It's Okay to Not Visit One's Family

I know that recent readings in Al-Anon's daily readers have spoken about treating one's parents the way we wished they had treated us, but I was reminded by my sponsor today that I've already done that, over and over again. The problem is the reaction I get from them is just more of the same - judgment, criticism, and blame.

I've made my amends for my part and shown them compassion, but now it's time to show myself some compassion, to not continue to put myself in harm's way. When I was raising children, when I realized they were being treated poorly by my parents, I took them out of harm's way.

Now that I have grandchildren, I would never let my parents be alone with them. So why do I continue to put myself in the same room with them?  Is this what forgiveness really is?  No, forgiveness is letting go of the resentments, not feeding the resentments. So just for today, just for now, I am not going to visit my parents.

Those Pesky Resentments

We have woodpecker problems. No matter what we've done to get rid of them, they come back every spring. This has been going on ever since we moved into our dream house. You could say that our struggle with the woodpeckers has been a bit of a nightmare.

But just like recurring resentments, our attitude towards the woodpeckers makes all the difference. We can get angry and start throwing rocks, accidentally breaking a window or two; or we can shoo them off whenever they start their pecking.

Trouble is, we're not always here to take care of them, just like with our resentments--we're not always aware of them until they have reared their ugly heads and done some damage. I'm usually aware of my big resentments when they start pecking at me again, but lately I've realized that I have a lot of little resentments that I need to deal with.

For example, I recently made new friends on a social website from a list of high school acquaintances. I was careful, though, not making friends with those people who had "done me wrong" such as a girlfriend who dumped me back in 5th grade. Fifth grade! That's going back a very long time. How silly of me, I decided. I'm only hurting myself, so I changed my mind.

I was also given the opportunity in my Al-Anon program recently to figure out what was going on with me when asked to do service work and my immediate reaction was "ick, absolutely not, that person/group 'done me wrong.'" Fortunately, I reasoned things out with a trusted friend who suggested I write about it before answering.

In one case, I still said "no" because I didn't want to commit to the time a project would take. In the other case, I said "yes" but they had already found someone else. In that case, it was a win-win: I learned how a resentment was holding me back but they probably found someone better suited to the request.

As far as the woodpeckers go, they probably aren't leaving any time soon. And getting angry at them does not help the situation. In fact, anger makes the situation worse. After all, the woodpeckers are doing what woodpeckers do. We have no control over them. We are able to pound on the wall or go outside and shoo them away.

Or hope for the same miracle of nature that happened last year. Starlings came and fought the woodpeckers away. We still had birds nesting in our siding, but starling don't make gigantic holes like woodpeckers do so the damage was a lot less last year. Sometimes, letting nature take its course is the best non-action one can do.

It reminded me of the slogans "Let Go and Let God" and "Live and Let Live" and how surrendering a resentment or a pesky problem can work wonders. May you find peace and serenity this spring as you let go of resentments, big and small.

Killing the Elephant

My blood father has come and gone and I am just now starting to regain my serenity, which to me is my goal in recovery. It turns out that the reason I was fearful of being alone with my father isn't for what he would say to me, but for what I would say to him -and how I would say it. The good thing that came out of his visit and a serious conversation we had one day was that I finally killed the elephant in the room.

That elephant was WHY? Why did you not visit me as a child? And why haven't you visited your grandchildren for 17 years? My father's answers are not as important as the fact that I asked the hard questions and then told him how I felt, both as a child whose father left and never came back and as an adult whose father only visited when it seemed convenient for him.

He was not appreciative of my bringing these things up, but the result was that I told him all was forgiven. I do not know where those words came from because I really did not feel forgiveness. However, I've been practicing forgiveness ever since - of my father but more importantly of myself for having been angry for so long and having expressed my feelings in an angry tone.

I'm learning to have compassion for myself - a little girl who was told to shut up, that her feelings did not matter; a young woman who was told to obey her husband (who was an alcoholic); and a middle-aged woman who believed that her relationships should never have any conflict ever again. I've been wrong about that last one. Conflict happens. It is how I deal with it that matters.

