Heaven and Hell

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

Working the 12 steps is not an easy feat.  Most of us have a hard time with the God steps: 2. “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity” and 3.” Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.”  As hard as they are, the process is gradual.  We do not come to believe instantly.   I’ve been working my 12 step program since the year 2000.  I still have to make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God every day.  It is not natural for me.  I want to control, so I have to make the conscious effort sometimes every hour.

Yet as hard as those steps are, that is not where people fall off the edge or quit.  Step 4.” Made a searching and fearless moral inventory” and Step 5.  “Admitted to God, ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs”, is what divides the sober from the drunk.  I see it over and over.  The minute we have to start looking at ourselves, we quit.

I thought that I was this sensitive, kind, innocent and self-sacrificing mother and wife.  And although there is some truth to that, I was also touchy, mean if I was angry and pretty self-centered.  I wanted to control the show or I wanted to play the victim.  In reality I volunteered myself for all kinds of things I didn’t really want to do and then was angry when I didn’t get recognition or respect.  It was difficult to look at the real me, but I was given the gift of an inventory.  Any good business takes an inventory at least once a year to record its assets and liabilities.  Writing out all of my resentments took me at least 9 months.  Every time I wrote a couple of sentences, I wanted to drink.  I learned really quickly that my resentments are what got me drunk.  I’d write a sentence of two and then have to leave it sit for days.  It would have been less painful for me if I had quit at that point and just drank.  After I had finished I had to share it with my sponsor.  I had resentments of people, places, institutions, situations, God, myself and my sponsor.  It was quite a long list.  I not only listed them but I had to write in detail each resentment and what happened.  I was told to be as thorough as possible.

My sponsor in detail went through each and every one with me.  I would read a resentment out loud and she would ask me, “Now what is your part?”  I’m here to tell you that I was so crazy and self-centered that at first I couldn’t tell the difference between my part and someone else’s part.  I’d take responsibility for other people’s wrongs and blame others for my wrongs.  I was embarrassed and humiliated by some of the things that I had said and done.

The interesting thing is that there had been nothing that I had done or been through that was shocking or that elicited any kind of a response except, “What was your part?” That made me at ease.  The other thing that is unforgettable about that experience is that when I finally come to terms with what my part was in the destruction of my relationships and in the destruction of my life, the resentments left and I had forgiven everyone who was on that list.  I had sat in church for 20 years listening to sermons about forgiveness and wanting to forgive, but when I returned home I was baffled about how to apply it.  When I look at my part, the forgiveness is automatic.

The process set me free.  I admitted and accepted that there are dark sides to my personality.  I quit hiding it and embraced it instead.  As a result, the dark sides have been brought to the light and I don’t have a need to act on them.  I don’t have a need to hide them either.  I am who I am and I like me today for all the good and all of the bad.  I just get to work on the character defects and I’ve asked my higher power to remove the ones that kept me drunk.  So far, he has.  The ones I get to work on keep me humble and in touch with other alcoholics.  It keeps me in the fellowship.  My character defects pull me in when otherwise my life would be so good that I may forget where I came from.

I discovered that there were patterns to my behavior and attitudes that got me into trouble or that caused a rift with a loved one.  At the end of the process I knew that I had created the hell that I lived in.  It was no one else’s fault but mine and it was all in my mind.  I began to think that if I created my own hell than I must be able to create my own heaven.  If hell began in my thoughts then heaven must too.  The truth about who I am set me free to create the life that I want.

Just for today I will discipline my thoughts and create something amazing

Ruining My Life

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been talking to women lately that have children who are alcoholics.  There is a common thought process that these alcoholic children are ruining their lives.  I felt the same way when one of my children was in the middle of her disease.  When my children suffer from alcoholism or other self-destructive tendencies it just feels like my life is falling apart.  I feel like I can’t take another heart break in my life and quite frankly it literally feels like I’m dying.  I can feel my body shut down and it feels like I am a victim of the disease and the uncontrollable circumstances around me.  My life feels out of control.  I have the mistaken idea that I have suffered enough with my alcoholism to cover for my children and that my children will somehow be exempt.  So I deceive myself into thinking that life is unfair and that my higher power has abandoned me and my child.

With these kinds of thoughts and feelings, guess what happens to my spiritual condition? If my sobriety is contingent upon my spiritual condition I then put myself in danger of drinking.

