Something's Happening...

Something's happening and it's "magical"...

First, I asked God for a good parking spot last week at the busiest shopping mall in town because I had a quick errand, not much time, and had had a particularly difficult day (having nothing to do with the holiday season). I got a front row spot immediately. So when I left, I prayed that the person getting my spot would be someone else who was having an extra hard day. I assume God answered my prayer.

Second, I went to the grocery store today and from the looks of the parking lot, it was very crowded due to holiday dinner shopping and a snowstorm coming. I didn't pray for a spot, but turned on my blinker when someone was leaving. Just as I went to pull in, another car pulled through from the other side. HOWEVER, when the driver saw me, he backed up and gave me the spot!

I pulled in and waved at him, mouthing the words "Thank You!!" He was not, by the way, the elderly gentleman one would expect to do such a kind deed, but a young man driving a yellow "hot rod" and at any other location might have appeared to be a member of a gang. I said a prayer for him, that he would be blessed in some way this holiday season.

Third, just today I wished for a cup of Christmas tea with a dear friend and then she asked me to drop by. Her table was lit with a balsam candle and set with beautiful red and white dishes along with her homemade Christmas cookies and teas for me to choose from. I felt loved by her and by God. This had nothing to do with parking spots, but with suddenly asking for things and being aware of God giving them to me.

If God is that thoughtful and giving in small things, a friend said to me, then He/She is no doubt wanting to bless me in the big things. I just need to ask, believe, and be open to how my prayers are answered. May all your prayers be answered for your highest good this holiday season and may your 2010 be the best year yet in your 12-step recovery!

Sad and Serene

My sponsor tells me I'm grieving my relationship with my parents, that it will never be what I wanted as a child, a young adult, and now a middle-aged woman. I realized at a meeting yesterday that being sad, which is a feeling one gets from grief, is okay. That I can still be serene. In other words, serenity doesn't mean happiness - jumping up and down with joy. It means contentment and acceptance. This really helped me to realize that it's okay to feel sad. It's part of my process in recovery. Plus, just realizing this lifted my spirits since I stopped beating myself up over being sad. It is what it is, and today is a better day.

NOT the Monday Blues

I discovered more about myself yesterday, that by putting up walls with my parents to protect myself, I had also prevented any kind of love or affection to get through. As I replaced those walls with boundaries during the time they were here, I let some "good" through and was still able to keep out the "bad".

As in most things "Al-Anon", it had to do with my attitude and my choices. I have to say this worked really well for me, but only after once again suffering through the extreme emotions I didn't let myself feel as a child. Maybe, maybe, I've finally learned. Just for today, I can accept my imperfections in my progress on this road of recovery.

GOD, GRANT ME THE SERENITY AND FAST!!!

I usually sleep until 7 a.m. but I heard a thump this morning at 5:30 and it was my mother falling down the stairs. Well, she just missed the last step. She's okay with her feelings bruised more than anything. But you'd have thought the world had come to an end. So I'm TIRED and now ANGRY after trying to have a quiet time and listening to about the 100th complaint in the last two days about my coffee being too strong and bitter. So I went into the kitchen and got out a different brand of coffee and handed it to my mother and said "Here, you can use this to make your own coffee in the pot I put in your room." Then I left the kitchen.

I wanted to go on and say that at least I make a pot of coffee for my guests (not to mention that I put coffee and a small pot in your room so you could make your own) when you don't make coffee for us. My parents each have their own single-cup pot and we aren't allowed to touch my mom's because she has it set up for her first cup. But there's been no thank you for anything, only complaints, or at least that's what I've heard. It's all I heard yesterday when we went to Whole Foods for coffee, how bad the coffee was because it was too strong. I used up my water bottle watering down their coffee.

I could go on and on but I won't bore you. Let's just say that I have a long way to go in my recovery process, and THANK GOD I HAVE AN AL-ANON MEETING IN A HALF HOUR!!! My goal in this life is that "unconditional serenity" I've only recently heard about, that I can be serene regardless of what is going on around me, including when my sleep has been interrupted and I am tested beyond my human patience. So GOD, GRANT ME THE SERENITY AND FAST!!! Thanks for listening.

Practicing These Principles...

Step 12 says to "practice these principles in all our affairs." The word "all" would mean holiday visits with family members, even those we don't like. I tried to put my finger on what exactly I didn't like about my mother last night as I watched her behavior at my Thanksgiving table. It wasn't her politics, although I disagree with those. My husband and father were having a lively conversation although they disagreed with one another. It wasn't her religion as I've become tolerant of that, expecting others to be tolerant of my beliefs. It wasn't her many physical ailments, even though she's had them for two decades, at least, and is now almost 80 years old so "deserves" a few aches and pains.

Instead, it was her unnamable disease, some kind of mental illness or personality disorder. Like the kind of arthritis she has that doctors haven't been able to name (strangely enough), her particular behavioral problem is hard to diagnose, especially for a layperson like myself. There might be a name for it should my mother think something was askew and seek help. Even my father, though a doctor, doesn't seem to think she's different and bends over backwards to take care of her. I've always thought this was why she continued in this behavior, because it works for her to get what she wants/needs.

