Letting Go

“Thoughts Become Things, Choose Wisely”

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A simple mantra, but very true. We’ve all heard about “self-talk,” both positive and negative. Negative self-talk is common for those of us who struggle with self-esteem. “Oh I’ll never win that contest, so I’m not gonna bother trying.” It’s not just laziness that forms such an attitude. It’s also the absolute certainty that I’m not gonna win. And to avoid the disappointment of losing, I feel it’s better to not even try. How many times have I been there? Too many to count.

Positive self-talk, on the other hand, says: “What have I got to lose? Nothing! And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be good enough to win.” I guess a healthier perspective would be something like: “Look, winning or losing a contest isn’t everything. If I win, that means my work was better than the other contestants’ entries. And if I lose it means that other entries were better than mine. But it doesn’t mean that mine was bad, It’s important to really believe that. There was just stiff competition.”

In my recovery program, making comparisons is discouraged. We are operating on a level playing field. We learn to accept ourselves as we are, warts and all. Unlike the contest above, we recognize that we are all equals. And when we tell ourselves that, we cease feeling inferior to anyone else. We all have defects and strengths. We work on our defects in the program, to minimize them, and to build on our strengths.

As we learn to do that, to make these self-affirmations, we are building up our self-confidence, and positive self-talk comes to us more frequently. These thoughts become part of our makeup. They solidify and become things we can rely on. So since thoughts can become real things in our lives, we learn to choose the good ones.

“What You Allow Is What Will Continue”

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Many of us do it, at first anyway. Sometimes it’s easier to take the path of least resistance. We are so terribly stretched out to begin with. We see our children caught in the vise of substance use disorder, and it’s natural to want to make things easier for them.

I paid off my daughter’s huge debts. Big mistake. And was she grateful? No! “How could you be so stupid, Mom? Now they’ll see that as an admission of guilt!” Oh yes, she knew all the ins and outs of this game she was playing with the law. And I naively thought I was “helping” her. By interfering like that, I was just encouraging her to rely on me bailing her out all the time. When she stole my identity and the credit card agency begged me to call the police, I did nothing, denying her the accountability she deserved. The lesson she might have learned. The chance to look at herself and turn her life around.

Far from being a help to my daughter, I was very much in the way, a big hindrance to her getting better from the disease that was claiming her. I needed to adopt a “hands-off” approach and let life unfold for her logically. The chances are that eventually her unlawful behavior would catch up with her. And she would have to face some consequences. And learn something.

The stakes might be higher this time. She wasn’t caught cheating on a quiz in school and had to get an F as punishment. This time she might be breaking the law and, if caught, might face a harsher penalty. Every parent’s fear, and possibly the only way my daughter would see the need for her  behavior to change.

So I stopped allowing my daughter to use me like an ATM machine, among other things. This is when she cut me out of her life. And whether or not she’s still indulging in the same behavior, at least I’m not encouraging it to continue by making everything easier for her and being over-protective. She has very likely found new sources of money.

The price I’ve paid? I haven’t seen her in 13 years. My Higher Power is protecting me from the guilt—and longing to seduce her back into my life, no matter the cost.

And her Higher Power is there for her as well, ready to help her whenever she asks for it.

I sleep well at night now, knowing that our fates are in God’s capable hands.

15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy

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  1. “Give up your need to always be right.
  2. Give up your need to control.
  3. Give up blame.
  4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk.
  5. Give up your limiting beliefs.
  6. Give up complaining.
  7. Give up the luxury of criticism.
  8. ‘Give up your need to impress others.
  9. Give up your resistance to change.
  10. Give up labels.
  11. Give up on your fears.
  12. Give up your excuses.
  13. Give up the past.
  14. Give up attachment.
  15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations.”

Just For Today

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From Hope For Today: September 5:

“…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.

“We Are All Broken. That’s How The Light Gets In.”

