marilea.rabasa@gmail.com

Learning From Repetition

by | Aug 7, 2019 | Awaremess, brain disease, change, Letting Go, Recovery, Surrender |

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~Aristotle I remember when my daughter Angie was in early recovery, a doctor we knew told her to replace the using habit with something else, something healthful. Any habit, good or bad, takes up time in our lives. When we want to rid ourselves of bad habits, according to this doctor, we need to replace them with something else that is pleasurable. Easier said than done, of course, when drugs are surrendered in favor of something else. But creating good habits takes commitment, determination and time. Many addicts give up drugs and rebuild their lives. They just have to stay committed to sobriety. My wish for all of us caught one way or another in the hellish world of addiction is that we find a better way to live—a way to live well and be...

Awareness, Acceptance, Action

by | Jul 31, 2019 | Attitudes, Awaremess, change, Courage, empowerment, Fear, Freedom, Letting Go, Recovery |

“The universe is run exactly on the lines of a cafeteria. Unless you claim—mentally—what you want, you may sit and wait forever.” ~Emmet Fox Fear has always kept me from asking for what I want. But the older I get, the less I care about rejection. Living fully means facing that on a regular basis. And I always learn something. Maybe I learn that my request was ill-timed or inappropriate. Other times I might learn that I asked for just the right thing, but it was denied. I can spend hours ruminating on why it was denied, driving myself batty. Or I can accept that things worked out differently, and let it go. My energy is better spent on other things I have control over now. That’s important. Because wasting my energy on things I can’t do anything about saps my strength—strength I need to stay in...

Expectations

by | Jul 3, 2019 | Acceptance, Attitudes, Expectations, Fear, Letting Go, Memoir Writing, Recovery, The Family |

Memoir excerpt: “In recovery, we learn to profoundly adjust our expectations, hard as it is. We raised one child, and now we have another. We are all too aware of the change that drugs have produced in our children. A parent wrote in Sharing Experience, Strength and Hope a very revealing statement, something I could have written myself. It is a key to understanding my story, my mother and father’s stories, and my daughter’s painful struggle: ‘I expected my children to be perfect, to always do the right thing. I tried to control them by giving them direction and making them do things in a way that I felt was correct! When they didn’t, I could not handle it. I could not accept their drug use and I felt that their behavior was a reflection on me. I was embarrassed for myself and scared to death for them. I became so distrusting of my children that I showed them no respect. I would meddle and invade their privacy looking for any excuse to challenge and confront them. When I came to Nar-Anon, I learned that my interference and my attempts at controlling them were actually standing in the way of their recovery. I learned to let go of the control I never had in the first place.'” You can find my book, A Mother’s Story: Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, by Maggie C. Romero (pseudonym) on...

Make Room For Love

by | Jun 19, 2019 | Attitudes, Forgiveness, Letting Go, Recovery, Serenity |

1 From Courage to Change, December 8: “As I release my resentments, I can extend compassion to the alcoholics in my life. I can love myself enough to love them too, even though I hate the disease that hurts us both. I become so full of love and compassion that I can’t keep it bottled up inside. I need to share it with others. My compassion becomes the healing light of my Higher Power shining through me to welcome and comfort other friends and family members of alcoholics.” “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” I have observed how anger and resentment have made people I know sick. So I’ve never forgotten this quote that I picked up in the rooms. Whenever I start to feel burdened with resentment towards someone, my blood pressure goes up and I lose my serenity. That’s when I make an effort to shed it like a dog’s coat in the summer. The dog is much cooler and I feel...

The Power Of Each Moment

by | May 29, 2019 | Acceptance, Attitudes, empowerment, Letting Go, Recovery |

From Each Day A New Beginning, April 15: “’It seems to me that I have always been waiting for something better—sometimes to see the best I had always snatched from me.’ ~Dorothy Reed Mendenhall Gratitude for what is prepares us for the blessings just around the corner. What is so necessary to understand is that our wait for what’s around the corner closes our eyes to the joys of the present moment…We can, each of us, look back on former days, realizing that we learned too late the value of a friend or an experience…When we detach from the present and wait for tomorrow…we are stunting our spiritual growth. Life can only bless us now, one breath at a time.” Attitude is everything in my life. I have losses. Everyone does. I can waste time regretting the past or projecting into an uncertain future. Today I can keep my feet planted on the ground and open my eyes. This is how I choose to live. My recovery program has assured me that I will always have choices, and I can only try to do the next right...