When Words Become Pictures

Twelve words that echo the Twelve Steps. Woodhaven Manor has twelve bedrooms, and from the start it felt right that each one should carry a word of its own. Each room now bears its name, with four images and a quote on the walls.

The images were my best effort to hold the heart of each word in something you could see. But what I have learned over time is that my version is never the only one. The boys who live in these rooms often look at the same pictures and see something entirely different. Sometimes their images are simpler. Sometimes they are sharper. Often they are better. And that is the beauty of this practice.

When you take a word and give it space, when you close your eyes and ask what it looks like, the word begins to change. It becomes personal. It becomes alive.

Willingness opened slowly for me when I sat with it. I began to see a hand reaching out into uncertainty, a bird leaning forward in its nest, the pause before a leap. Each picture carried the same quiet truth: willingness is not agreement alone, it is the risk of moving forward in faith when you cannot see what waits ahead.

I once tried this practice with my husband. We chose the same word, sat in silence, and let images rise. His answers were nothing like mine. His pictures made sense, but they told a story from his life. Mine told one from mine. That moment reminded me that each of us carries words differently. In sharing our images, the word itself grew larger.

This happens often with the boys. A photograph that was meant to hold one meaning unfolds into another. For me, hope looked like children playing or the persistence of nature. One boy pointed instead to light breaking through storm clouds. His version was not about innocence. It was about survival. And once he said it, we could all see it.

In morning group, these words sometimes make their way back into the circle. I will ask a boy to bring an image from his room, and it sits in the middle of our conversation. We do not lecture about what it means. We look at it together and listen. A firefighter climbing into smoke. Footprints pressed into sand. A monkey staring into its own reflection. Each one opens a door, and once it is open, the boys step through with their own meaning.

The Steps are like that too. They are not words to skim or memorize once. They are words we carry, words we return to, words that keep opening as we live with them.

One morning, the word was courage. We placed the photograph of the firefighter in the center of the circle. Smoke rising. A ladder reaching upward. We sat with it quietly until our newest resident said, "Maybe courage is doing the thing even when you are scared of it." He had never been in that room. He had never seen its words. Yet what he spoke was already written there. The others looked at him and nodded, a little amazed. In that moment, the picture, the word, and his own voice had come together.

And that is what this practice has shown me: a single word, held closely, can open into a deeper understanding than we expected.

I invite you to try visualizing one of the words that represent each step: Honesty, Hope, Faith, Courage, Integrity, Willingness, Humility, Loyalty, Discipline, Perseverance, Awareness, and Service. Choose one that draws you in. Sit quietly and ask yourself: what does this word look like to me? You might be surprised by what rises to the surface.