Gratitude

Thanksgiving

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

I know the holidays are rough for most of us.  But for me it’s the one time a year that I’ve been able to put aside my depression and anxiety and focus on hope. My husband tells me that Christmas lives at my house.  I have a small ranch but I decorate several trees.  There is Christmas in every corner.  That’s not to say that I didn’t have some rough years.

I remember the year I was so mad at my husband, now my ex, that I actually threw the Thanksgiving turkey as it was coming out of the oven.  I’m not proud of that.  There should never be any reason for such a violent reaction.  Alcohol brings to us a myriad of regrets and behaviors that we never thought we were capable of.

The year after that I was six weeks sober and found myself sitting in an aftercare meeting Thanksgiving night.  I remember thinking, “I’ve only got to be among the lowest people on the face of the earth.  How did, I, get here?”

Those were probably my most despondent holidays.  That was 14 years ago.  It’s amazing what a decade brings.  My home is a safe place today.  It’s safe from me.  The holidays are joyous occasions that I get to spend with my five children and their spouses and kids.  I get to bring good memories and set my own traditions.  My grandkids know that I will get them books and they look forward to that.  I paint special ornaments on wood for my kids that they can pass on to their kids after I’m gone.  My Christmases will live on generations after I’m gone.

This year I look forward to spending Thanksgiving with my ex-husband and his wife.  They are family.  We will laugh and share our troubles and dreams and things that we’ve learned.  We will share our gratitude.

Maybe the holidays are horrible for you.  I pray you will wrap yourself in the fellowship of a group of alcoholics and make them your family.  I know a man that has a Christmas breakfast for his alcoholic friends.  He stays in service and takes care of his adopted family of ex-drunks.  He gives the gift of hope.

There are good years and bad years.  But I know one thing for sure, “I’ve have touched the bottom and it is sound.” –John Bunyan

Just for today I will look for those things that I can be Thankful for and remember that there will never be a holiday that a drink won’t make worse.  Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Cease Fighting

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

My 12 step program has given me the ability to look for the positive in people, to learn how to forgive and think of the world as a generally safe place.  As an alcoholic I’m generally full of fear, focus on the worst in people and hold resentments forever.

When I’m with my children or my family, positive thinking is fairly easy.  I love them, so I can easily find their good qualities and overlook their character defects.  It’s easier to overlook slights because I see their human condition.

At work it becomes more difficult.  I seem to be focused on getting the job done and running the business.  People tend to get in my way, not do what they tell me they’re going to do and just plain act stupid or lazy.  I spend the majority of my days irritated at some person, place or thing that slows down the idea of progress that I have designed for myself.  I forget about the people, people who have feelings, people who love and people who have pain.  I forget that they have an inner life and inner talk just like I have.  I forget that most of them probably have amazing stories of overcoming some kind of hardship or ailment.  I forget that in the grand scheme of things 100 years from now no one will remember the business that I did or the money that I made for the company.  What will be remembered is the compassion and love I showed another human being in the daily chore of doing business.  That love will be passed along to their family and friends and will one day cross the divide of generations.  There is no other work that is more meaningful than the way I treat people while I’m at work.

Since I’ve worked my 12 steps I supposedly have ceased fighting anyone or anything, but yet I still fight at work.  I fight for my place.  I fight to be recognized and I fight to be right.  I fight to keep business and I fight to do business.  My days are wasted on fighting.

What I’ve failed to do is turn it over to my higher power.  My only job is the footwork.  The results aren’t up to me.  Maybe it will fall apart, but if it does it serves a higher purpose and I must be ok with that.  My sanity and ultimately my sobriety are at risk.  We do not have the luxury of resentments like normal men.  We do not have the luxury to live a mediocre life of some good and some bad and let the chips fall where they may.  We are sensitive people.  Eventually the irritants and the resentments drive us back to the bottle.  We must live our lives aware and thinking of others.  When I don’t do that my self-will runs riot and my self-centeredness actually stands in the way of my own progress.

This week I’ve decided to focus on what is good about people.  I’m trying to find the good and verbally recognize it.  I’m working on gratitude for what they do right rather than focus on what is wrong.  The amazing part is I’m happier, my week is easier and I sleep better.  In a world where most of our business is done over the internet, we dehumanize people.  We forget there is a face connected with the name under the letterhead of our emails.

Just for today I will practice patience not knowing if something I do or say will be helpful or hurtful.

Higher Power

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

When I first was admitted to treatment, I was told to find a higher power.

“You have got to be kidding!  That is the very thing I gave up on!”

The difference this time was that I wasn’t told to find God.  I was told to find a higher power of my own understanding.  I didn’t even know what that meant.  You can just pick and choose? I didn’t know you could do that. I just knew that the religious God, the one that decided if you go to heaven or hell, the one who constantly stood judgment against me, the one who asked me to pray and didn’t answer anyway and the one who caused my suffering (or allowed it), didn’t work for me.  My assignment was to write down all the things that I didn’t want in a higher power, which was the easy part.  Then I was instructed to write down what I could understand a higher power to be.