To tell you the truth, I did not deal with my father the way I wanted. I spoke louder and longer than necessary. Yet my voice was heard. He heard me. He said that I was hurt as a child. He said he was a good person who had done some very bad things. When I apologized for being so hard on him, he said he probably deserved it. Then I told him all was forgiven and hugged him. I also said that I was done talking about it.

The rest of our time together was a lot more relaxed because the elephant in the room was dead. It is a lot easier to be with others when there isn't a huge beast in the room. Even though I feel like I am still fumigating my world and needing extra rest and needing to talk a little longer in meetings and with program friends - I am regaining my serenity. I am accepting things for the way they were, what happened, and how things are today.

I am forgiving myself as well as both of my parents and my husband. I feel like I want to hold onto my original resentments because they are such an integral part of who I was most of my life. At least, God, let me have just a little resentment... but that's not how surrender works. I need to surrender 100%. It is time. I believe I am letting go and letting God, for good. I believe I am trusting the God of my understanding to do for me what I cannot do for myself.

I believe some of us have a harder time giving up our grudges. I am one of those people, even though I know they hold me back, they weigh me down. No longer. I'm asking God to remove them from me again, before they drag me back to that bitter, ugly person I was when I came into the program 20 years ago. I know it will happen. I've experienced this miracle before. I can feel them lifting and leaving in their wake SERENITY. Now I can get on with living my life.

Why I Hold Grudges

I’m working the Steps this year by reading and answering the questions in Paths to Recovery. The first question in the defects section in the chapter on Step 4 – made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves – asks why do I hold onto my resentments? I’m not sure I’ve ever asked myself this question; I’ve only acknowledged that I do indeed hold onto grudges, thinking it is what I learned growing up with a very sick mother, having been abandoned by my father.

Perhaps knowing why I continue to hold onto my resentments even when I know they hurt me is the key to really letting them go. Suddenly I realized that I hold onto my grudges to protect myself from getting hurt. As a child, I put on my suit of armor and became as hard as steel so no one could hurt me again like my father had and like my mother continued to do. Even then they got through, although I didn’t feel it, not really.

But as I grew, both physically and emotionally, the suit of armor became too small; it began to spread apart and the gaps left me more and more vulnerable as time wore on. I still had resentments, but my coat of grudges no longer protected me the way it used to. As I’ve grown spiritually in Al-Anon, I’ve learned that my health depends on me completely shedding this false protection that no longer serves me. Instead, I will cover myself in God’s acceptance, love, forgiveness, and approval of me, as well as my own acceptance, love, forgiveness, and approval of me.

In this way, I no longer need to hide behind steel plates; the problem with the armor was that it protected me from everything – even the good stuff in life! Now I am protected by a transparent bubble that lets hurtful opinions and actions bounce off of me while letting kindness and love through. I no longer need to fear what others can do to me, so I can let go of my old, childhood resentments and finally be free of their constraints. I can grow up and enjoy the maturity of adulthood. Just for today, I know that I did the best I could even as my parents did the best they could.

Lessons Learned in Service

I am so grateful for service work in Al-Anon. It is what we do after working the 12 Steps for our own recovery. It is part of the 12th Step to pass on our own experience, strength, and hope. But it is also how we keep our recovery going and don't slip back into old ways of thinking and behaving. I am grateful that I've had the opportunity to learn lessons in a safe environment.

I've learned how to communicate with others.

I've learned how to ask for help.

I've learned that I don't have to do it perfectly.

I've learned to show up and shut up.

I've learned that I can love someone with whom I disagree.

I've learned more tolerance for others in their struggles.

I've learned that keeping busy is sometimes the best way to stay out of someone else's business.

I've learned to let go of resentments, old ones as well as new ones.

I've learned to feel my emotions without letting them get the best of me.

I've learned patience with myself and others on this path of recovery from living with the disease of alcoholism.

I've learned that it's never too late to grow up, get out of myself, and stop pointing the finger of blame.

I've learned to not whine and stay away from Pity City, Pop. 1.

I've learned that I can love myself the same way others love me - I can really listen when they compliment me rather than just hear the constructive criticism.

I've learned that even a hopeless case that was me can become the person I was meant to be before I reacted negatively to my parents' behavior.