The truth is because of my own alcoholism; my life is far richer than it ever was before.  I have a set of friends that don’t tell me what I want to hear.  They tell me what I need to hear.  They know me at my worst and they know me at my best and they love me anyway.  I have learned how to love unconditionally and have learned how to forgive.  They taught me how to view life in such a way as to bring peace.  They taught me how to have a conscious contact with a higher power.  They taught me how to do the next right thing.  They taught me why I should never take anything personally.  They taught me how to suit up and show up for meetings, work, school and life no matter how much pain I was in because it’s in the daily habits that our lives are made.  They taught me to take life one day at a time.  They taught me to have the courage to make necessary changes in my life and taught me when to let go.  They taught me not to quit before the miracle happened.

I tried to teach my children these things as I’m sure my parents tried to teach me.  But unfortunately we learn them through experience.  My alcoholism made me teachable and gave depth to my life that I could not have gotten any other way.  Why then am I trying to protect my children from this? I have to be careful of being so protective that I rob my children of the journey and experience of finding out who they really are and what they are made of.  It’s in that dark night of the soul that we find our way.  It’s in the dark night of the soul and the dignity of their own choices that our children will find their way.

I haven’t done anything to ruin my life.  I am on a journey of discovery and I am learning that my suffering is unnecessary and my worry is worthless.  My journey is teaching me to explore and have fun.  It has made me grateful for small things.  It has helped me to see the amusement in things that used to irritate me.  I want my children to experience those things and the self-confidence that is born of working through a seemingly impossible situation, because there is no such thing as impossible situations.  If we see our children struggling, it’s not the end of the world.  It the beginning.

I’m now watching my children’s children struggle with their issues.  I have a couple of grandchildren with self-destructive behaviors even at a very young age.  I am still prone to worry.  I’m here to tell you that the worry at times makes me insane until I realize that they are beginning their journey and I can’t prevent them from that nor should I want to.  I just hope that I have done enough inner work that I will be the wise old lady that they go to when they are ready.

So just for today, I’ll take some time to work on myself.  Maybe I’ll write.

 

Tomorrow’s Business

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

I had lunch with my soon to be daughter in law over the weekend.  Her and my son has been talking about what they want their wedding ceremony to be like.  Much to my surprise, my son told her that he would like me to get ordained over the internet and to perform the wedding ceremony.  He calls me the family’s spiritual leader.  Although I was extremely flattered and would probably perform the ceremony if they really wanted me to, I also have a lot of fear rushing through my veins.

I’m not afraid to speak and perform the actual ceremony but more afraid of the implications of being ordained.   I’m not very spiritual.  I’m still self-centered and self-seeking.  I am prone to tantrums when things don’t go my way.  I still curse and have been known to sneak a cigarette or two.  I am extremely materialistic.  I can be judgmental of others and most of the time I’d rather help myself than others.   My life has been fraught with some really poor choices.  Most of all, I’m an alcoholic.  My sobriety is only contingent upon my spiritual condition today.  I’m afraid I will fall.  My head is filled with the committees telling me I’m not good enough.   My mind races and has prepared all of the arguments for and against this idea.  I’ve already prepared the sermon and the polite decline.

I ponder what I would tell a sponsee if faced with a similar dilemma.  The first thing I would probably say is, “La tee da.  Welcome to the human condition.”  Everyone faces these very human emotions and reactions to life.  I realized that with every responsibility I was given I was not necessarily ready, but that I grew into it.  I wasn’t a mother when my son was born.  I wasn’t a grandmother when my first grandchild was born.  I wasn’t a chemist when I started school.   I wasn’t a manager when I was given the title.  I wasn’t a wife when I got married.  I wasn’t a sponsor when I was first asked to help another alcoholic.  I wasn’t even an alcoholic when I got sober.  I was just a drunk.  With every responsibility I’ve ever had, I learned as I went.  It was on the job training.  Each responsibility, in some way, made me a better, stronger and a more compassionate, less self-centered person.  If I had said no to any one of those responsibilities my life would have been dramatically altered and I would not have grown into me.

Maybe God is calling me to go deeper into my spirituality and to become stronger.  Maybe my higher power just wants me to perform a simple ceremony.  Then again, I am alcoholic.  I haven’t even been officially asked by my son yet.  I would probably tell my sponsee to worry about today and stay out of tomorrow’s business.