I was told to throw away anything that I ever believed about God.  We were going to start over.  I think my family and especially my teenage children had a difficult time with this.  It appeared that I had turned my back on everything that I taught them and everything that I believed in.  Maybe I did for a time.  But for me, it was like building muscle.  In order to get stronger you have to break it down first.  The beginning of finding a higher power of my own understanding had to be rudimentary.  God is love and understanding.

Over the years my understanding has developed and deepened.  Today I maintain that if I can define God, then God is too small to keep me sober.  For me a higher power is all encompassing.

One of the first things I was taught in treatment was that I am not a victim.  Very few of us are.  Children are victims.  As adults we are usually not victims, we are volunteers.  Today I have problems with any religion that tells me that I need a savior. I quit thinking of myself as a victim a long time ago. I think that my higher power has given me all I need to save myself.  He’s already done it all and given it all.  I think that pain is a part of life, but suffering is optional.  I get to decide.  Once I think of myself as a victim, a drink is close by.  I think of my higher power as energy that I can tap into at any time.  I can also shut it off.  I can’t define it.  I can’t see it.  I know it’s there because when I consciously choose to tap into it, my path is enlightened, I feel inspired and I’m at peace.  When I choose not to tap into it I develop resentment, I become whiney and I begin to think of myself as a victim of society, my job, my family.  I always get to choose.

It took me years to learn to tap into it.  It began by choosing to notice the things that I was grateful for.  I’m an ingrate by nature.  When my heart is grateful for what I have, I no longer have to worry about what I don’t have.  When my heart is grateful for what I have, it’s easier for me to let go of those things that I don’t really want in my life, jobs, relationships or junk around the house.  Gratitude makes the path clearer and makes forgiveness easier.  I’ve never seen anyone unhappy that is truly grateful for what they have.

It is easier said than done.  I began by writing a gratitude list every day.  I wrote down my small one bedroom apartment that I lived in with my three children.  I didn’t feel grateful for it, but I wrote it down.  I wrote down my old minivan that I was paying high payments on with a 9.9% interest rate.  I wrote down each one of my children individually and that they were experiencing good health.  I wrote down that I was going to college and that I had a part time job. I wrote down that I was grateful for my ex-husband and the part that he’s played in my life. In the beginning I really thought that I deserved better and that I should have more.  After writing the same list every day for about 6 weeks, I began noticing a shift.  I actually felt grateful.

It’s a funny thing about gratitude, in the laws of chemistry as well as the laws of life, like attracts like.  Shortly afterward, I was able to move into a bigger apartment.  My relationship with my oldest son improved.  My ex-husband and I became friends and began working together instead of against each other. My part time job started paying more money. My life continued to improve from there.

Now whenever I find myself wanting something, I begin to achieve it by first counting my blessings.  Make no mistake. Gratitude is the conduit that ties me into the energy of my higher power who I choose to call God.

So just for today, I think I’ll count my blessings.

 

Peace and Gratitude

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

This weekend I have a camping trip planned.  When I pull out of the driveway in my little 16 foot trailer, it feels like the whole world melts away.  Underneath the stars in front of the fire, I try to think about all of the things I was worried about during the week and I can’t remember why I thought it was such a big deal or why it took up such space in my head.  I feel like my brain empties of all of the garbage and I can just be.  And I don’t have to be anything to anyone else.  I get to be who I am.  I’m at peace.

When I first got sober, I’d hear the word peace thrown around and I didn’t even really know what that meant.  I don’t think I had ever experienced it.  I was always worried about something.  People told me not to quit before the miracle happened and I really had no idea what they were talking about.  “Wasn’t the miracle that I was sober?” I was a wreck for almost three years and was only hanging on by my fingernails.

Then one day something changed for me.  I was at perfect peace for what felt like the first time in my life.  By staying in recovery and doing the things that others suggested I had somehow cultivated an environment of peace.  I didn’t experience it every day at first and don’t always experience it every day now, but I began to experience it more often and the intervals of peace began to get closer and closer together.

Today I can’t tolerate a prolonged period of irritability or discontentment in myself.  I know how to put myself in a peaceful state again.  It boils down to the basics of my 12 step program, talking to another alcoholic and doing what is suggested, going to a meeting, reading, writing, meditation and prayer.  It’s simple but really not easy.  I like to complicate it and try to find a way around doing what’s easy.  I’m always trying to think it away.

Another way that I’ve learned to cultivate peace is to nurture myself.  I always thought someone else should do that.  I was always angry if you didn’t sooth my feelings which were impossible to sooth away in the first place.  I’m an extremely emotional and an extremely passionate person.  I have strong feelings.  Today I recognize that this quality in myself is good and is useful in many areas of my life, but I am responsible to take care of my own feelings.  I nurture myself.

I take care of people all day.  I have employees and a husband, children and grandchildren.  Sometimes I have to stop and ask myself what will make me happy today.  I nurture myself.  It might be something as small as lighting a candle, or eating healthy.  It might be as large as a trip.  In the end, I’m responsible for what I feel.  What I’ve noticed is that feelings are always preceded by a thought.  I work on disciplining my thoughts by staying in gratitude.  Where there is gratitude, there is always peace.

Just for today I’m going to write in my gratitude journal.