Pause and Ponder – Chip Ceremony
Once a month, staff gather in the chapel in Nashville on a Wednesday afternoon for a chip ceremony organized by our Certified Peer Recovery Specialists. At a recent ceremony, clients lined up in the hallway outside the chapel and waited for their turn to be celebrated. As a client stood at the threshold, a peer announced the number of days the client had been sober. The staff in the room cheered as the client made her way to another peer who was waiting to award the appropriate chip. Some clients danced their way up to receive their chip. Others hugged staff after receiving their chips. Most slid their chips into their name badge holders to serve as a constant reminder of their sobriety.
These chip ceremonies provide an opportunity for us to model many of The Next Door’s core values. As we come together as a community to celebrate our clients’ sobriety and shower them with love, we show respect for their hard work and offer words of encouragement. We hold out hope for them that their sober time will continue to increase – two days of sobriety can lead to two weeks, two months, two years.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to walk into a room today and discover a group of folks cheering for us, offering us words of encouragement to keep up our good work, handing us a token to remind us how far we’ve come? In lieu of such a ceremony, think about what you can do today to celebrate yourself. What milestone can you mark? What accomplishment – no matter how small it seems – can you take pride in today? Being mindful of such things is one way to practice self-care.
You are worthy of celebration! Keep up the good work.