Just for today I think I will.

 

Things We Trip On

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

The day I walked into my first 12 step meeting, I had barely finished detoxing.  I was still in treatment, still shaky and terrified, full of a million forms of fear.  I knew my life was ending as I knew it.  My marriage had ended a long time before I started drinking.  I thought if I had a few drinks and relaxed maybe things would improve.  It worked until it didn’t.  I knew divorce was imminent.  I had no education and no skills.  I knew I’d have to provide for myself after 20 years of being a stay at home mom. 

We are told, “There are those that suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”

“I knew I couldn’t stay sober,” was probably the first honest thing I said to myself in a long time.

Over the years when I look back on that time, I still feel this pain inside my chest.  I still feel the fear.  I still feel the heartbreak and I still feel the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization of my disease.  I still feel the physical weakness and the nausea after detoxing for 3 days. I still feel the tremors.  I feel that feeling of being utterly alone in an abyss of darkness where there is not one single person that believes in you or even cares, not even yourself.  I don’t think it’s hard to figure out why someone would commit suicide.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was walking into the light.  There in the middle of the city in a mental hospital, I found a room of hope. I found a group of people who loved me sober and they would love me drunk.  My higher power is a funny thing.  As my life was ending, he met me at the door with the beginning of a new life.

My current husband was the chairman of that very meeting.  It was 11 months before we dated and 6 years before we married from that time.  I’m married to a man that knows who I am at my sickest and knows who I am at my healthiest and loves me anyway.  Maybe even because of it.

I don’t suggest looking for a soul mate at a 12 step meeting.  We are not sane people.  I’m just saying that when our old life ends, our higher power has already made arrangements for the new.  We probably trip over it.  Sometimes it just takes standing still and doing the next right thing one day at a time.  I decided that it wasn’t important that I was happy.  It was important that I did what was suggested for me to do.  When I had thoughts of suicide, I said to myself that I would stay here just for today.  I went to meetings, found a sponsor, and worked 12 steps.

What I’ve found is that it’s the things I do a little every day that make up my life.  If I work on my sobriety a little every day I’ll stay sober.  If I work on my education a little every day, I end up with a degree.  If I work on not having to control my loved ones a little every day, I end up with good relationships.  If I work on thinking good thoughts a little every day, I end up happy.

The opposite it true also.  The small amount of negativity I subject myself to every day, can corrode my career, my relationships and my sobriety. It’s a choice.

Just for today I think I’ll focus on one good thought.

Codependency

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

I was asked by a friend to say something about codependency.  I’m not an expert but I can surely talk about my experience, hope and strength.  I think there is confusion on what codependency is but I personally define it as a cycle of enabling behaviors that does not allow the person I am enabling to take responsibility for their own feelings, behavior and life.  As a mother of small children I would run in to pick them up when they fell down.  Sometimes this was helpful and gave my child a sense of security and love.  At other times, I’d run in too soon and they wouldn’t start crying until I picked them up.  This taught them to feel sorry for themselves.  It’s easy when their small.  You catch on pretty quickly.  It becomes more difficult when they’re grown and many times others can see our enabling behavior before we can.

It becomes even more difficult when our enabling behavior is complicated with guilt over what we should and shouldn’t have done.  We want to rush in a rescue because we think it’s our fault our child is alcoholic or an addict or struggles with depression or whatever the case may be.

First of all, I have to say after raising five children that I don’t think it makes much difference what you did and didn’t do.  I have tried over the years to pound in certain lessons to my children which made no difference.  They’d still continue with the same behavior into adulthood.  There were other things that my children just intuitively knew without any direction.  My children have been some of my best teachers.  I’ve seen alcoholics come from good families and I’ve seen good kids come from addict parents.  I’m here to tell you, sorry, you didn’t have that kind of power.  You didn’t make your children fall or fail or drink or drug.  They are who they are.  They are each born unto their own.  What you say or teach or pound into them probably made little difference.  And I’m pretty sure all they really care about and all they remember is the love you show them and sometimes it’s the tough love that’s best.

