I’ve been on vacation visiting my family two states away.  I come home feeling a little sad that I probably won’t see my family for another year and strangely at peace and ready to tackle whatever life decides to hand me, life on life’s terms.   I also feel empowered to create the life that I want.  Somehow, going back to my roots and catching up with those I love has grounded me.

It wasn’t always like that.  I used to hold a lot of resentment.  Working the 12 steps helped me to see what my part was in the disintegration of my family relationships.  It also helped me to see my family and parents as human beings with feelings and weaknesses and issues of their own as well as strengths and talents.  My little sister has always been a big part of that as well.  She is an old soul and somehow sees to the truth in all of us.  She’s the first person that really saw me and got who I really was.  I don’t think it was always that she approved of how I thought or my behaviors, but she understood where they were coming from and she approved of me.

I remember when I was drinking I had friends and family tell me that I was drinking too much, that I should grow up and that I was a spoiled brat.  All of that was true but it didn’t really bother me too much and at that point I didn’t care who said it.  I’d just lift up my glass and have another drink at them.  But one day my sister shot me a look that pierced through my heart and down to my soul.  She was standing in her kitchen and she didn’t say much but the look she gave me was half anger and half, “You’re so pathetic.”  I don’t know what she was really thinking but I know my sister well enough to guess.  Whatever it was, I got the message loud and clear even in my drunken fog.  I was clearly out of control.  It was bad enough to warrant the disapproving look from my sister.

When I first got sober, she was probably the only one who believed in me.  There was an acronym WWJD, what would Jesus do?  But I when I was struggling with a life issue or didn’t know what the next right thing to do was I’d say to myself, WWJD.  What would Jennifer do? (I changed the name to protect the innocent.)  Jesus was much too esoteric and unreachable for me in early sobriety and my sister just somehow understood life.  She got it and I didn’t.  Somehow I could figure it out if I put myself in her shoes, so that’s what I did.  Little by little I learned to think like her and after several years and a sponsor my feet were set firmly on the ground.  I go back home when my grip loosens to get re-grounded.

Although our personalities, tastes in cloths and décor and interests are totally different, we seem to share a common thread.  We have the same spiritual bent and similar philosophies of life that we have developed separately but in the same time frame.  We also developed interest in some health products separately but in the same time frame.  It seems that even though distance separates us, there is a matrix of some kind that keeps us connected even when we don’t talk for a while.

My sister tells me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear.  There is no greater friend.  I have a lot of gratitude for her and for the part she has played in my life and in my sobriety.  She’s my little sister but I look up to her.

I think one of the keys to my sobriety was to have someone that I could look up to and mimic.  I have tried to find people who were smarter, more spiritual, and richer than me to hang out with and to learn from.  I hang out with the winners and somehow that gives me success.

Just for today I will mimic someone I look up to.