2022 is close, very close. It holds the promise of new beginnings and a renewed sense of hope that we can start afresh.

I was once called by a manager I had many years ago as “the most annoyingly optimistic person” on the team to which I replied with a big smile on my face “Thank you”.  All we could do was laugh. We haven’t had too much to laugh about since March 2020 with you know what arriving to disrupt our lives. For those of us in the recovery movement already we had ‘go to’ skills, tools and  practices that we pulled on like our lives depended on them and our lives did indeed depend on them.

We were ahead of the rest of world who were now learning how to live a day at a time. We had been saying that for years, sometimes annoyingly to new comers but when Covid hit, we in some sense were the most equipped to deal with it.

‘Keep it in the day’ ‘A day at a time’ were the mantra’s of the world and we had more than a passing acquaintance with living that way. Our communities were one of the first to pivot into online support and began to meet and greet people from all over the world in time zones we could only dream to visit. Now we were having meetings where for us in Ireland it was dark and near bedtime and for someone in New Zealand it was bright  and breakfast time. We learned from each other how to cope better and survive the pandemic with a sense of humour that is particular to people in recovery.

We have been to some pretty dark places physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. We hadn’t come this far to be taken out by a virus so we set about offering each other psychological support that made us feel connected, supported and gave us a few laughs.

Offering someone a laugh is where we enter with the #FlamingoPosse. An off the cuff comment and gif to make someone smile. It was a woman walking down a cat walk wearing a pink dress with a flamingo ‘growing’ out of. It was Friday and we were talking about ‘Rocking the Friday night Frock’. Before we knew it we were sharing every Friday Gifs that showed people wearing life sized flamingo swim floats, flamingo costumes with frills and flounces and even the lads offered images of catalogue Flamingo socks and jocks.

So why am I telling you all this? Well this little inconsequential gif to make someone smile has turned into a community in and of itself. Us “Flamgals” as one of the girls coined our group have a whole support system built around Flamingo’s. We love our men folk and they are huge supporters of us at all times but we have to acknowledge when women band together we make monumental things happen.

Speaking of making monumental things happen enter the 2022 project that Recovery Hour is bringing to light, and yes it features Flamingos.