With that being said, I struggle with this issue every day of my life.  I have a daughter who is an addict.  I don’t think I ever got a good night’s sleep when she was out there.  I gained 50 pounds and constantly worried.  I had a period of time when I couldn’t contact her because I would immediately lay into her about her lifestyle or nag her to eat.  There were a couple of years that I didn’t even know where she was living because she was on the run.  The day came when she decided to get treatment.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  It was carefully orchestrated and planned.  There was only a window of opportunity.  If I nudged too hard, she would rebel.  If I enabled, she would miss taking the responsibility.  There was a period of about two months that was pretty shaky.  She was in a women’s facility with about 12 other women and their children.  She wanted to come home, but the option was the facility or homelessness.  I did not have the skills or the resources, financial, emotional or spiritual to help her.  I knew she needed professionals and I somehow knew that with all the sobriety that my husband and I have that it wouldn’t be enough.  I had to decide early on that I couldn’t work her program.  I can’t tell her to go to meetings, or get a sponsor.  I was desperate for her to get better so I stayed out of it.

Sometimes self-preservation kicks in and I do the right thing.  Other times I struggle and try to tell my adult children what to do and what kind of help they need.  I want to control it and I want them to get help and get better in my timing.  I can’t take any chances.  I cling with desperation and give them whatever they want and tell them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

I wish I could tell you that I am absolutely sane and have it figured out.  I’m not.  Eventually another alcoholic or my husband who has 26 year in the program points out to me that I’m giving too much.  I might see it or I might not.  I don’t have that figured out either.

I usually let go right before I’m ready to destroy my relationship with my child.  I think what I’m learning is that if it affects my sobriety in any way, my sanity or my relationships with my other children or my husband, I’ve gone too far.

It is natural as mother’s to want to protect our children.  It’s counterintuitive to push them out of the nest, but sometimes for their own sake and for ours we have to.  When I keep in mind that my job as a mother is to teach them to be responsible citizens that can take care of themselves and are independent from me, I do much better.  Sometimes the only way to learn is to make mistakes and I need to allow them to do that.  I need to give them the dignity of their choices.  We are told that “no human power could relieve our alcoholism.”  How can I then possibly cure my children of that or any other mental ailment?  They have to want to get better.  It’s time to turn it over to a power greater than myself.

My sponsor used to tell me that I needed to stay strong so that when my daughter was ready for help, I’d be able to help her.  That spoke to me and I took her suggestion.  Talking to another alcoholic saved me and it saved her.  She now has 3 years in the program and is coming upon 4.

I think I’ll make a phone call, just for today.

 

Solutions

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

When I first became a member of my 12 step program, I was looking for the differences.  I was comparing myself to others. It was difficult to see that I was alcoholic because I didn’t have a DUI. I had not been in jail.  I hadn’t stolen anything to support my addiction.  What I failed to do was to look at the similarities until an elderly gentleman in overhauls told my story.  I was a housewife with 5 kids, but this elderly man with nothing apparently in common with me told me who I was by his own testimony with alcohol.  I still find that amazing.  I’m awestruck by the common bond that those of us share who otherwise “would not mix.”  It was then that I started seeing the likeness, the similarities.  It was then that I accepted my disease and that I was like every other alcoholic and it was only a matter of time before my “have yet’s” would catch up to me.

I find a similar phenomenon with religion.  As alcoholics we are so bitter against God or anything resembling God that we are looking for the differences between us and those who believe. We are looking for why we shouldn’t believe.  If we are truly agnostic or atheist as we say we are, then why are we so angry with God and religion?  Why is it so hard to open our minds up to the possibility of not even a God, but a higher power?  I think we feel we’ve been burnt by religion and want nothing to do with it.  We’re afraid of being hurt and disappointed.  We’re afraid of another dead end road.  We’re afraid that nothing is on the other end of the line that we pray.

When I worked through my resentments with religion while working on step 4 of my 12 step program, I realized that I had played a part in my bad relationship with God.  Just like all of my bad relationships, I had some part to play in its disintegration.  Somewhere along the line, I blindly believed in someone else’s definition of God.  I didn’t take the time to think it through and discover for myself who God was to me.  I had expectations of what God was supposed to do for me based on expectations that someone else had fed me.  I had set myself up for failure.

When I finally began to define my higher power for myself, the resentments melted away.  Instead of looking for differences between myself and those “God believers”, I began to work with what was similar.  I began to look for the universal truths behind all religions.  I was told not to throw the baby out with the bath water.  Religion has given millions of peoples through thousands of generations hope, comfort, peace and direction.

