Boundaries

“Keep It Simple”

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Each Day A New Beginning, June 25:

“’I have a simple philosophy. Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. And scratch where it itches.’               Alice Roosevelt Longworth

All too often, we complicate our lives. We can wonder and worry our way into confusion; obsession or preoccupation it’s often called. ‘What if?’ ‘Will he?’ ‘Should I?’ ‘What do you think?’ We seldom stop trying to figure out what to do, where to do it, how to meet a challenge, until someone reminds us to ‘keep it simple.’

What we each discover, again and again, is that the solution to any problem becomes apparent when we stop searching for it. The guidance we need for handling any difficulty, great or small, can only come into focus when we remove the barriers to it, and the greatest barrier is our frantic effort to personally solve the problem.”

 

Amen to that! “Simplify” is one of my favorite directives. Tidy surroundings are very important to me, but much more important is keeping a tidy mind. My emotional sobriety depends on it. And without emotional peace, I ‘m vulnerable to my own addictions.

My addict, Angie, is thirty-seven, all of my children are in their thirties, and they are old enough to be independent and accountable for the choices they make. If Angie were fifteen, I wouldn’t be saying this. I would still be her legal guardian and would have some leverage over her. But she’s not a teenager, and I’ve learned to get out of her way and let her solve her own problems.

It’s hard, of course, to let go like this no matter how old our children are. But when I remember to keep it simple my life works better. I sleep better, for one thing, and that gives me the strength to face the challenges of each new day—wild fires, monsoons, and flash floods. Welcome to New Mexico!

 

 

 

Accepting Imperfection

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“When we strive for perfection in ourselves and expect it in others, we may feel we have failed when this doesn’t meet our expectations. This step teaches us to accept each other and ourselves as we are, even if it’s less than we had hoped. We strive only to do our best. This invites us to practice humility in order to begin our progress toward recovery.”

 

True humility is the ability to see myself in relation to God, and this keeps me where I need to be with the people in my life. It has nothing to do with humiliation; it’s maintaining a realistic and balanced perspective of myself. I’ve heard it said that addiction is a disease of relationships, and it certainly has the power to destroy them. When I try to let go of many of my defects and practice humility, my relationships work better. This, I believe, is God working through me.

Playing God

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Memoir Excerpt:

 “Recovery in the Program, time and the perspective it brings us, has given me a lot of new information. My own recovery has also graced me with a healthy amount of humility. I used to confuse humility with humiliation. I used to think that admitting my faults would produce shame in me and threaten my self-worth. But in recent years I have a different understanding of this word.

Having taken the Fourth Step (“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves”), and later the Seventh Step (“Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings”), I began to see myself in a healthier light. I began to see myself in relation to my higher power. I am just a speck in the universe, no more, no less. I’ve been playing God for much of my life. It doesn’t matter any more why; what matters now is that I remain ever mindful of the amount of power I have over others and stop trying to play God with them.”

Others Need Us Too

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Memoir Excerpt:

“I’ll never forget a friend I had years ago. She was the youngest of three girls in her family. The middle sister had suffered from cancer years before and had died. My friend was ten when her sister died at age fourteen. But it wasn’t the death that traumatized Jillian so much. It was the years of care, heartbreak and obsession with saving her dying child that her mother endured—to the exclusion of her other two girls—that turned Jillian into an angry, rebellious teenager. She did not get her share of mother love, she felt, and to this day she has not forgiven her mother. I should have remembered that story while I was obsessing over Angie.”

I have since made amends to my other children and family members for allowing my daughter’s illness to take up so much emotional energy in my life. And they have forgiven me. It’s so easy for a loving mother to become enmeshed in the life of a troubled child. But I need to remember that there are other people in my life, and I will try to keep a healthy perspective and a sense of balance.

Letting Go…Over And Over Again

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From The Forum, June, 2015:

“My son’s future is his—not mine. ‘He is not living his life for me,’ I thought as I shuffled into the cold kitchen. It was three o’clock in the morning. I was in search of an Al-Anon daily reader. My son, my only child and someone I loved more than anyone, had been arrested, spent the night in jail, and was in more trouble than I ever imagined possible.

I had never thought that my child, whom I put through college and spent many waking hours imagining his promising future, would be in that situation. However, all of that changed when his addiction became known to the family. From that time on, I faithfully attended Al-Anon meetings, sometimes four times a week, got a Sponsor, chaired and spoke at meetings, and volunteered to speak at an Al-Anon meeting at the women’s prison.

My son’s future was my future, and I told myself that my efforts made in recovery were for the both of us. Deep down, however, I was betting that my recovery would ultimately guarantee his recovery. In my heart, I believed that the love we shared along with the Al-Anon and A.A. program would be the life raft he needed to recover. I was his mother. I could make it happen…

Now, weeks after the arrest, awake at 3 a.m., I reached for the book, Courage to Change, and randomly opened to a page that said, ‘You can’t live someone’s life for them.’ It was what I needed to hear. As challenging as it was, I had to stop living his life and focus on myself. I had to let go of the life he was creating and embrace my own life…

Finally, I was beginning to understand that for my serenity, I had to live each day focused on myself and my recovery.”

 

In my memoir, I said the same thing, a reflection of my early time in recovery. Drowning in codependence, I hadn’t yet accepted that Angie’s illness was something I wasn’t responsible for nor was it something I could control with my own recovery:

“In fact, I was still so joined at the hip with her that, in the beginning during the brief periods when she was in recovery, I used to claim at meetings that our mutual recoveries were intertwined. I remember saying, ‘I have no doubt that her recovery goes along with my recovery.’ My Program friends just nodded their heads in support, probably wondering what the heck I was talking about. It would take a number of years and much Twelve-Step work to rid me of that notion.”

 

Of course it gives us parents much comfort to think that we have the ability to save our children. We all wish we had that power. But that power ultimately rests with the addicts themselves. We can offer love and emotional support. But because of the complexities of the disease, we need to let go and allow the addict to take responsibility for his own recovery.

Detachment 101

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“Detachment is not detaching from the person or thing whom we care about or feel obsessed with.

Detachment is detaching from the agony of involvement.”

Boundaries…boundaries…boundaries. Where do I end and the other person begins? A strong sense of self enables us to set clear limits with others. I was terribly enmeshed in Angie’s life; I had never separated from her in a healthy way. Because we were so alike, I identified with her and felt overly responsible for her messes. Her problems became my problems and it never occurred to me to let her tackle her own issues, both for her betterment and my own.

But thankfully my work in recovery has helped me face myself in the mirror and make some important changes. I made the necessary separation, first of all, from Angie. I no longer feel the “agony of involvement,” as I’ve let go of Angie’s illness and the ensuing consequences of her drug use. I can’t save her from herself. I can only love her and be here for her should she choose to walk with me in recovery.