Month: June 2020

This is an excerpt from my second memoir, Stepping Stones: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Transformation.

“Our first house in Virginia boasted an outdoor speaker system so we could listen to music on the patio. But it was broken and we never had it fixed. 

Instead, the speaker provided a nesting place for a number of birds in the six years we lived there. Every spring, forgetting that it was right next to our kitchen door but high enough for the birds to feel safe from curious humans, I would start to notice the flight of a couple of birds back and forth to the same spot. And there was a maple tree in front of our fence where one of the birds often sat, waiting its turn to be a parent.

“They’re back!” I yelped to my neighbor who was pulling up weeds. I felt foolish, tipping the birds off.

“I want to see how many eggs she’s laid, Angel. Please bring the ladder outside,” I asked as he was hanging up a picture in the dining room.

“Don’t be crazy; if they see you go anywhere near their nest, they’ll abandon it.”

So I left it alone, watching Mom and Pop swoop in and take turns sitting on the eggs.

One May morning I heard a lot of chirping coming from inside the broken speaker, and I observed the parents, one at a time, bringing food to their hatchlings. Such a simple cooperative effort, ensuring the welfare of their young.

Hatchlings became nestlings, and then came the end of the swooping. There were no more parents taking turns at the nest, and the comforting sounds of life, the chirping, had stopped. 

I realized the babies must have been strong enough to leave the nest and test their wings. They had become fledglings, and they were off.

But I saw the female soon afterwards in the maple nearby singing. 

Gosh, those baby birds must be miles away by now. And there was Mom hovering nearby, probably thinking the same thing.

Still I wonder, sometimes, if they can hear their mother singing.”

Time was passing:
The voice inside me would not be stilled.
For years I covered my ears
And prayed for peace.
But my road was not destined to be an easy one.
The mettle still needed much testing.
My real work was about to begin.

One day I woke up and
Prepared to take up the yoke.
Step by step, I plowed the field.
Hitting rocks, one by one, I
Moved them aside.
They weren’t too heavy.  I found myself
Getting stronger the more I worked.

It’s a bittersweet victory, my field of flowers.
There was a price that was paid along the way.
As I stand and admire the smells and beauty
I see three smiling shadows darting behind the trees.
I remember when those happy smiles
Had form and function in my life.
But the Voice would not be stilled.

It consumed me.
And together, the Voice and I, watched helplessly
As the forms became shadows
Hiding behind trees.

The road to my spiritual life began when I was a young child growing up in an alcoholic family. But I didn’t start to walk this road until halfway through my life when my daughter fell ill with drug addiction. 

I was very unhappy growing up. It’s a classic story of family dysfunction that many of us have experienced as children. But back then I didn’t have Alateen to go to. My father was never treated and died prematurely because of his illness.  I, too, was untreated for the effects of alcoholism, and grew into an adult child.

Well, many of us know how rocky that road is: low self-esteem, intense self-judgment, inflated sense of responsibility, people pleasing and loss of integrity, and above all, the need to control. I carried all of these defects and more into my role as a mother to my sick daughter, and predictably the situation only got worse. 

I was a very hard sell on the first three steps, and my stubbornness cost me my health and my career. But once I did let go of my self-reliance, my whole life changed for the better.  The Serenity Prayer has been my mantra every day. I’ve learned to let go of what I can’t change. I don’t have the power to free Annie of her disease, but I can work hard to be healed from my own.  This is where I’ve focused my work in the program.

My daughter has gone up and down on this roller coaster for twelve years, and right now she’s in a very bad place. But that has only tested me more. My faith grows stronger every day when I release my daughter with love to her higher power, and I am able to firmly trust in mine. 

Friends of mine ask me, “How do you do that? You make it sound so simple!”  I tell them, “First of all getting here hasn’t been simple. It’s the result of years of poisoning my most important relationships with the defects I talked about earlier. I knew I had to change in order to be happy. Secondly, I surround my heart with faith-based unconditional acceptance of whatever happens in my life. It’s my choice.

Somewhere in the readings, someone wrote ‘Pain is not in acceptance or surrender; it’s in resistance.’ It’s much more painless to just let go and have faith that things are unfolding as they are meant to. There’s a reason that HP is running the show the way he is. I just have to get out of the way; I’m not in charge. I also read somewhere the difference between submission and surrender: submission is: I’ll do this if I get XYZ; surrender, on the other hand, is unconditional acceptance.  Well, the latter is easier because I’m not holding my breath waiting for the outcome. I just let go – and have faith. Again, it’s a very conscious choice. 

We all have different stories. What has blessed me about a spiritual life is that I can always look within myself and find peace regardless of the storms raging around me. I’m learning how to dance in the rain.

No, not the kind that slither across the road 
Until they get squashed by a fast-moving car.
I’ve seen a few of them on my morning walks.
Poor creatures: don’t snakes have ears?

No, these snakes are an invasive plant, 
Burgeoning out everywhere.
But, like the vipers that don’t exist on this island,
These snakes have fangs.

Oh, don’t fall into a blackberry patch!
I think I’d rather drink poison and die a slow death
Than impale my whole body on those thorns.
I’d pass out from the pain, I’m sure.

They’re vicious and relentless, the way
They rise up over existing bushes
Like snakes ready to strike.
But I’m at the ready with my clippers.

Cutting them back as soon as I see them.
Some are just skinny babies.
Others half an inch thick.
But my clippers win today.



Tomorrow, more snakes will rise up out of the woods
And try to take over my landscaped grounds.
I won’t spray, though.
My deer family live here.

This is an excerpt from my second memoir, Stepping Stones: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Transformation.

Carter and I had been driving home from his friend Chris’s house one Saturday afternoon. Chris lived near Mount Pentelicus, one of my favorite haunts outside of Athens. From the crest of this hill on a clear day in winter, you could see the whole bowl of Athens with the smog hovering overhead. This was where the Brits came to celebrate Boxing Day every December 26.

Crowds of people also came to fly kites on Mount Pentelicus in December when the weather changed. As we turned the corner, we saw the tail of a kite peeking out from under a pile of rubbish, flags zigzagging down the string. Its owners must have had no more use for it when it lost its wind, and so it lay abandoned in the field.

Our curiosity taking over, we stopped the car, got out, and went to investigate. We wanted to breathe new life into this broken and tattered kite. I never thought that something inanimate could come to life. But at that time in my life, there was a dying in me that I knew I had to defeat or it would defeat me. My son was part of this tragedy, and somehow we knew that the road to healing could start with repairing that kite and watching it fly again. A dust-covered old TV pinning it down to the ground was holding the kite hostage. Its colorful tail saved it from certain death.

So we took the kite home and repaired it with glue and tape. We waited for a day with just enough wind to try and fly it.

I was restless inside, as though we were testing something other than the kite. Lying on the sofa for weeks, staring at our beautiful Christmas tree, I had been questioning my decision over and over. How could I do this to my family? How could I be so selfish? My mother stayed, I remember thinking to myself. And when I was much younger, she was one of the saddest, most guilt-ridden women I knew. I wanted to be happier than she had been.

The day to test the kite finally came, a clear, sunny day with a nice breeze. Together we took the kite back to the mountain. We watched it continue to rise and float in the air until all the string was used up. We ran with it as it leaped in the wind, flying like it was brand-new. A miracle!

We brought it down and carefully put it in the car. We would probably never fly it again, but I couldn’t let go of something that had taught me such an eloquent lesson: I was sure from that day on that there are second chances in life for those who have the heart to reach for them.