What I found was a greater faith and the peace that comes with the unity of knowing I’m connected in some way to every human being on earth.  We all share something in common, including those periods when I doubt.  Doubt is part of the process.  I have something spiritually in common with people on the other side of the earth even though our lives and lifestyles normally “would not mix.”  I love and laugh and hurt and so does every human being on earth. I started there.  I think my higher power, or God, loves and laughs and hurts.

I noticed that all little boys think farting and burping is funny.  I think God does too.  I think God hurts when we hurt but, I think it hurts him more when we don’t use the power that he gave us to help ourselves and to help others.

I learned by taking calculus that there is more than one solution to a problem and that there is a solution.  Believe it or not, I learned about my higher power through mathematics.  It’s there if you look for it.  I learned how to find solutions in theoretical multidimensional worlds.  We ask why all the pain and suffering in the world.  I think God has provided solutions but we don’t use them.

With that being said, I’m not a religious person.  I do not attend church.  However, I do believe in the power of organized religion that helps millions of people all over the world with not only spiritual matters but also matters of survival. I also came to believe in the power of a loving God.

I think, just for today, I’ll look for and ponder the solutions that God has already given me.

 

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.

 

Good and Bad

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

I was thinking this morning about when I first started drinking.  I have five children. Four of them were asthmatic.  If I let them outside to play, they would come indoors wheezing.  My three year old grew whiskers as a result of the steroids he was on.  His face was pumpkin shaped.  I took at least one child to the doctor every week. My doctor and I saw each other so much that we were on a first name basis. The three year old had to have his blood tested every week.  I felt so bad for him that we went out for ice cream each time he had to see the doctor.  I was hoping he’d look forward to that.

I had three of them using a nebulizer to take their asthma medicine.  They had to take turns and the three year old would scream, “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!,” for the entire 15 minutes that he was using it.  I kept records like a nurse because they were all on 4 different medicines.  Yet they still wouldn’t get better.  If one of them contracted a cold, they’d all be on steroids which weaken the immune system and then it would start all over.  I was peddling as fast as I could, but it seemed my efforts to make my children healthy had sorely failed.  I was cooking health foods and reading all that I could to find any clues at all about why my children were so sick all of the time.  I had read every book about asthma that a lay person could read and it was all for nothing.

In the meantime, I was trying to home school my children, two of them were in diapers, two of them were teenagers and their father was never home.  He was working 90 hours a week which is how he coped, always fearing the ability to provide for such a large sick family.  I had my own problems with asthma and allergies and was extremely fatigued.

My doctor sent two of them to a specialist to see if they had Pulmonary Obstructive Disease.  After he examined them I asked if they had Pulmonary Obstructive Disease.

The doctor replied, “Oh God no!  You just need to make sure you give them their medicine as directed.”

I’m thinking, “Oh my God!  What more can I do?  He doesn’t think I’m giving them their medicine correctly?”

I was a faithful church goer for at least 16 years.  In that moment I had quit believing in God as a personal savior.  He certainly hadn’t saved me or my children and now the doctor is accusing me of not caring for my children properly.

I poured myself a glass of wine and lifted my glass into the air, “Here’s to you, God!!!”  Certainly, no lightening had struck.  What I did notice was that it was easier to get the dishes washed in the sink, I wasn’t bitching at my husband when he came home and I didn’t care anymore what the doctor had thought.  In that moment, I found the answer to all of my problems.  It was liquid courage.  It was “like the sun coming up in my belly.”  It worked for me until it didn’t anymore.

I am quite used to judging that something is good or bad.  My twelve step program helped me to just observe.  I have to admit after 11 years of sobriety and 14 years in a 12 step program I still judge everything in my life as good and bad.

But let me tell you what my family is like 19 years later.  The youngest child has no asthma.  The three year old that was on so many steroids that he grew whiskers, is an incredible trumpet player.  Because of his asthma, his air capacity is unbelievable.  I read all of the laymen’s books on asthma that I possibly could, so I went back to school for a degree in chemistry with an emphasis in biology.  I obtained the degree.  I work in a preventative health industry.  My health is amazing.  I’m now divorced and married to an amazing man that is home for dinner every night.  The other children that had asthma, struggle some with their asthma but steroids are rare.

