Letting Go

Finding My Faith

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Memoir Excerpt:

“It wasn’t until I was tested as her mother that I found my ability to harness any faith at all. My sadness as a child paled before my growing despair as an adult child. The journey I’m on now has given me fresh new insights as I’ve confronted myself and understood where I have come from. My journey has in turn helped me understand where I have taken my own family. What was given to me has been passed down to my children. Yet I understand now that I could not have turned out differently, nor could I have been a different parent. My behavior as an adult was scripted from my childhood. What I need now is faith in something outside of myself to help me carry the burden—and gratitude that I’m finally able to ask for help. My faith has everything to do with turning over my self-will and accepting the will of another. I have found peace and serenity in acceptance of life as it is happening every day. Letting go and handing over the reins has given me the freedom to live my own life now without feeling shackled to the past or frightened of the future.”

Seasonal Lessons

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From Daily Word, 9/29/2015:

 “Change: I gracefully move through life’s transitions.

As colder days approach, trees shed their leaves and animals prepare for hibernation. They instinctively move through the seasons. In contrast, humans are prone to resisting change even though we know it is an essential part of growth. I may notice myself worrying or fighting change. Then I remind myself I am able to prepare and move through any change I encounter.

I envision myself shedding old beliefs and ways of being just as a tree releases leaves. Like the hibernating animals, I prepare my mind and body for a time of quiet and reflection. I see divine order in the leaves reappearing each spring. My life also follows a pattern. I emerge from each season stronger, wiser, and more loving.

‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. —Ecclesiastes 3:1’”

Letting Go…Detaching With Love

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Memoir Excerpt:

 “The skill of detachment enables us to create a safe distance between our addict and ourselves, because I have learned from experience that if we don’t, we might be swallowed up by their black hole before we know it.

“As parents, we often feel we don’t deserve this gift of detachment. But we do; I did the best I could with what I had. I have learned how to forgive myself for any mistakes I made with my daughter. It took a long time, but this was an important step, because until we do that, we risk being forever enmeshed in their pain and the mess of their lives if they don’t choose recovery.

“Once we are able to reach some level of detachment, we are freer to work the steps. In hindsight, I see now why I couldn’t really do the first three steps at first as I might have. Guilt was holding me hostage. I simply had not let go of my responsibility in her life, my importance in her life, and therefore my need to “fix” her life. I needed to be humbled, in the best sense of the word.”

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only saps today of its strength.” A.J. Cronin

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From Courage to Change, September 4:

“As we let go of obsession, worry, and focusing on everyone but ourselves, many of us were bewildered by the increasing calmness of our minds. We knew how to live in a state of crisis, but it often took a bit of adjustment to become comfortable with stillness. The price of serenity was the quieting of the constant mental chatter that had taken up so much time; suddenly we had lots of time on our hands and we wondered how to fill it.

Having become more and more serene as a result of working the Al-Anon program, I was surprised to find myself still grabbing for old fears as if I wanted to remain in crisis. I realized that I didn’t feel safe unless I was mentally busy. When I worried, I felt involved—and therefore somewhat in control.

As an exercise, my sponsor suggested that I try to maintain my inner stillness even when I felt scared or doubtful. As I did so, I reassured myself again and again that I was safely in the care of a Power greater than myself. Today I know that sanity and serenity are the gifts I have received for my efforts and my faith. With practice, I am learning to trust the peace.

Today’s Reminder:

Today I will relish my serenity. I know that it is safe to enjoy it.

‘Be still and know that I am with you.’ English prayer”

 

When I was obsessing about Angie, and deeply enmeshed in her constant drama, I felt a lot of things: needed, important, and valued—all of these things not good for my addict because they kept me in my own illness: pandering to her needs and enabling her.

I pray every day to remain detached with love from my precious daughter, the hardest thing in the world, to abandon my need to rescue—and to enjoy the God-given peace I’ve worked so hard to have. I wish the same for us all!