She's not an alcoholic (although she might be addicted to pain pills) but tends to be self-centered like a practicing alcoholic. It's always about her. No matter what the topic of conversation, she always makes sure it comes back to her. The best example of this was at my sister's 50th birthday party where she announced that no one had bothered to throw her a 5oth birthday party. My father, out of character, told her that she had insisted she was 39 and holding, so why would they celebrate her getting older? Last night when everyone was talking about anything other than her, she just stared at her food not eating anything. I asked her if she was okay and she said she's lost her appetite lately. "Hmmm," I said, "you did that once before" (referring to years before when she became annorexic "dying for attention" and didn't get "well" until my father succumbed to cooking for her).

Well, my making that remark didn't work for her as it wasn't the kind of attention she wanted, so she started to pick at her food and took forever, but she ate most of her meal. Apparently, her not being hungry hadn't worked for her because no one fell for it, no one made a big stink about it. Today she's tried a lot of different things for attention, the latest being carsick after a two-mile ride from the grocery store. "You know me," she says after every little incident. I've said a few times, "No, I don't" because frankly they're new and I just don't want to play her game. I have grandchildren to dote on these days.

So the question for me last night and then again this morning in my prayers and meditations was to figure out how I could keep my serenity while having my mother in my home for three more days? I recently was able to forgive my blood father whom I don't have an ongoing relationship with, but that was forgiving someone with whom I have no relationship. In fact, I gave myself permission to make amends to myself by not being in touch with him. How do I forgive someone who is still sick but with whom I have chosen to have a relationship, albeit through few and fairly short visits?

The answer is still the same: I can forgive without getting drawn into their illness. With my father, it's not having any contact. With my mother, it's not falling for her tricks. Been there, done that. It doesn't work for me, and I am the one I need to take care of first and foremost. Mainly because I wasn't nurtured by either of my parents. My best parent is my step-father who adopted me, and he did all of us kids a disservice by catering to my mom's every wish. It really is sad, but it is still his choice. My choice is to care for those who really need it after I've taken care of myself.

This is how, just for today, I'm practicing these principles in all my affairs :-)

Step 9 Spiritual Awakenings, Numbers 1 and 2

Number 1: After a long spiritual drought over the summer, or so it felt, I learned something new while working Step 9 in September – that my amends to my blood father need only be that I forgive him, period. This does not require that I call him or write him, for direct contact with him usually ends with my being harmed.

This goes well with making amends to myself, that I forgive and love myself first and foremost. Forgiveness, I learned early on in the program, does not mean saying that a behavior was okay, for that is often not the case. Forgiveness instead is letting go of a resentment. We do this for our own serenity which my sponsor tells me is my ultimate goal.

Until this spiritual awakening, that all I need do is forgive (in this particular case), I was having a great deal of trouble understanding how I could feel serene while trying to have a relationship with someone who abandoned me as a child and has continued to repeat that behavior for the last 50 years. Why would I expose myself to someone's abuse if I love myself?

The answer is I wouldn't, and shouldn't.

Number 2: I also learned what loving myself really means - my second spiritual awakening this fall. I'm someone who has fought depression ever since my father first left me. I wrote poetry about death and thought about suicide long before my teen years. That or anger was where I went whenever I experienced the emotional pain of rejection, real or imagined.

I was going there again this fall so used the tools I have learned to keep myself afloat (besides taking medication). First was to have an “attitude of gratitude,” so I made a gratitude list. Okay, that helped me to stop the self-pity, to count my blessings. Second was to get some exercise and sunshine. That helped short-term, but the effects did not last long enough. So third, I thought about others and that I needed to stay alive for them. Anyone who has had a family member or friend commit suicide will tell you to think of others.

This is when I realized that I only felt good when I was either with others or had plans on a daily basis to be with someone else. Should someone cancel our plans, I would be devastated and wonder how I was going to make it through the day. It took me awhile to see this, since my old self felt better when I was alone because people often made me feel bad about myself. That's because my family of origin was non-supportive and I used to choose unhealthy relationships.

That's when it hit me, that if I was going to beat my depression, I was going to have to love myself enough to enjoy my own company. I needed to lose my dependency on others to feel good about me. In other words, staying alive for others was no longer working because it was only a temporary fix – I had to learn to stay alive for me! This is a radical change in my thinking and I have just begun to practice it.

Stay tuned for more blogging on this.

Taking Risks

Okay, I've been playing it safe for too long. Even though that is what I needed when I first came into Al-Anon and for many years. To be with and interact with people like myself who had agreed to treat each other with mutual respect in order to recover from the effects of someone else's alcoholism. But now, now that I've practiced "correct" behavior through service work and around my family members, now it is time to step out of my comfort zone and take a few risks.

Today I began that process. I met with a non-program person to discuss our common interest which has nothing to do with a 12-step program. I had never met this person before today. We found each other online. I trusted my Greater Power to tell me if she was safe. I believe she is, especially since we're meeting in a public place and not making any huge commitments. And if it doesn't work out for us to continue meeting, we can always agree to stop.

It's not like I haven't been taking risks all along. I took a risk coming to Al-Anon for the first time. I took a risk every time I set a boundary with my drinking spouse before and after he got sober. I take a risk every time I leave my house, either on foot, on my bike, or in my car. Every time I pick up the phone to call a friend or relative, I take the risk of being "rejected" - of someone saying "no."

I have and can continue to live the Serenity Prayer - to ask God for the courage to change the things I can. In other words, to take a few risks...