Boundaries do not have to be angry walls that shut other people out. They are a form of assertion and self-affirmation. In the spirit of friendship.
They tell people: “This is what I need in my life, and I need you to acknowledge and respect it. When you do, things will work well in our relationship. But if you don’t, if you cross lines and disrespect my boundaries, our relationship might break down and stop working. I will probably exit the relationship out of self-respect.”
Boundaries are not there for others. They are there for our self-regard—to benefit us.
“…In Step Four I realized I was stuck in the past. My daily thoughts were usually about plans for the next day, week, or even month. I always anticipated tomorrow to the point where it became my today. I’d get so caught up in what I was going to do that I often wasn’t aware of what I was doing now.
After realizing this character defect and asking my Higher Power to remove it, each day I have is usually better than the one before. I give thanks for the little joys in each day. I still make plans, but I don’t let my thoughts erase the present. Anticipation is sweet, but not at the cost of today.
When I look back on this in the context of alcoholism, I understand why I behaved as I did. With all the awful happenings at home, there were many todays I didn’t want to experience. As a child, I had limited options, so the best way to escape was to flee into the possibility of a better tomorrow. I have different choices now. I know enjoying my day and doing the right thing for myself and my Higher Power is the best plan for an even better tomorrow.
Thought For The Day: Just for today I choose to enjoy all this day has to offer. If I don’t like the offering, I’ll ask my Higher Power to help me adjust my attitude.”
This reading ends with something that I have found to be true: attitude is everything. My daughter, whose disease brought me into the rooms, is still lost to the disease that claimed her 23 years ago. And for too many years I ignored the tools of the program and saw my life as a tragedy. But after much work and recovery of my own, I’ve learned to adjust my perspective.
Yes, my daughter is lost to me, but there are other people in my life who need me. I have another daughter who’s getting married, and I rejoice in that. I have a son and grandchildren who live nearby and it makes me happy when I see them and how well they are.
My life is varied, with friends and other family members, a sister with whom I’ve reconciled and I rejoice in that. I can distance my heart and mind just far enough from my grief over Annie to take pleasure in my blessings. I don’t obsess over my loss nor define myself by it. It’s part of the fabric of my life, good and bad, happy and sad, just like everyone else.
What my recovery program has enabled me to do is keep Annie in my heart, but focus on all that remains.
Unlocking the key to this is the key to 12-Step recovery, because with it we become empowered to intelligently deal with the substance use disorder of a loved one. In a letter to another parent I said, “ I love my daughter with all my heart and soul. But it’s been learning how to love and value myself that has elevated me from the reality I live with—“elevate,” as in rise above, detach from, avoid becoming enmeshed in and manipulated by the addict. Oh, it’s a sad, sorry catechism we mothers of addicts must learn in order to survive the substance use disorder of a child.
But if we can create even a little bit of distance and objectivity from the problem that is consuming us, we might be gifted with some freedom: to look around us and appreciate (and allow ourselves to be distracted by)) other blessings in our lives, whether it’s a good job, good health, other healthy children, grandchildren, or a sunny day. Life goes on, relentlessly, with or without us. I choose to live well in the time I have left. My recovery has taught me that I deserve to.
“What does another person’s mood, tone of voice, or state of inebriation have to do with my course of action? Nothing— unless I decide otherwise….
Detachment with love means that I stop depending on what others do, say, or feel to determine my own well-being or to make my decisions. When faced with other people’s destructive attitudes or behavior, I can love their best and never fear their worst.
‘Detachment is not caring less, it’s caring more for my own sanity.’”
Well, it took me a long time to get to this place, where I felt I deserved to be sane and healthy. I needed to shed a lot of baggage—things like guilt, low self-worth, and the thrill of martyrdom—in order for Al-Anon to work its magic on me. Guilt, in particular, cripples us and puts at risk when we need to set limits. Not until I did this was I able to set healthy boundaries with the people in my life. Like all card-carrying codependents, I didn’t know where I ended and the other person began. I was enmeshed in everyone’s difficulties, my daughter’s most of all, which effectively kept me from facing myself in the mirror and dealing with my own defects and resulting problems.
I’ve learned many healthy life skills in my program of recovery, and I would pass them on whenever I could. As Forest Gump’s mom would say: “Life is a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” That’s true of course. But the secret of being happy is making the best of what you get, no matter what that may be.
I was on the tour boat in the caldera of Santorini and we were approaching Oia at the end of the day, hopeful to catch the sunset from that end of the island. Oia, and most of the towns on Santorini, looked like horizontal white jewels, sparkling against the sun’s rays, perched atop this rock in the Mediterranean. It was a stunning sight and can only be appreciated like this from down below.