I've learned that I have always done the best I could, just as my parents did the best they could.

I've learned that the best way to live is to ask God each and every morning to let me be of service, even if some days that service is taking care of myself first and foremost.

Thank you for letting me share.

Sometimes It's Okay Not to Feel

When I heard that my mother was in the hospital with serious side effects from taking too much of her narcotic pain medicine, it crossed my mind that she could die. She is, after all, almost 80 and has been in bad health for years. When her possible death did not bother me, I was a bit bothered by my lack of emotion. I simply thought, "Should she die, I would go to her funeral." Period.

Then I read in Hope for Today (March 19th) that we have sometimes already grieved the loss of someone long before they are actually gone. We have already shed our tears and gone through the appropriate stages of grief, which I believe are denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance. After years of trying to fix a relationship that was not to be, I realized I was already at the last stage of acceptance, thus the lack of feelings (or at least intense feelings).

I was more into thinking about Dad and how he would do as Mom's death would affect his life dramatically. This still didn't prompt in me the need to be by his side, for it would mean travel when that was the last thing I needed right now. My first obligation is always to myself, to take good care of me. Plus I have a sister right there should Dad/Mom need someone. And I have other family members close by me that I need to help in the coming month.

Fortunately, Mom recovered and is now home with a new regimen, and Dad is relieved. If I had gone into my prior mode of drama resulting in rescue, rather than calmly accepting what is and what could happen - without getting into all the what-ifs - I would have wasted energy that I do not currently have to deal with Mom/Dad, again. I've spent time on those relationships, even travelling to Europe once to rescue them. As such, I've made my amends. I've done what I can do and that is enough.

This may sound cold to some of my readers, but I assure you that it is simply the result of years of grieving over what I never had and never will have with my parents - healthy, functioning, nurturing relationships. Both my sponsor and a professional (who included my mother in my therapy for a time) told me that some people simply do not change. I had to move on to take care of myself and look to other relationships for my needs - first and foremost the one with my Greater Power.

With that comes love and forgiveness of myself as well as the same for others. Forgiveness, by the way, does not mean we forget. It means we let go of the resentments. And love isn't always a feeling, it is more a willingness to respect another's humanity - flaws and all - realizing that they, too, are children of God. I also rely on the God of my understanding to let me know when and if I should step up to the plate, and this time it was obvious that I belonged on the bench - simply watching the game and praying for those involved in the action.

Why Do A 10th Step?

So why is it so important to do a 10th step? (Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.) Can't we let some things just slide by? After all, we aren't expected to be perfect in our recovery from living with the disease of alcoholism. However, as my sponsor tells me, my goal is serenity and if I don't keep my side of the street clean, I lose my serenity. I realized yesterday that something was amiss. I was suddenly gossiping about a person in the program to several people - the very person I had harmed, and then I started telling someone else a bunch of the "bad" things my spouse had done long ago, things he had made amends for and I had supposedly forgiven him for.

I reflected on this behavior this morning and realized that because I already knew I had to do a 10th step, but hadn't yet, I was into resenting the person I had harmed, and I was remembering other resentments supposedly long gone. In other words, I was blaming others for my behavior that I had yet to make amends for. It was amazing how quickly this was happening, and how quickly I was losing not just my serenity, but my sanity. For example, my dog was sick last night and I began to panic - I was suddenly angry with my daughter because I couldn't find my towel-rags (even though I had moved them myself) and I resented the vet who had cleaned my dog's teeth the day before. Plus I was projecting having to go to the ER vet on a Sat. night and ending up with a $1000 bill, neither of which happened.

So now that I know how quickly I started to react rather than respond to a situation because I need to make a 10th Step, it is essential that I talk with my sponsor about the best way to make my amends. There is not a simple solution this time - the person I harmed is not someone I live with or whom I can just call, plus I need to know how much information is necessary in making my amends. In the meantime, I can admit my faults to my Greater Power right here and now and start anew. I can be serene knowing that I've written it down and am willing to make my amends. I don't have to wait until I make those amends to regain my sanity. I don't have to remain resentful and angry at others, and especially I don't have to be angry with myself.

