Attitudes

Choice and Empowerment

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Each Day a New Beginning, 9/30:

“’Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?’ Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

We choose the lives we lead. We choose sadness or happiness; success or failure; dread or excited anticipation. Whether or not we are conscious of our choices, we are making them every moment.

Accepting full responsibility for our actions is one of the requirements of maturity. Not always the easiest thing to do, but necessary to our further development. An unexpected benefit of accepting our responsibility is that it heightens our awareness of personal power. Our wellbeing is within our power. Happiness is within our power. Our attitude about any condition, present or future, is within our power, if we take it.

Life is “doing unto us” only what we allow. And it will favor us with whatever we choose. If we look for excitement, we’ll find it. We can search out the positive in any experience. All situations present seeds of new understanding, if we are open to them. Our response to the events around us determines whatever meaning life offers. We are in control of our outlook. And our outlook decides our future.

The day is mine, fully, to delight in—or to dread. The direction is always mine.”

We all go through tough times, often wondering how we will endure the unendurable. Watching our children go down paths we would never choose for them, and being powerless to stop it; or many of us burying our children, and forced to face the closure that comes with that. How do we bear it? How do we go on? I put my faith in God, and know—without a doubt—that things are happening for a reason, and that much beauty is often born out of loss. I’m so grateful to have the eyes and heart to see what has been left to me. My recovery is a miracle. God is good!

“If Onlys Are Lonely”

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From Each Day A New Beginning, November 24:

‘If onlys are lonely.’ Morgan Jennings

“The circumstances of our lives seldom live up to our expectations or desires. However, in each circumstance we are offered an opportunity for growth or change, a chance for greater understanding of life’s heights and pitfalls. Each time we choose to lament what isn’t, we close the door on the invitation to a better existence…

The experiences we are offered will fail to satisfy our expectations because we expect so much less than God has planned for us in the days ahead…

I will breathe deeply and relax. At this moment my every need is being attended to. My life is unfolding exactly as it should.”

I’ve wrestled with my faith most of my life, always too self-reliant for my own good. But as I’ve watched my daughter succumb to heroin addiction, it has been a great comfort to me to learn how to harness a newfound belief in the power of something outside of myself, something I can turn to in my despair and know that something beautiful will come out of it. And it has: my whole life, and how I choose to live it now, is a miracle.

“Changed Attitudes Can Aid Recovery”

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Memoir Excerpt:

“’Recovery is when fun becomes fun; love becomes love; and life becomes worth living.’” (Melody Beattie)

“Now I tune into the life that is going on all around me. My sadness around Angie doesn’t weigh me down anymore. It’s there, of course, but I elevate myself when I remember to count my blessings and be grateful. Like a snake that has shed its skin, I feel fresher and more ready for life and its daily renewable force. My son now has a wife whom I adore and two beautiful little girls whom I visit often. They, along with Caroline, Gene, and my wonderful friends and extended family, are the flowers in my garden. They are, along with my work and my other passions, my happiness. Every day that I let myself embrace life, I find contentment. I just have to keep my heart open. “Agape” is one of the Greek words for love. Agape—open—ready to receive.”

 

Attitude Is Everything

Marilea C. Rabasa2 Comments

Memoir Excerpt:

“When it’s dark enough, you can see the stars.” Charles A. Beard

Over the years in my struggle with Angie and her drug addiction, and certainly at the beginning, I wondered if I would ever run out of tears. They seemed to swim in a bottomless well of grief. But I’ve been fortunate to discover and nurture many spiritual tools that have helped me walk through this nightmare and that have sustained me. Though I’ll never stop grieving for my daughter and missing her, my life gets better when I apply acceptance, gratitude and faith in God’s plan for me. As I’ve learned to “let go and let God,” I’ve freed myself to appreciate all the blessings in my life that are right in front of me. And this is how I cultivate being happy.

We Deserve Some Peace

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“Enough is enough when the hurt inflicted is greater than the lesson learned.”

All of us on this painful journey arrive here at different times. It took me many years: many years of being manipulated by guilt and finally finding the freedom to let go of it; many years of my determination to save my daughter from the disease that’s killing her, desperate to take control of what I had no control over; and many years of readjusting my focus onto all the wonderful people and gifts in my life. As I said in my memoir, “I have lived a very blessed life,” and to be able to say that in spite of my struggle with Angie, well, that says a lot about the power of spiritual transformation.

Taking Care Of Ourselves

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Wisdom From The Rooms:

“In Al-Anon we learn how to exchange a wishbone for a backbone (with love).”

Setting and enforcing boundaries with our loved ones is difficult, and can seem harsh at times. But many of us see all too clearly the effects of drug use on our loved ones: the loss of their moral compass which can lead to lying, stealing, verbal abuse and worse, all as a result of flooding their brains with dangerous chemicals. It can become a matter of our survival to stay strong and take care of ourselves, even when that means making excruciating choices. At the end of the day, we owe it to everyone else in our lives to survive and try to live well. Then, God willing, if the addict needs us to walk through recovery with him/her, we’ll be strong enough to do so.

An Attitude of Gratitude

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From Courage to Change, August 30:

“Normally my sponsor would recommend a gratitude list when I felt low, but one day, when I complained about a family situation, he suggested that I list all the things I was unhappy about. Several days later my depression had passed, and when I told my sponsor about the terrific day I was having, he suggested a gratitude list. He thought it might help me to refer to it the next time I felt blue. That made sense to me, so I complied.

When I went to put this new list in the drawer where I keep my papers, I noticed the earlier list and read it once more. To my surprise, my list of grievances was almost identical to my gratitude list—the same people, same house, same life. Nothing about my circumstances had changed except the way I felt about them. For the first time I truly understood how much my attitude dictates the way I experience the world.

Today’s Reminder:

Today I recognize how powerful my mind can be. I can’t always feel good, and I have no interest in whitewashing my difficulties by pasting a smile on my face. But I recognize that I am constantly making choices about how how I perceive my world. With the help of Al-Anon and my friends in the fellowship, I can make these choices more consciously and more actively than ever before.”

‘Change your thoughts and you change your world.’ Norman Vincent Peale

I can make an effort to be grateful instead of sad. It’s a conscious choice—because I want to be happy.

 

Whereto, Persephone?

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Memoir Excerpt:

In a letter to my daughter:

“‘I imagine in your mind you feel justified in treating me so badly. But I’m here to tell you: no, you’re not, not now, not ever again.  If you can’t muster the consideration and respect that I deserve, then we need more space.  And that’s my recovery at work.’

She was in San Francisco now and crashed on her sister’s sofa. Caroline, still recovering from her initial bout with Crohn’s disease back in October, was very welcoming and didn’t put too much pressure on her to find her own place. But Angie needed to find some space of her own and was fortunate within a couple of weeks to find a group home right around the corner from her sister, on Harrison Street. She bought a bike and enjoyed tooling around the Mission.

Then, while I was still reeling from December, she ended up in another hospital at the end of January, on IV antibiotics for the second time…

 

Angie ran away from Virginia only to find out that she couldn’t leave the addict behind. I’ll never know exactly how she ended up in the hospital for the second time, and it doesn’t matter. Angie was a grown woman learning to live in a new city. Her sister was close but unlikely to be drawn into her drama. Caroline knew a few addicts and knew plenty about addiction. But she was carefully and lovingly detached. Angie was really on her own again with no parents around. She was at yet another crossroads where she was faced with the same choices that had confronted her many times before. Would addiction continue to squeeze the life and humanity out of my daughter as it had in the past? Or would she be able to fight her demons on her own? “