We disembarked and decided to forego the smelly donkey ride up to the city, deciding to walk up. I was immediately drawn to the Church of Panagia Platsani. After entering the cathedral, I went right to the candles and lit one for my estranged daughter, Annie. I found this to be wonderful nourishment for my soul. The cynical me said, “Oh well, another money maker.” But the believer in me said, “Listen to me, God. I’m talking to you now. This is my prayer.”
I’ve heard it said that prayer is talking to God, and meditation is listening to Him. I did a lot of praying in Greece, in many Greek Orthodox churches. I spent a tidy sum of money, money I could have invested in souvenirs. But I chose to invest in prayer in the country where I began to lose my daughter thirty-five years ago.
“Losing my daughter…” We learn so much by craning our necks and looking backwards. We gain so much clarity through hindsight.
It’s very hard, this practice of letting go, and the faith I’ve been gradually acquiring these past many years has been a lifeline. It’s kept me from permanently free falling into despair—that black hole of uselessness—as I’ve been letting go of having Annie in my life. Only a mother can know the glue that binds her to her child, and all mothers must let go of their children. “They come through you,” Kahlil Gibran says, “yet they belong not to you.”
Letting go is a constant discipline for all of us. But letting go when your child will be coming back is one thing. Letting go when they’re gone—that’s something else. My girl has a brain disease and has been pumping her body with substances that have caused a lot of brain damage. It’s a very cruel thief, substance abuse. It robs you of yourself. My daughter Annie no longer resides in that body.
So I light candles in the country where circumstances threw her into a tailspin of depression. Her parents divorced and she rarely saw her father afterwards. Annie got through adolescence adequately, but she was a grenade waiting to explode. When she was twenty-one and a college graduate, she plunged into the dark world of drug addiction and has remained in that never-never land ever since—that fantasy world where what you want never comes and so you need to get more…
My faith has come to me, not like a burning bush, but in increments over my own years of recovery from this.
“Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.”
Earth’s renewal is manifest all around the globe. Seasons around the world are remarkably varied, depending on climate and geography. Where I originally come from, New England, we have four seasons, distinct from one another. The chilly autumns at that latitude create the deep reds in the leaves in Vermont, for example, whereas the leaves blanketing the Rio Grande River, due to the heat, rarely achieve that color.
I lived in the Rio Grande Valley of Albuquerque for a decade, and though we had four seasons, they were noticeably different from New England, both in their timeframes and their intensity. One could say that New Mexico is a land of extremes, never made more clear than by the prominence of its seasons.
In Albuquerque, the leaves change color from the frosty night air. This is a welcome change from the brutal heat of the summer. But there, the leaves turn saffron yellow, not the reds I used to see in New England.
In New Mexico, autumn is a gorgeous and productive lingering—well past Thanksgiving. It’s harvest season and the farmer’s markets overflow with abundance from the ground. Many holidays come in autumn and on the cusp of winter. These are always poignant times of the year for me, but now more than ever they are times to take stock and savor all that I have.
Winter drops like a curtain, and a couple of weeks before Christmas, Mother Nature lowers the boom. Winter is bitter in the high desert. Where I lived, there was very little snow. Sandia Mountain, across the rift valley from my farmhouse, attracts all the “weather.” At nearly 6000 feet, the air is cold even with the sun shining, though the temperature rarely drops below freezing.
Winter rings in differently state to state. But universal, in the areas where cold weather does settle into our bones, is the wish to smell spring in the air. This is where geography affects the heralding of spring in the Rio Grande Valley. Powerful winds blow up from the canyons like invisible giants blowing away everything in their path. My first experience of this had me amazed and flummoxed by the fierceness and ferocity of the winds, wondering what happened to the gentle spring times from my youth. But they would come soon enough.
I finally enjoyed watching the trees coming out of dormancy and preening like peacocks, their colorful buds in bloom. I thrilled to see the first flowers peek up from the ground. And gradually I saw the resurgence of nature in all its glory. It is the season of renewal, of new beginnings, as though the earth were starting over.
But spring in Albuquerque ends with an intensity of heat and humidity that is unexpected in one of the driest states in our country. This is because the monsoon season is preparing to unleash itself where it is most needed. Summer is ushered in by the skies opening up to a kaleidoscope of colors at the end of each day. This is when I take cover on the patio to listen for the thunder preceding the deluge of water soaking our gardens. On one occasion it was hail the size of golf balls killing all our tomatoes. Buckets of rainwater cause the gutters along the streets to overflow.