If I've learned anything recently, it is that I need to forgive myself first and love myself unconditionally - I need to Let It Begin With Me before I can forgive others and love them unconditionally. So I'm 10th Stepping myself right now and will ASAP 10th Step the other person I have harmed, and if necessary the people I gossiped to - if I don't stop this thing right here and now it will get bigger and bigger and I will fall into depression and self-pity. Since I was just there a few months ago, I don't want to go there again. I am so grateful that the Al-Anon program gives me the tools to not just get well but to stay well, and the 10th Step is one of the best tools I have.

B.A.R.F.

So here's a new acronym I came up with during a meeting on Step 4 yesterday:

Behaviors

Attitudes

Resentments

Fears

I got these from someone sharing about what they write about during a personal inventory. These are the things we need to get rid of to uncover our assets (except behaviors can be good as can attitudes!), thus B.A.R.F.

Step 4: Just Do It

I went to a good meeting today on Step 4. We read the chapter in Paths to Recovery and it contained many methods to taking one's moral inventory, making it a bit overwhelming. But there was one line I really liked from an Alateen sponsor: "Keep It Simple!"

It occurred to me that we in Al-Anon spend an awful lot of time on Step 4, often years, when it is really just one of the twelve steps. In that way, we seem to make it more important than the other eleven steps. And because we think it is soooo important, we get stuck on it, thinking it is tooooooo hard and we'll never be able to get it done.

There are those who go way back to the beginning and write about all the resentments they've ever had. I recently heard about someone with 600 resentments! What? The most I ever wrote were 60. But even that was way too much, especially since my Step 5 took two days. What my sponsor says is correct, in my opinion, that we really only have about ten main resentments that cover everything as we tend to meet and deal with the same characters and characteristics, including our own, over and over again.

My advice to sponsees now is to begin your inventory with what is going on right now. Deal with the present first. As time goes by, you can work your way back to your early childhood where your problems began. I found that this was more like "peeling the onion" because when I got to the bitter core, it was the incident and the person whom I first reacted to negatively. By then, I'd been going to Al-Anon long enough to be able to face this squarely and ask God to remove my continual reaction to it.

So this month, as I work Step 4, I'm going to "Keep It Simple!" I'm fortunate in that I've written a lot of Step 4's, so I don't really have a lot of stuff to dig up and dispose of. Yet, I still have some grievances and behaviors, especially my own, that I need to write about and then talk to my sponsor about when it's time to move on to Step 5.

I'll give myself a month, since my meeting works one step a month. Any more time and I'm holding myself back from the good God has in store for me.

Spiraling Upward...

Recovery and progress in this program have often been described as a spiral, that we deal with the same issues over and over again, only on a different level. Many times, it seems like we're sprialing downward - you know, the one step forward, two steps back feeling. As we grow, however, by really working the steps, reasoning it out with others, attending meetings, and doing service work (vital, in my opinion), our spirals tend to go upward more than downward.

I had this type of growth spurt recently. Just a few blogs ago, I mentioned my blood father again. I had actually started this blog with the last time I was in contact with him. Since then I've been working on forgiving him for not only his past behavior but his current behavior towards me. Watching the movie The Savages last month brought it all to the forefront again. I saw these adult children who had been abused as children forgiving their father by taking care of him in his last days. It was moving considering they hadn't had much contact with him for years and years.

But that didn't mean that I had to take care of my blood father in his old age. As someone said to me early on in the program during a step study, you can forgive someone but that doesn't mean you have to take them to lunch. And as my current sponsor says, you can forgive someone without forgiving their actions. Also, you don't need to put yourself in harm's way if that person continues in their destructive behavior. Which my blood father has, continuing to abandon me over and over again while at the same time blaming my mother and me for his estrangement.

So what happened recently besides seeing the movie The Savages? I went to NYC last weekend and visited Ellis Island. It occured to me that I didn't know enough about my father's family to look up if any of them had come through Ellis Island. (I knew about both sides of my mother's family, that they had hit the states and the West around 1852.) When I got home, I found the genealogy book my father had given me in the 1990's about his father's family, and in it was a family tree with his mother's maiden name and her parents' names.

