ICYMI: The Miracle of Recovery — A Conversation with Hunter Biden
ICYMI: The Miracle of Recovery — A Conversation with Hunter Biden
Originally published on December 8, 2023 and December 16, 2023, two enthralling, humanizing interviews with Hunter Biden
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The Miracle of Recovery — A Conversation with Hunter Biden
Being a member of a 12-step program, I spend my nights in rooms with people who are trying to be better humans. The people in my program are trying to live authentic lives, and we learn to make amends when we were wrong. We learn to clean up the wreckage of our past. We learn that being better humans is an inside job.
We also pray to be of service to others and learn how to maintain integrity when life gets lifey.
As I listen to Moby’s interview with Hunter Biden this morning, listening to how human he is, understanding what it’s like to burn down your life and land in our rooms, embraced and loved — loved by the group until we learn to love ourselves — I am heartened that he has the tenets of our simple program to survive the ongoing assaults by the Russian war machine and Roger Stone’s pure evil that guns for him daily because his father represents such a threat to autocrats everywhere. Truly, all that stands between an authoritarian US and a democratic US is his father, and we voters. So the Russian war machine and US traitors attack the son to hurt the father.
“I wake up acknowledging that I am living an amends, and I will for the rest of my life — not in a bad way, but because it’s a beautiful thing to know that what I am going to do in the morning is be filled with gratitude for number one, I am alive. And number two, that I can be of service to other people, and number three, that I can engage in the things that I know will give me sustenance to make it through the day.”—Hunter Biden on Moby Pod, Part 1
I encourage you to listen to this thoughtful interview with Moby and Hunter, Lindsay and Bagel. As a woman in recovery who uses the tools I have learned in my simple program for complicated people to deal with the attacks and threats I receive daily for my work now going on seven years, I hope many of you will hear Hunter’s words and think, “There but for the grace of God go I….”
‘The Reason to Have Hope’ — Part 2 of the Hunter Biden and Moby Interview
And here is Part Two of that interview, originally published on December 16, 2023:
Among the highlights I noted from Part 2:
‘Hope Is the Thing With Feathers’
Part 2 of music artist Moby’s interview with his friend Hunter Biden is a celebration of his art. He paints hummingbirds — the things he sees in his garden. He, like me, is a birder in recovery. For me, the birds came first and helped guide me out of broadcast news and into a meaningful life.
For Biden, the birds that he paints are his salvation. I know a bit about hummingbirds, the tenacious fighters of our natural world. The males will literally push themselves to the brink of death in the battle for domination. I always think of them as the James Cagney of the bird-verse.
One quote that is very meaningful to Biden comes from Ernest Hemingway:
“The world breaks everyone and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”—Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
And one quote that is very meaningful to me, is this one below from Biden:
“You would think that someone who has gone through the darkness that I describe in my book, that when I decided to reveal myself through my art, that that’s what my work would reflect… but I’ve seen the darkness, I’ve visited that place, I never want to go back. It’s not a place that I want the world to experience. What I have experienced in recovery, and the expression of my art is a reflection of the light, the beautiful things, the reason to have hope. Everything that I paint is some kind of abstract version of something beautiful... Birds are the greatest harbingers of hope.”
—Hunter Biden on Moby Pod, Part 1
I often think of a quote from the writer Kurt Vonnegut, when he wrote about what he thought was the greatest contribution to civilization from America.
“What has been America's most nurturing contribution to the culture of this planet so far? Many would say jazz. I, who love jazz, will say this instead: Alcoholics Anonymous.”—Kurt Vonnegut
I hope Hunter Biden keeps coming back.
Here is a link to his interview with Moby:
So I hope my readers find this helpful and humane.
Do recall, de-humanizing people is the first-step toward fascism.
Hunter Biden is a human being, a man in recovery, a father and a son, trying to make living amends.
Truly, there but for the grace…
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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