Letting Go

Doing Nothing…For The Moment

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Hope For Today, October 15:

 “I need to spend a lot of time doing nothing. I watched the world pass by as I berated myself for not accomplishing anything. When I did take action, it was often a reaction. I reacted impulsively and compulsively to the words and behaviors of everyone around me. Itb seemed as though I was always ricocheting off two walls, one marked ‘inactive’ and the other marked ‘reactive.’

I need to remember to cultivate a balance between action and inaction. Impulsiveness can be as much a trap as immobility…It helps me to remember that a period of inner waiting and preparation, what I used to call doing nothing, takes place before I can realize which action to take. When my Higher Power and I are ready, everything falls into place in a way that never could have happened had I acted alone.”

 

In the program there is a saying: “Sit there; don’t do anything.” In other words, all my frantic fixing, doing, and attempts to protect are often counterproductive and achieve just the opposite, especially if I haven’t thought things through first. And experience has shown me to use prayer and meditation as I go through this process. All too often fear will lead me to make unwise decisions. When I slow down and ask for help, doing nothing for the moment, I feel more confident in the choices I make.

Enabling Is Not Helping

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From Thirty-One Days in Naranon, Day 6:

“It was difficult for me to understand enabling and to realize that instead of helping the addict to get better, I was really helping him to continue to use. Enabling was what I used to do by loaning him the car, covering his bad checks, replacing the things he “lost,” making excuses for the things he did wrong, and hosting his parties. I thought that by being kind and helpful, everything would be okay.

It was the Nar-Anon program and group members who opened my eyes. It felt good to learn that by enabling the addict, I was performing tasks for which he was responsible. It didn’t matter what my reason for enabling him was, I was preventing him from suffering the consequences of his own actions.”

In my memoir, I wrote, “Years later in one of my support groups in New Mexico, a friend shared how she had to lock everything up in her house. She’d lock the jewelry here, the silver there. She had a different key for everything place, and one time she was so flummoxed by her son that she lost all her keys! We laughed together at that one, grateful that we could still laugh. This is what it comes to for many of us parents. We erect walls to protect ourselves, keeping the addicts out. And then, of course, we feel guilty about doing that.”

In the rooms I’ve heard many times: “What we allow will continue.” So I don’t allow Angie to abuse our relationship anymore. We are no longer dependent on each other. I’m on my journey and she must follow her own path. At this fork in the road, when parents stop making life easy for their addict, many of them are forced to see themselves more honestly and attempt recovery. Many succeed.

This was a very difficult choice for me, but I was drowning in my codependence. I needed to pay attention to the rest of my life and let go of Angie. As I have found peace on my spiritual path, I pray she will too someday.

“Changed Attitudes Can Aid Recovery”

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From Each Day A New Beginning, June 29:

“Self-pity is a parasite that feeds on itself. Many of us are inclined toward self-pity, not allowing for the balance of life’s natural tragedies. We will face good and bad times—and they will pass. With certainty they will pass…

Recovery is learning new responses, feeling and behaving in healthier ways. We need not get caught by self-pity. We can always feel it coming on. And we can let it go.”

In my recovery program, I’ve leaned that I have choices. I don’t have to be on automatic pilot anymore. “Awareness, acceptance, action”—the 3 A’s. I can choose new attitudes. I can choose acceptance and gratitude. Then happiness will follow me.

“Keep It Simple”

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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!

 

 

 

The Power Of Faith

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From Hope For Today, June 13:

“…What I had overlooked in Step Two was the word ‘Power.’ The day I started placing my attention on that Power instead of on insanity, I began to see miracles in my life. One such miracle was my ability to talk about my fears in Al-Anon meetings. Other miracles included taking the Twelve Steps that lead me to serenity, and engaging in the process of forgiving and healing.”

It has taken many years of hearing Step Two read at meetings for me to really hear the word ‘Power.’ Now I realize how much more awesome my Higher Power is than this disease. Instead of dwelling in fear, today I am striving to pass on the miracles of recovery to my children.

 

 

Am I Helping Or Enabling?

Marilea C. Rabasa2 Comments

Memoir Excerpt:

 “Rehab was mostly clear sailing for Angie. But there was one incident at the end of March that was upsetting: she snuck out beyond curfew with a friend and got drunk. She came back eventually, very repentant, and good-naturedly accepted her loss of privileges. The staff felt obligated to call me about the incident. I wasn’t sure what it all meant, but I joked with Gene that she has acted out more since she was twenty-one than she had in her whole life!

I’ve heard it said that once drug abuse takes hold in someone, they stop growing emotionally and remain stuck. Angie was thirty that year but clearly acted like a rebellious teenager. And up until the present when she found the courage to break away from me, she had been almost completely dependent on her father and me. But we, addicted as we were to her, made that easy for her. From time to time throughout her addiction, she fought to establish her independence from us. Then she would turn around and ask for help. I wanted so much for her to take charge of her own life, but later on it would be crystal clear: Addiction was in control and was happy for any handouts. Drugs cost money.”

 

I made many mistakes early in Angie’s addiction. Taking over too many of her responsibilities, I should have closed the bank sooner. I often say that deep pockets are dangerous. They allow us to be generous and feel good about it. A friend in Virginia told me that she’s glad she didn’t have the money to bail her son out of jail. He was forced to stay and feel the consequences of his behavior. It taught him a lesson, and he chose to go into recovery when he got out. He’s doing very well today. I see an important lesson in that.

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.”

“Living Well Is The Best Revenge”

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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.”

 

Letting Go…Over And Over Again

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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.