My Love Is Forever

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Memoir Excerpt:

Quote from Cherishing Our Daughters by Dr. Evelyn Bassoff: “ ‘Veronica is learning to live with her real disappointment and to be supportive but not overly invested in her daughter’s life. ‘I am learning important lessons in therapy. One is that the only life you can direct is your own; my good advice (to Anne-Marie) only falls on deaf ears. Unless my daughter musters the courage to make changes, I cannot do anything more for her. And so, over and over again, I say to myself, I am not responsible for the way (Anne-Marie) chooses to live. Another is that you love your child forever not because she is happy or successful or makes you proud but because she is your child.’”

We Deserve Some Peace

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“Enough is enough when the hurt inflicted is greater than the lesson learned.”

All of us on this painful journey arrive here at different times. It took me many years: many years of being manipulated by guilt and finally finding the freedom to let go of it; many years of my determination to save my daughter from the disease that’s killing her, desperate to take control of what I had no control over; and many years of readjusting my focus onto all the wonderful people and gifts in my life. As I said in my memoir, “I have lived a very blessed life,” and to be able to say that in spite of my struggle with Angie, well, that says a lot about the power of spiritual transformation.

Letting Go: Let Me Count The Ways…

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Memoir Excerpt:

“We walked up to this Italian place just beyond the intersection on Market. They served fabulous take-out in big bins, like a salad bar but hot food. Angie and I got what we wanted and sat down. We talked a little about her massage therapist, the apartment she had found and was planning to move into, the pending suit against Wayne Chin. These were safe topics—topics of her choosing. Conversation was awkward. There was no real engagement, no honest connection between my daughter and me. Blissful dishonesty; play it safe. Don’t push her away. I can’t begin to describe the loneliness I felt carrying on this meaningless conversation—and being with this stranger I barely knew anymore. All I could think of was how much I missed her bangs.

I chose to spend these five days in San Francisco in blissful dishonesty, knowing full well that Angie was using drugs right under my nose, but saying nothing about it. Maybe that’s a sign of my ongoing recovery, my letting go. Is it possible that I could have halted in its tracks more than a decade of methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin abuse with a reprimand?

‘You little, fill in the blank. What are you doing now? How could you ruin my visit this way?’

No, I don’t believe so. I’ve known it for years, knew it then and put it into play this last time I saw her on her turf: whether or not my daughter chose recovery and gave up drugs was not up to me; it was up to her. She herself had to embrace recovery from addiction—using whatever method worked for her. I know many addicts who have recovered, and I’ve prayed that she would join them.”

 

The Hardest Thing

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From Courage to Change, one of my favorite daily readers:

“It’s not easy to watch someone I love continue to drink, but I can do nothing to stop them. If I see how unmanageable my life has become, I can admit that I am powerless over the disease. Then I can really begin to make my life better.”

And from my memoir: “This is the hardest thing about letting go of those we love strangling in the clutches of addiction: watching them do the dance by themselves—and staying on the sidelines. If I live to be as old as my mother when she died, I’ll never experience anything harder.”

Chasing The Butterfly

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From Each Day A New Beginning, July 19:

‘At fifteen, life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.’—Maya Angelou

“We had to surrender to a power greater than ourselves to get where we are today. And each day, we have to turn to that power for strength and guidance. For us, resistance means struggle—struggle with others as well as an internal struggle.

Serenity isn’t compatible with struggle. We cannot control forces outside of ourselves. We cannot control the actions of our family or our co-workers. We can control our responses to them. And when we choose to surrender our attempts to control, we will find peace and serenity.

That which we abhor, that which we fear, that which we wish to conquer seems suddenly to be gone when we decide to resist no more—to tackle it no more.

The realities of life come to us in mysterious ways. We fight so hard, only to learn that what we need will never be ours until the struggle is forsaken. Surrender brings enlightenment.”