full life where it doesn't matter what is said or how you are represented, that you're just allowed to move and grow and change, and so we want people to constantly be able to do that.

Speaker 1: 5:56

And so, hopefully, this episode mainly about freedom, but it's also about peace, it's also about acceptance. They say this in the big book when we're talking about alcoholics. You know, acceptance is the key. That was a big story, one that actually made a very important impact on my early recovery, how to accept my own life, accept what I was doing, accept the fact on what I needed to do to get out of my situation yourself. Look, shake hands, talk, listen to people's story. People are so fascinated when you let them tell their story and then we don't have to come to places like this where we are viewing so many unjust deaths.

Speaker 1: 6:50

And it is sad. It is truly, truly sad that this is a piece of American history, but it has to be told, cannot hide it, cannot wish that it didn't happen. It did happen and it was happening not only for years, for decades, for centuries. That's the sad part. This has been going on. That's the sad part. This has been going on. The American history has been full of slavery, but now we can each person, first with your local community and then that kind of grows into the state and into the federal level. So I hope everyone is enjoying this Memorial Day does represent, because Memorial Day is also about freedoms that our soldiers have given us and hopefully, the freedom that the soldiers have given us, everyone can participate in them. Given us, everyone can participate in them. So I wish everyone a good weekend and lots and lots of enjoyment so you can get the most out of life. Life is wonderful. This is the end of this episode of the 1% in Recovery podcast.