With that information, I went on the Ellis Island website and found three women who could have been my great-grandmother. Then I went on websites in Minnesota to find my great-grandparents' wedding certificate or my grandmother's birth certificate, to find out more about my great-grandparents. I didn't get anywhere, although I didn't make any phone calls to find out more. Instead, I decided that I might have to contact my father to find out more. Then I was reminded from the family tree that tomorrow is his 80th birthday.

Suddenly I felt like it was time for me again to try to contact him. After all, it was his 80th birthday, and his mother would be 100 next month were she still alive. Now I have been advised by both my sponsor and therapist to emotionally divorce my father, and I've been working on that for several years. So I called my sponsor who did not give me advice but told me to pray about it, determine my motives, and think about the consequences, if I could live with the outcome. I pleaded with her to tell me what to do and she said I already knew what to do.

I didn't, but I did know - and I told her so - that I do believe I had finally forgiven him. I had finally let go of that deep resentment that was my original resentment. I didn't really realize it until I said it, but it was true. My insides match my outsides now. I no longer have to fake it till I make it. I truly am serene about the whole situation. It is what it is. I have accepted it and moved on or upward into a different level of living, no longer pulled down by the past.

So after dinner, I started to write a letter to him about Ellis Island and wanting to know more about his mother's side of the family. I fully intended to say Happy 80th Birthday and all that, but just a few paragraphs into the letter I felt very strongly that I was wasting energy and time, and this wasn't in God's will for my life. That I could be open to having a relationship with him, but he would have to initiate it this time since he was the one who broke it the last time. I learned last year that I don't need to mend a relationship that I didn't break!

Even though I used to try, over and over and over again. And where did it get me but not serene. Yet here I am now, serene, although things don't appear right with my world, they are, because they are right in my heart, with my motives, with my God, and with the universe. Each of our stories is different. Each of us follows a different path in recovery. One friend may forgive her father and take care of him in his old age. Another may have to forgive her father after his death.

As for me and my heart, although I don't see or talk to my father, I have forgiven him and wish him a Happy 80th Birthday. He is, after all, a child of God and suffering from this family disease called alcoholism. And because of that, I can be compassionate, but I can also detach with love for myself, moving ever upward in the spiral of recovery.

Gone But Not Gone...

Thank you for missing me. It's a nice feeling. I have been gone from blogging for a while, but I'm still working my program, going to meetings, doing service work, all the really important things. I've also been traveling and going to meetings in places like Rome, Greece, Prague, and Montana. Yes, I live a charmed life these days, but I still live with me and that can be a challenge. I was also in a motorcycle accident and am recuperating from a little head trauma - a great excuse, I've discovered, for my laziness (the doctor says I need to rest) and my motor mouth (speaking before thinking). So I have a lot of reasons for not blogging, but they just aren't good enough anymore, not when other people are suffering from the effects of someone else's drinking. We are in this together, so I'm here to extend a helping hand...

TODAY'S EPIPHANY: Along with new countertops we just got a new sink, so I spent a week searching for the perfect sink protectors like I had for my old sink. Alas, I couldn't find any anywhere that worked, not even online. Then I bit the bullet and went to WalMart, thinking it would serve me right if I found what I needed because I've spent years refusing to shop there for political reasons. Even though WalMart has heard the outcries from the people and changed some of its methods, I continued to nurse my resentments against IT and other giant corporations that have done ME wrong. Well, you guessed it. I found the perfect sink protectors at WalMart, along with some other nifty accessories, and all for a good price. So I was thinking today as I was enjoying my new sink that I bet I've missed a lot of life's gifts while avoiding those people, places, and things I hold grudges against. Like the program friend who once, just once, spoke to me about her religion. And, well, there are a lot of examples. I really am my own worst enemy. God, Just for Today, help me to let go of all my resentments so I can truly enjoy the blessings life has to offer. Amen.

Pausing to Ponder...