By the way, the three year old is almost 21.  He remembers the ice cream and a chance to be alone with his mother but doesn’t remember his blood being taken every week.

You might say that is good.  You might even say that if it weren’t for those years of suffering I couldn’t have reaped the good that came out of it.

Just for today I’ve decided not to judge.

Do Not Take Anything Personally

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I take my sobriety for granted.  We survive a lot to get sober and to stay sober.  It was usually a catastrophic event that we drank over anyway.  When we get sober we have to learn to mourn and grieve without alcohol.  We’ve survived DTs and the 12 steps. I sometimes feel like my Grandmother when she’d talked about the Great Depression.  She was tough as nails and I feel like I’m tough as nails.

My sponsor used to hammer an important concept: “Do not ever take anything personally.”

“I’m sorry, “I said, “It’s all personal!  How could it not be?”

I finally got it.  I finally realized that the words or deeds that others do to offend me are not about me.  They come from the inner dealings of their own issues.  Their problem with me, is not about me, therefore I do not need to take it personally or be offended.  What that concept gave me was an inner freedom.  I was finally free to be who I was.  I didn’t have to apologize for it, or excuse it or hide it.  I’m strong because I’m free.  The fear of people left me.  Resentments left me.

Then something or someone comes along to remind us of our fragility.  I thought I quit caring about what others think of me.  I thought I could handle anyone’s barbed words and let it roll off of my back.  Alcoholics are by nature hypersensitive.  I thought I let go of the hypersensitivity when I let go of my resentments.  And I did.

What I come to realize is that we have only a daily reprieve.  If I am not vigilant and if I am not actively taking care of my sobriety, my hypersensitivity is activated.  Sometimes it’s activated in the most inconvenient of places.  My sobriety is contingent on my spiritual condition.  If I don’t take care of my spiritual condition, I become hypersensitive and in turn am endangered to drink.

Taking care of my spiritual condition may be different for you than it is for me.  I think for me it means I take the time at least once a day to be quiet and to quiet my mind.  In addition to being an alcoholic, I’m also an introvert.  I need a sufficient amount of quiet to go back out into the world and let possibly offending words and deeds roll off of my back.  I know myself and know my limitations.

So, I will tend to my spiritual condition, just for today.

 

Peace on Earth

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

The camping trip this weekend was a good chance to talk to my sons, especially while traveling.  They are very much like me when I was in my 20’s.  The world seems like a daunting place to be and when you are 20 and realize what a violent state the world is in and what a sad history our own country has, it seems discouraging.  They are young and energetic but wonder about how wise it is to bring children into the world; they wonder how they can choose careers that make a difference.  They feel like there is nothing they can really do anyway.  And like me, they tend to overthink the issues.

I struggled to find anything to say that could truly bring light into the subject or comfort.  I mumbled something about change starting at home and in our own lives and allowing that to ripple into our communities.  I don’t believe they really understood what I meant or how that would even work.  I thought about it all weekend.

I’m a recovering alcoholic.  My 12 step program suggests that I drink because I’m irritable and discontent.  In other words I drink because of a lack of peace.  When I drink, like most drunks, I’m prone to less than charitable behavior.  I’m self will run riot.  When 80 percent of the population in prisons are addicts and alcoholics, you might get the idea that it’s the lack of individual peace that causes all of the crimes.

It makes sense to me that if every person in the world were at peace, there would be peace on earth.  Violence would disappear.  So, peace starts with me.  When I’m agitated about my job, or my kids, or the economy, or traffic, or lack of peace in my country or in the world, I’m not at peace.  My family soon follows suit and we gripe together.  Pretty soon, they are griping with their friends and I’m griping with my friends.  Doesn’t it make sense that the mood would eventually reach the other side of the globe?

I’m not saying we should never do anything, and I’m not saying I live in perfect peace.  I’m just saying maybe it would be a start.  Maybe it’s time I let go of guilt, resentment and fear.  Those are the ones that cause me all of the trouble.  I don’t drink over them anymore, but they still sit there in the recesses of my mind quietly causing they’re destruction and robbing me of my serenity and possibly robbing my family and coworkers of their serenity.

Just for today I will practice developing a peaceful heart by letting go of guilt, resentment and fear.  Who knows who it might reach?