The monsoons leave as abruptly as they began, and July and August settle into an oppressive climate of high temperatures and dust filling the air. The blazing sun, which is a God to the indigenous people of the Diné tribes, became my enemy, and I took refuge inside my house, free from the enervating heat that sapped me of my energy.
By September, as the earth’s axis started to point in the other direction, the intensity of the sun weakened, and the relief of cooler nights began, though the days remained hot.
And so began the cycle of seasons starting over. Autumn and all its colors began to peek though the curtain of summertime dust of brown and gray.
Time is relentless; it doesn’t stop for anyone. Time may be finite, but endless are the possibilities we can do with it. As long as we have time in our lives, we have the chance to start over, just as the sweetness of my honeysuckle hedges signaled the starting over of summer.
Life goes on, and we with it. Whether it’s the seasons we observe, or the seasons of our lives, we are always starting over.
“Through the sharing of other members and the warmth of their friendship, I started to develop a new strength. I recognized my powerlessness, accepted drug substance use disorder as a disease and avoided having expectations. My frustrations began to vanish. With all the knowledge I acquired through the Nar-Anon program, literature and phone support, I became more open-minded. This brought me a sense of serenity and helped me set more realistic goals for myself.”
Would we even be having this conversation if our children were suffering from diabetes? Of course not!
Substance use disorder is a gravely misunderstood disease, shrouded in secrecy, shame and stigma. Bikies, tatooes, and skid row…oh how times have changed! But thanks to the many programs out there that are educating the public about the true nature of addiction—that it’s a brain disease—awareness is increasing and attitudes are slowly changing.
Look how in one generation the American perception of alcoholism has evolved. We had a recovered alcoholic in the White House for eight years, a man who freely admitted that he struggled with alcohol when he was younger. Alcoholism is also a form of substance use disorder, and it’s my fervent hope that Americans will start to view substance abusers with the same compassion offered to many alcoholics. When public perceptions change, so will attitudes toward our addicted children.
My daughter is a heroin addict. If she felt less shame, would she be less isolated? I believe so. In a few other countries, and even in Seattle, WA, there are programs in place to help addicts manage their illness. This support is specifically designed to keep the crime rate down and help addicts be more functional in their daily lives. In my memoir, I wrote about how Gabor Maté, a doctor in Vancouver, has been an advocate for addicts for many years. He has made a big difference in that city.
How I wish things were easier for my daughter, that she be viewed with compassion and not judgment. But I do believe that because of our efforts to raise awareness and set up support programs, life will be easier for future generations. I take a lot of personal comfort in that.
I’m a mother. When my kids were little, it was my job to keep them safe from harm. If they ran across the street with a car coming, I might have spanked them a little so they’d remember to look both ways the next time. Yes: pain; yes: consequences. Yes: both good teachers.
But when my daughter was twenty-one and started making terrible choices, I still thought it was my job to protect her from harm, self-inflicted or otherwise. And I still treated her like a two-year-old.
When she first stole from me early on, I went into a long period of denial and guilt, minimizing my feelings and believing her incredible explanations. My inaction only emboldened her, and she went on to steal in other ways. Several times, she stole my identity, with no explanations. So even when it was clear to me that her behavior was sociopathic, I still behaved inappropriately: I did nothing. Even when the credit card company told me to do something—that it would be a lesson for her—I still did nothing.
Where was the smack on the rear she would have gotten from running across the street? Where were the consequences that would have reminded her to be careful? I presented her with no consequences in the beginning of her illness and so she learned nothing. Her progressive illness got much worse. My guilt was crippling me as an effective parent.
Not until I started working my own program of recovery in Al-Anon was I able to release myself from the hold that was strangling us both. I needed to get out of my daughter’s way. She wasn’t two anymore.
I’ve made a lot of progress since those early days. I’ve learned to let go and leave her to the life she has chosen. Four rehabs helped her turn her life around for a while, yet she always slipped back into her substance abuse disorder and the life that goes with it. But staying out of the way has given me the freedom to take back my life and learn to live joyfully by focusing on my blessings. It has also given her the freedom to take responsibility for her own life and hopefully her own recovery. If she reaches for it again, and I pray she will, how much more rewarding it will be for her to find her own way!
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 down this road until halfway through my life when my daughter fell ill with substance use disorder.
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 of Al-Anon, 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 my daughter 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 more than twenty 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 fill 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 of what I get. 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.
