Humor

What Makes Rainbows?

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Courage to Change, March 14:

“One beautiful day, a man sat down under a tree, not noticing it was full of pigeons. Shortly, the pigeons did what pigeons do best. The man shouted at the pigeons as he stormed away, resenting the pigeons as well as the offending material. But then he realized that the pigeons were merely doing what pigeons do, just because they’re pigeons and not because he was there.

Active alcoholics are people who drink. They don’t drink because of you or me, but because they are alcoholics. No matter what I do, I will not change this fact, not with guilt, shouting, begging, distracting, hiding money or bottles or keys, lying, threatening, or reasoning. I didn’t cause alcoholism. I can’t control it. And I can’t cure it. I can continue to struggle and lose. Or I can accept that I am powerless over alcohol and alcoholism, and let Al-Anon help me to redirect the energy I’ve spent on fighting this disease into recovering from its effects.

It’s not easy to watch someone I love continue to drink, but I can do nothing to stop them. If I can see how unmanageable my life has become, I can admit that I am powerless over this disease. Then I can really begin to make my life better.”

My recovery has been, among other things, about redirecting my energy into a positive force for my loved ones and me. Before I learned the tools of recovery, though I appeared to be content and doing well, I was deeply troubled and unhappy on the inside. Then, when my daughter  became a substance abuser, it all boiled to the surface. I love my daughter very much, and I would have done anything in my power to save her.

There’s that word “power” that we hear so much in the recovery rooms. And that’s good because power and ego so often go together, and I’ve had to learn to let go of both of them. I spent several years trying to save her, but I made many mistakes and in the end was not able to influence her choices. Just like the pigeons, she’s gonna do what she has to do. I can only love her and be strong for her if and when she goes into recovery. I am, therefore, concentrating on saving myself. And if it weren’t for my daughter, I probably wouldn’t even be doing that. Beauty is often born out of loss. I still have a heart that can love—and the eyes to enjoy the beautiful sunsets where I live in Puget Sound.

Loosen Your Grip!

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From Survival To Recovery, page 268:

“Living fully requires enough trust to release our manipulative, tight-fisted control of life, for only then can we accept the guidance of a Power greater than ourselves. For adult children of alcoholics, our damaged, devastated trust has to be healed and nurtured bit by bit until we feel safe enough to truly let go and let God. Trust does not come from reading a book, however inspired, but from experiencing new relationships in which we are trusted and we can learn to trust those around us…If we willingly surrender ourselves to the spiritual discipline of the Twelve Steps, our lives will be transformed…Though we may never be perfect, continued spiritual progress will reveal to us our enormous potential…We will laugh more. Fear will be replaced by faith, and gratitude will come naturally as we realize that our Higher Power is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves…”

“We will laugh more.”  How can I, beset by depression and instability for many of my years, come to revisit my life now from another perspective? How have I learned how to laugh and see the comedy in things? What has enabled me at last to live well and be happy?

Being in the rooms.

But I hasten to add that we can learn the same tools elsewhere: the tools of letting go and accepting what we can’t change; the tool of gratitude; the tool of detachment and understanding our personal boundaries in relation to our substance user. There are many places where we can pick up these life skills: from our family, friends, church, from our own life experiences…

I might have been luckier, like many of you, and learned these tools in a happy, functioning family when I was growing up. But I learned them later.

And it’s never too late to learn how to be happy.

White knuckling it through life is exhausting. Different methods to relax work for different people. Yoga, prayer, knitting, running, reading, listening to music—the list is endless. The best thing for me to relax is the Serenity Prayer. It has become my mantra:

“God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.”

I embrace this prayer in big and little ways every day. Its wisdom keeps me right-sized and humble, while at the same time encouraging me to make changes in my life that are within my reach.

We are all challenged, of course, by the last line. That’s why I keep going back to recovery meetings!


The Healing Power Of Humor

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From Hope for Today, April 6:

“…Today my sense of humor is a natural reflection of who I am. I experience the world through smiles and laughter rather than through bitter smirks. I share joy with others rather than seek company for my misery. I help others heal rather than attack them. I allow my sense of humor to unfold naturally, just the way it was meant, and I watch the wonderful results as my Higher Power works through me toward a higher good.”

Finding my sense of humor has been a reflection of how I’ve changed in recovery. I’ve worked through my grief around my daughter and continue to do so every day. But the darkness has receded. Somehow it’s not as heavy to carry as it used to be. It seems lighter. I’ve gained perspective from years of reading and writing, and listening to other peoples’ stories. Being able to laugh, and cease to take myself too seriously, has eased my journey through this frightening tunnel. I can see the light at the end of it.

At times I wondered if I would ever laugh again, but my Higher Power wanted me not only to survive but to do so joyfully. There are many other people in my world, and my recovery spills over onto them in countless ways.

Cultivating a healthy sense of humor keeps me right-sized; I stay small and HP stays big. Then I don’t get in my own way so much!

Laughter Is Contagious

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From Hope for Today, April 6:

“…Today my sense of humor is a natural reflection of who I am. I experience the world through smiles and laughter rather than through bitter smirks. I share joy with others rather than seek company for my misery. I help others heal rather than attack them. I allow my sense of humor to unfold naturally, just the way it was meant, and I watch the wonderful results as my Higher Power works through me toward a higher good.”

Choices. Life is chock full of them. Every day when I wake up, I have a choice about how to experience my life.
 
In the past, if I was sad, I ran with that feeling. At first, I guess I needed to experience those feelings. But when I allowed them to overwhelm me, it was the author of many bad choices.