The poem in my first posting may never be read by its recipient. He doesn't know I'm in Al-Anon, and unless he responds to my latest invitation to see me when I'll be only 35 miles from his home next weekend, we will probably never meet again... This is one of those cases where we do what we can to make our amends, to make up for our shortcomings, but leave the results to our Higher Power... for we are powerless over the insidious disease of alcoholism and its behavior in other people. We can only change our own attitudes and consequent behaviors.

I have decided to share my story in this format, as anonoymously as possible, in order to pass on the Al-Anon program to anyone who has already discovered its rewards and anyone out there who is still suffering from having lived with the disease of alcoholism in a relative or friend. My plan is to share my program backwards, from where I am now to where I was, inserting what happened in the middle. This doesn't mean that I am completely recovered. Far from it. I have simply reached a mountain top this month where I believe I am finally letting go of the original resentment in my life - of my father for having abandoned me as a child and for continually abandoning me as an adult.

Many women out there have been damaged by their relationship with their father. If a little girl doesn't have a loving one, she is often prone to pick men who treat her the same way her father did or a man, she thinks, who will replace the loving father she did not have. I did just that. My pick was an alcoholic. We have been married many years, and I found Al-Anon a long time before he found Alcoholics Anonymous. My program helped me to be content whether the alcoholic was still drinking or not. But just as my spouse's drinking no longer made me miserable, his sobriety did not make me deliriously happy. In fact, the opposite seemed to happen. I truly realized that my happiness depended on my relationship with my Higher Power and my own behavior - my relationship with myself and how I treated other people through my thoughts and actions.

I came to understand that I still held deep resentments that were clogging my soul. In Al-Anon, we talk about peeling the onion - peeling off the layers of resentments we have built up against people who have harmed us, some significant, others a lot less so, everyone from the person who cut us off in traffic to that parent who failed to nurture us. I've been peeling my onion for years, working the 12 steps of the Al-Anon program and giving back to Al-Anon through volunteer work and helping others work the steps. But I never really got to the core of my onion until this year. Oh, I've gotten close before, but I immediately covered it up with new, fresh resentments in order to avoid the fumes with the potential to poison me for the rest of my life. This is called denial, and I was denying that my father abandoning me was a resentment I had not yet exorcised.

This spring and summer, the time had come. My body was beginning to feel the effects of this powerful resentment. It was as if I'd gone through rolfing to rid myself of the emotional pain and the result was the pain coming to the surface where I could actually feel it, yet it has yet to be released. Some days, I can hardly walk, my hips and knees hurt so much. I got some relief this summer, but only because I escaped into depression for a few months. Depression, for me, is not only anger turned inwards, but denial of the destructive nature of resentments - not harming the resentee, but the resenter. Depression for me is tuning out, wanting to escape, contemplating a way out of the misery that is my inner life.

But after getting help for the depression, when it lifted, the pain came back. And no medication or massage seemed to aleviate it. In fact, I am still suffering some as I write this, for this exercise is part of my releasing it to the universe, asking my Higher Power to take it from me. I am still wondering what the outcome will be of my reaching out to my father one last time. I stilll want to control the situation, or to react to it rather than respond to it. I still want to get angry, to lash out, to complain to others, to wail and bemoan my horrible childhood, to exaggerate the awful things my father has said and done to me. In other words, I still want to drown in the problem rather than swim in the solution. Why? Because it is familiar; it is what I have been doing since I was seven years old, since the day my father left.

Yet it is time. Time to let go of my original resentment. The resentment that turned me into an angry, hardened, I-can-do-it-by-myself, leave-me-alone, little girl who grew up to be the typical Al-Anon, bouncing back and forth between the extremes of burning bridges to building them with I'll-do-anything-for-you-just-don't-leave-me! I have just recently learned that I don't have to leave yet another job because everyone there isn't perfect, and I can't seem to be perfect there either. I can work through the problems by fixing myself and my behavior, with the help, of course and always, of my Higher Power. I don't have to participate in the gossip and griping. Neither do I have to be the victim of such. I can look at my own behavior, correct and make amends, if necessary, and then establish my boundaries. If someone crosses them, I let them know as graciously as possible.