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“This journey of mine, this parenting journey, would involve going two steps forward sometimes and then three steps backward. It was not vertical progress I was making, but it was progress. And strangely, the more I kept the focus on myself and striving to be happy, the easier it was to let go of my child. I knew I had paid my dues, and I feared no one’s judgment, least of all God’s.

I’ve railed at God many, many times during these twenty-three years of joy and pain, this God they speak of at Twelve-Step meetings. How many times had I sinned in my life? Many, more than I want to remember. And so the child in me had been sure, earlier on, that I was being punished for all of them. It was my karmic payback. “What goes around comes around,” etc. Indeed, for all of my life, before my breakdown, I had no faith in anything or anyone other than myself. I grew up very lonely and isolated, and if there was a god, he wasn’t paying any attention to me. So I learned to be very independent and self-reliant.

But when I finally found myself on my knees, I felt broken and whole at the same time: broken because my MO for dealing with my problems hadn’t been working; and whole because I finally let myself believe in something outside of myself to strengthen me, to fill in the gaps that were missing in me, and to help me cope. I was starting to develop and cling to a faith that assured me that I was not being punished and that I would be OK in the end, no matter what happened to my daughter. And I realized that fighting her battles for her was not only a waste of time; it was also useless and of questionable value.

My energies, spent though they were, would be better directed toward reclaiming my own life, which had been sorely compromised in the fight to save my daughter. And in reclaiming my own life, I was bidding for my redemption, long overdue, but just within my reach. This was my journey now, I knew it; I sadly accepted it. I wanted us to be connected but we weren’t. I wanted her struggle to be our struggle, but it wasn’t. I wanted to save her life but I couldn’t. I could only save my own. And I’d keep working at it—or this relentless disease would claim two more victims instead of one.” ~Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, by Maggie Romero, 2014

Carpe Diem

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Spending too much time regretting our past mistakes and/or fearing what may happen in the future keeps us from looking at what’s right in front of us: the here and now. But the present moment is all that’s real and something we can hold onto. So I will try to be present and attentive to what’s going on right now. That’s how I can relish what’s good in my life and enjoy the ride.

What will be will be. I can’t control the outcome of the future. So why even think about it? I’ll focus on the present moment and work with things I can control, like the laundry! J Yesterday is over and done. Tomorrow isa faraway dream. I’ll keep my mind on today and make the most of my life as it is. That’s the only way I can be truly happy.

“Living Well Is The Best Revenge”

Marilea C. Rabasa2 Comments

I’ve received many emails from moms asking me how I cope with the living death of Annie’s substance use disorder.. 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 my daughter’s memory in this way, and I truly believe she would want me to live well and be happy. Blessings to you, Mom.”

“Deal From Strength”

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From “The Forum,” October, 2014:

“Before I came to Al-Anon, when I was figuring out if I was okay, I had a mental checklist: is my daughter okay, is my son okay, and is my husband okay? If I could answer yes to all of those, then I knew I was okay. When I could no longer deny that my teenage son had a big problem with substance use disorder, I was no longer able to feel okay, because he wasn’t okay. I had it backwards.

In Al-Anon, I’m learning how to be okay without first checking in with my loved ones to see if they are okay, If they aren’t, maybe I can say or do something helpful; maybe not. I will still be okay. The action I take is much more likely to be effective if I am acting or speaking from a place of serenity. And with serenity I can begin to let go of the outcome, knowing I have done all I can and that I am powerless over the rest.”

All I can add to these wise words is another saying I’ve picked up along the way: “Deal from strength.”  So often in life our actions, and more often reactions, are born out of fear. When my daughter robbed me, I was afraid that if I had her arrested she would be scarred forever, when in fact it might have taught her a valuable lesson about consequences. This is an example of enabling at its worst. My fear governed that very poor decision. Now, through the wisdom I have learned in the rooms, I do things differently. I make choices, not out of fear, but based on what I feel is right. I deal from the strength of my convictions. Then I can let go of outcomes and be at peace with myself.

Self-Love

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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.