detachment

“Living Well Is The Best Revenge”

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

I’ve received many emails from moms asking me how I cope with the living death of Angie’s heroin addiction. She’s neither dead nor alive. Many of my friends here know the hellish limbo I’m living in, without any resolution or closure. But I have found a way to cope well and move on with my life. This is what I wrote back:

 

“I put my grief in a back drawer and close it. Then I look at what’s in my front drawers every morning. I have so many wonderful things to be grateful for. Instead of focusing on the problem, I try to keep my mind on the solution. This is how I live. It keeps me humble, grateful, and glad to be alive. I honor Angie’s memory in this way, and I truly believe she would want me to live well and be happy. Blessings to you, Mom.”

 

Trusting In Ourselves

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Hope for Today, November 12:

“Serenity? What is that? For years, I was like a weather vane that spun around according to the air currents that other people generated… I attributed these mood swings to nervousness, lack of assurance, and whoever else occupied the room at the time. Serenity always seemed beyond my control… Where does this serenity come from? It comes from trusting that everything in my life is exactly as it should be… It comes when I choose to care for myself rather than to fix someone else…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: I am powerless over many things, but my serenity is not one of them.”

In the rooms I am learning to keep the focus on myself rather than obsess about fixing other people. We have learned to “release our addicts with love and cease trying to change them.” I am the only person I have power over, and when I pay attention to my own growth and betterment, everyone else in my life benefits. This is selfishness at its best.

Someone once told me that the greatest gift we can give our children is our own happiness. So I will continue to strive for it every day—and it will nourish them and all the people in my life.

Spiritual Empowerment

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Hope For Today, April 15:

“…Before I seriously practiced meditation and prayer with Step Eleven, asking only for knowledge of God’s will for me and the power to carry that out, detaching was an exercise in futility.

Today detachment is different for me. It’s an opportunity to make a choice. I can focus on the problem, or I can attach to my Higher Power and see what is before me with rest, new eyes and thoughts. I am learning to detach from old reactions that interfere with my serenity, old fears that feed into expectations and judgments, and the part of me that diverts me from my primary spiritual aim…”

 

I’m very grateful to be able to make the choices I make today. I’ve changed. I make decisions that support my living well—with gratitude, peace, and joy. As I said on Tuesday, it’s all a matter of perspective.

Today I choose the serenity that comes from detaching from the problem and attaching to the solution. I’m happier when I live in the solution. I can say with a full heart that life is good.

 

 

 

Another Perspective

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

“A Open Letter to My Family (from the drug addict)

I am a drug user. I need help.

Don’t solve my problems for me. This only makes me lose respect for you.

Don’t lecture, moralize, scold, blame, or argue, whether I’m loaded or sober. It may make you feel better, but it will make the situation worse.

Don’t accept my promises. The nature of my illness prevents my keeping them, even though I mean them at the time. Promising is only my way of postponing pain. Don’t keep switching agreements; if an agreement is made, stick to it.

Don’t lose your temper with me. It will destroy you and any possibility of helping me.

Don’t allow your anxiety for me to make you do what I should do for myself.

Don’t cover up or spare me the consequences of my using. It may reduce the crisis, but it will make my illness worse.

Above all, don’t run away from reality as I do.Drug dependence, my illness, gets worse as my using continues. Start now to learn, to understand, to plan for recovery. Find NAR-ANON, whose groups exist to help the families of drug abusers.

I need help: from a doctor, a psychologist, a counselor, from an addict who found recovery in NA, and from God.

Your User”

 

Enmeshment can be crippling: we don’t have enough emotional distance, often, to deal intelligently and effectively with the addict. Stepping back, detaching, takes discipline and restraint. Such a hard thing to do when we’re in this emotional minefield. It has taken me years in my recovery program to act more and react less. As I said in my last post, I need to deal from strength to be any help to my daughter. The oxygen mask goes on me first.

“Let Go And Let God”

Marilea C. Rabasa3 Comments

“In Al-Anon, letting go and letting God means exchanging the finite, narrow limitations of our own self-will for the infinite wisdom of our Higher Power. We turn our lives over to the Higher Power’s care, confident that in God’s time, solutions to our problems and relief from our pain will come to us.

The lily symbolized this slogan and was inspired by the biblical passage that tells us:

‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’

By making the Twelve Steps a part of our lives, learning to trust God’s will, and practicing program principles in all our affairs, we continually renew our faith and achieve our own special beauty as our serenity grows.”

My life is so much simpler when I let go of things and people I can’t control and turn the struggle over. What had been weighing me down is lifted from my shoulders and I feel lighter, more at peace. This frees me to live my life better, unencumbered by negative thoughts for which I have no solutions.

Life can still be good for us; it’s all a matter of perspective.

Serenity Every Day

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Hope for Today, November 12:

“Serenity? What is that? For years I was like a weather vane that spun around according to the air currents that other people generated… I attributed these mood swings to nervousness, lack of assurance, and whoever else occupied the room at the time. Serenity always seemed beyond my control… Where does this serenity come from? It comes from trusting that everything in my life is exactly as it should be… It comes when I choose to care for myself rather than to fix someone else…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: I am powerless over many things, but my serenity is not one of them.”

Trust. That’s a hard one for many of us. I am an adult child, and being able to trust anyone has been difficult. So I became very controlling, trying to manipulate events to suit me. I had no faith that things were happening as they were meant to. I was always forcing outcomes.

But eventually that behavior took a terrible toll on me and my most important relationships. I was far too dependent on others and what was going on in their lives. This weather vane was spinning out of control. I needed to find a way to center myself.

I’ve learned to recognize situations in my life that I have no control over. And I’ve learned to let go of them and the people attached to them. My life is much simpler when I “stay in my own hula hoop” and concentrate on making my own life better. It’s the only thing I have the power to control.

Joyfulness and serenity are the gifts of my recovery. We can all reach for them, and the rewards are amazing!

An Invitation To Joy

Marilea C. Rabasa2 Comments

 

From Each Day A New Beginning, June 28:

“‘Joy fixes us to eternity and pain fixes us to time. But desire and fear hold us in bondage to time, and detachment breaks the bond.’ ~Simone Weil

…”We are on a trip in this life. And our journey is bringing us closer to full understanding of joy with every sorrowful circumstance. When you or I are one with God, have aligned our will with the will of God, we know joy. We know this, fully, that all is well. No harm can befall us.

Each circumstance in the material realm is an opportunity for us to rely on the spiritual realm for direction, security, understanding. As we turn within, to our spiritual nature, we will know joy.”

I have been growing in my spiritual recovery for fifteen years, and it has been the key to learning to live with my daughter Angie in the grips of heroin addiction. Those of us who love an addict know the pain and frustration involved. We know how addiction destroys far more than the addict; it destroys whole families and, often, we who love them. It almost destroyed me.

But I have been incredibly blessed with some well-meaning interventions over the years, the first from a school counselor who told me to go to Al-Anon to help me deal with Angie’s drug addiction. My work in several twelve-step fellowships has given me the tools to adjust my thinking and change my attitude about a lot of things.

The most important change in my perspective is my habit of gratitude. The best antidote to my grief around losing my daughter is focusing on all the good things in my life, my other children and grandchildren, good health, etc. We all have something to be thankful for.

When I turn my thoughts away from my losses, when I “detach” from Angie, I feel a lightness around my shoulders, and I’m able to live joyfully. I wish that for all my friends here. God Bless!