I'm working through the same type of situation in a family relationship. These problems are helping me to be true to myself while not rejecting and condeming others. They are helping me to put into practice the principles we learn in the Al-Anon program by working the 12 steps. We sometimes call this awareness, acceptance, and action. I am in the action stage, at least in the aforementioned relationships and certainly in one of my oldest relationships, that with my father. Although I don't feel like I've taken much action since there is no response from him and therefore no interaction, which has been the case most of my life, beginning with the almost total lack of correspondence for 12 years, and no connection either by phone or in person during that time...

Yet I have taken action. I have sliced into the core of my onion and its poison is seeping out through my muscles, slowly but surely. It is almost gone. I can tell because it isn't as deep. It is more on the surface. Often, just the warm touch from my hand can relieve the pain. All I have to do is remember to touch where I hurt rather than feel the kind of self-pity that says, "This will always hurt, this will only get worse and worse, I am doomed to a life of pain..." I am not. I have learned that. I've lived with the chaos of alcoholism and learned to be content and even happy. I can certainly do the same with this original resentment. I only have to be willing to let my Higher Power take it from me. That doesn't mean it is instantaneous. It is too old and I've held it so deep inside me, that even a supernatural healing takes time and causes pain, like surgery of a deeply imbedded tumor which affects all the nerves and organs around it.

And feeling the pain of its release also serves to teach me to not take it back, ever. To right now know that once it is gone, I can finally begin to become the loving, kind, creative, humble, and authentic person I was meant to be - before I reacted so harshly to my father leaving. And my mother's hurt clouding her ability to be an emotionally available parent. But that is for another blog, another day. Today I am releasing by reaching out to any reader out there the seriousness of what can happen when we hang on to our resentments. They will kill us one way or another. I have a choice here. I can walk upright with no pain or I can hobble to a drugstore and buy myself a cane. My Higher Power and the Al-Anon program and all it offers can be my "crutch" or I can work my way towards needing a walker or wheelchair long before I am an old woman. I've seen it around me. I feel it happening to me. And I choose to not take that path.

I choose health - beginning with my spiritual health which helps heal the emotional, mental, and physical health. I chose this week to contact my father with an invitation to meet with me. We haven't seen each other since his mother's funeral, which I took the time to travel to to be with him and my brother and pay my respects to the grandmother I hardly knew... The last time we saw each other before that was eight years ago. My spouse and I stopped over for a few days on our way to another destination. My father told me that because our trip wasn't solely to visit him, our stopping over did not count. Yet he has not made any attempt to come visit me, my spouse, or my children, not in 13 years. Yes, he is a very sick man. He was damaged as a child, by an alcoholic, and has not received the gift of recovery that I have. Thus, it is up to me to make one more, for my sake, attempt to see him.

After this, I am through, unless by some miracle my father sees his part and makes his amends. I can no longer participate in this one-way relationship. My counselor has told me to consider emotional divorce. To stop sending birthday, Christmas, and Father's Day cards. After all, this father did not raise me. He even easily gave up his rights as a parent when my step-father adopted me. So I had a daddy of sorts, although not the real deal. He loved my mother, and so tolerated me. I was not an easy child to be around and for many years as an adult, I was hostile and unyielding, spewing out hateful words and blaming everyone but myself for my problems and lack of love in my life. Yet he never gave up on me and always left the door open, even visiting me and my children, his grandchildren, along with my mother, who also had every reason to reject me, unlike my blood father whose reason for rejecting me was his own guilt of falling in love with another woman and parenting her children....

So I've told you enough. I've typed enough this cool fall morning. I am so grateful it is fall, my favorite time of year. Even when there are so many painful anniversaries this month, I can be happy. Perhaps that is why my Higher Power has given me the desire and the tools through the Al-Anon program to take care of my core resentment this month, by attending a family wedding only 50 miles away from my father. I'm leaving it up to him whether or not to drive the 50 miles to see me. It is, at this point, his choice. The proverbial ball is in his court, once more. However, if he takes any cheap shots, as he often has in the past, I can leave the game. And it won't be as a sore loser. It will be as a healthy adult who is willing to play fairly but not put up with being bullied anymore. I'm suddenly feeling light. My hips no longer hurt like they did when I woke up this morning. This can only be a God-thing. Thank you for listening...