Now I choose gratitude. Why??? The problem that brought me into the rooms of recovery hasn’t changed. So what am I grateful for?

Everything else. My world isn’t defined by my problems, by what is lacking. I choose to define it with the joy of my blessings. They far outweigh my losses, and I put my focus on them. In years past it was hard to smile or feel any joy at all. Time can heal us, and now I’m glad that it can.

I’ve had an attitude adjustment, and it’s working for me. Nowadays I seek out comedy and enjoy a hearty belly laugh at a good joke. It beats feeling unhappy all the time.

My soul is dancing when I laugh.

Staying Out Of The Weeds

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Before I went into recovery, I was pretty lost. On the outside, my life seemed to be rolling along well. But on the inside, I was insecure and sad. I dealt with these feelings in unhealthy ways, but didn’t feel much pressure to change them. I never missed a day of work, and I appeared to be fine. But appearances can be deceiving. Nothing had yet occurred to call my choices into question. Nothing had happened yet to push me out of my complacency.

But when my middle child fell victim to substance use disorder, after I had tried and failed over and over again to help her, I broke. The carefully manicured life I had been living was a treasured glass from my cupboard, smashed onto the kitchen floor. Many little shards, and some big ones. I cut my fingers cleaning it up.

My recovery fellowship comes with a philosophy that teaches me many different things. And one of those things is to forgive myself and others for the transgressions we inevitably commit in our lives. Our common humanity dovetails at every meeting I go to, where we encourage ourselves to face our defects, let them go, and move on.

For years, I held on to mine to punish myself for my part in Annie’s disease, and most importantly, for failing to “save” her. I have learned, gratefully, that my daughter suffers from substance use disorder, as do I, and I could no more save her from it than if she’d had diabetes. I simply don’t have that power.

So I try to stay away from martyrdom and self-pity, because neither of those feelings will help Annie get well, and they hurt me a great deal. That’s where the weeds are. They muddy the waters; they keep me angry and sad. When I steer clear of them, it takes some of the sting out of losing my daughter. I can more easily open my heart to what remains in my life.

The miracle of my recovery is that, like a gentle breeze blowing away the clutter of remorse, my eyes can see my life through another lens now, one full of gratitude, humor and love. The fruits of my recovery rest on these three things.

“We forget that the depths teach us how to better appreciate the heights.”

Empathy Starts Here

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Pity the poor fly. Its brain is pretty miniscule and not capable of making decisions that might lead it to its final flight.

Have you ever wondered what they were thinking flying through our open doors and/or windows? Well, they weren’t thinking; remember, they’re just flies. They had just spent a lovely day outside, gobbling up insects, laying eggs on piles of compost, and just frittering away their time, wondering what to do next.

“Oh, there’s an open door,” they venture excitedly, “maybe there’s more food through that door.”

“Nope, not a good choice,” we implore, as we flail around trying to whisk them back outside. But too late for some. They get lost in the curtains, the laundry room, the bathrooms. They do tend to linger around windows as they wistfully wonder how to get back out into the open air. Yet they have no idea how to accomplish that.

“Oh, look at all those ants…” precursors of a thought, their jaws watering at the sight of all the insects through the living room window. My son leaves the doors open sometimes, just so that they can escape the doom that awaits them.

But then more just come in.

Oh, pity those poor flies. They’re not suicidal. That would require some forethought, and they don’t think at all, remember. They just like to eat bugs. And poop. And make more flies. One place to do all that seems just like any other one.

Wrong! Inside most reasonably well-kept houses there are not a lot of bugs. So there they sit, or flit from room to room, vainly scrounging around for some edible bugs, while they slowly lose their energy, utterly bewildered by it all.

Finally, unable to carry on and fly, these lost and confused insects drop down onto the floor where I find them, usually near the windows—those glass barriers that kept them from swooping down and devouring all those ants. One by one I pick them up and take them outside, where they become dinner for other insects.

You Just Gotta Laugh!

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From “The Grapevine” 11/18:

                                                “Sorry I Asked

An old timer with 40 years of sobriety had a dream. In it, his first sponsor, who passed years before, appeared. The old-timer, seizing the opportunity, asked him one question: ‘Is there AA in Heaven?’

‘Well Jim,’ his first sponsor replied, ‘there’s good news and bad news. The good news is yes, AA meetings are held in heaven. The bad news is, you’re chairing this Saturday.’”  ~Marty Z., Palm Bay, Florida

Laughter is Contagious

Marilea C. Rabasa2 Comments

From Hope for Today, April 6:

“I also used humor as a manipulative tool to get people to like me. …My sense of humor wasn’t spontaneous or appropriate. I used it to please people. When no one was around to please, however, I was miserable…

Today my sense of humor is a natural reflection of who I am. I experience the world through smiles and laughter rather than through bitter smirks. I share joy with others rather than seek company for my misery. I help others heal rather than attack them. I allow my sense of humor to unfold naturally, just the way it was meant, and I watch the wonderful results as my Higher Power works through me toward a higher good.”

Memories of Greece

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

A Memoir of Recovery

 

 

 

I’m finishing up my second memoir about addiction, a sequel to A Mother’s Story, but had to visit a major crossroads in my life first. My daughter Angie was ten when a big change occurred in our lives, and I needed to revisit Greece with a fresh perspective nearly thirty years later. Sending love to all my FB friends from the top of a volcano, Santorini, where they have internet and TV, lol!