Recovery

“God, Grant Me The Serenity…”

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Memoir Excerpt:

“Blissful dishonesty—that’s what I indulged in for five days in San Francisco. We were walking in parallel universes. Well, we had been for years, but it’s a strange feeling when you’re together up close. I chose to overlook the obvious. One word from me, one reprimand, one emotional “Give up drugs, Angie, or you will die!” would have sent her back across the cable car tracks and I wouldn’t see her again. This was the truce we had made together at the beginning of my visit. It ensured that she would see me at all. And I wanted to see her. At this point in our long goodbye, I never knew if I would see her again. It was such a desolate, helpless feeling. Let go, Maggie, I thought to myself, she has her own Higher Power and you, dear girl, had better cling to yours. You’re gonna need Him more than ever now.

This was where I was in my recovery as I left San Francisco, at that hard won place I’d fought through years of resistance to find: the end of the battle—acceptance. I had tried to help her over the years and admittedly made so many mistakes: I begged, I pleaded, I covered up, I manipulated, I enabled, I moved boundaries so often I couldn’t even find them anymore. I confronted her behavior; then I did the opposite, lapsing into momentary denial.”

Taking Care Of Ourselves

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Wisdom From The Rooms:

“In Al-Anon we learn how to exchange a wishbone for a backbone (with love).”

Setting and enforcing boundaries with our loved ones is difficult, and can seem harsh at times. But many of us see all too clearly the effects of drug use on our loved ones: the loss of their moral compass which can lead to lying, stealing, verbal abuse and worse, all as a result of flooding their brains with dangerous chemicals. It can become a matter of our survival to stay strong and take care of ourselves, even when that means making excruciating choices. At the end of the day, we owe it to everyone else in our lives to survive and try to live well. Then, God willing, if the addict needs us to walk through recovery with him/her, we’ll be strong enough to do so.

Love, Change, and Moving Forward

Marilea C. Rabasa4 Comments

Memoir Excerpt:

“My Twelve-Step recovery, so far, has brought me a great deal of gratitude and serenity, mostly when I remember that voice from God telling me to let go of control and resistance. Yet there’s another part of me that hurts terribly when I witness the destruction of my daughter at the hands of Addiction. How can I be well while Angie is so sick? I’ve spent all these years searching for an answer.

Meghan O’Rourke, author of The Long Goodbye, in an interview discussing her own grief about losing her mother, says this: “I’m changed by it, the way a tree is changed by having to grow around an obstacle.

It’s the subliminal mother force in me. Grief and loss—they change us. I keep getting beamed onto Planet X, then back again, my molecules getting rearranged every time. Just as Angie has changed, so have I. I’ve loved my daughter as best I could for half of my life. How can losing her to this living death not change me?”

Stirring The Pot

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memoir-witches

I love this cartoon from the New Yorker. But it’s not why I published my memoir. I suppose some authors put their stories out there for less than altruistic purposes. My motive was to heal from the disease that has crippled my family and me for generations. Many people still think of addiction as a choice or moral failing. So where I fully expect compassion from most people, I still feel judgment from some of those who have never walked in my shoes. And those are the people who will look at this cartoon and might say, “Hell, yes, she’s plotting to wipe out those people who nearly ruined her life!”

No, I’m not. “Those” people are my people, and we’ve all been swirling around in the maelstrom of addiction for a long time. Addiction is emerging from the shadows and people are talking openly about it. The shame and stigma are starting to evaporate, and people are viewing addicts in a new light, deserving of as much compassion as any other sick person.

And those witches stirring their cauldron, planning to poison the evildoers who wronged them? They’ll be out of a job.

An Attitude of Gratitude

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From Courage to Change, August 30:

“Normally my sponsor would recommend a gratitude list when I felt low, but one day, when I complained about a family situation, he suggested that I list all the things I was unhappy about. Several days later my depression had passed, and when I told my sponsor about the terrific day I was having, he suggested a gratitude list. He thought it might help me to refer to it the next time I felt blue. That made sense to me, so I complied.

When I went to put this new list in the drawer where I keep my papers, I noticed the earlier list and read it once more. To my surprise, my list of grievances was almost identical to my gratitude list—the same people, same house, same life. Nothing about my circumstances had changed except the way I felt about them. For the first time I truly understood how much my attitude dictates the way I experience the world.

Today’s Reminder:

Today I recognize how powerful my mind can be. I can’t always feel good, and I have no interest in whitewashing my difficulties by pasting a smile on my face. But I recognize that I am constantly making choices about how how I perceive my world. With the help of Al-Anon and my friends in the fellowship, I can make these choices more consciously and more actively than ever before.”

‘Change your thoughts and you change your world.’ Norman Vincent Peale

I can make an effort to be grateful instead of sad. It’s a conscious choice—because I want to be happy.

 

Whereto, Persephone?

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Memoir Excerpt:

In a letter to my daughter:

“‘I imagine in your mind you feel justified in treating me so badly. But I’m here to tell you: no, you’re not, not now, not ever again.  If you can’t muster the consideration and respect that I deserve, then we need more space.  And that’s my recovery at work.’

She was in San Francisco now and crashed on her sister’s sofa. Caroline, still recovering from her initial bout with Crohn’s disease back in October, was very welcoming and didn’t put too much pressure on her to find her own place. But Angie needed to find some space of her own and was fortunate within a couple of weeks to find a group home right around the corner from her sister, on Harrison Street. She bought a bike and enjoyed tooling around the Mission.

Then, while I was still reeling from December, she ended up in another hospital at the end of January, on IV antibiotics for the second time…

 

Angie ran away from Virginia only to find out that she couldn’t leave the addict behind. I’ll never know exactly how she ended up in the hospital for the second time, and it doesn’t matter. Angie was a grown woman learning to live in a new city. Her sister was close but unlikely to be drawn into her drama. Caroline knew a few addicts and knew plenty about addiction. But she was carefully and lovingly detached. Angie was really on her own again with no parents around. She was at yet another crossroads where she was faced with the same choices that had confronted her many times before. Would addiction continue to squeeze the life and humanity out of my daughter as it had in the past? Or would she be able to fight her demons on her own? “

“Let Go, Or Be Dragged”

Marilea C. Rabasa6 Comments

Memoir Excerpt:

“Eventually I got to a place where I admitted—no, I accepted—my powerlessness over her disease, though it was counterintuitive for me to do so. By accepting her disease it still sometimes felt like I was giving up, like I didn’t care. Nothing could be further from the truth. But I had to walk over a lot of hot coals before I would know how much I loved Angie. In time I became detached enough to look at her, feel nothing but compassion and love for her, and discuss things intellectually. It was no longer my personal mission to try to change my daughter into the person I wanted her to be. I was not Angie, and she was not me. We were separate people, and I no longer felt that her illness and/or what she chose to do about it reflected on me. This was tremendously freeing for me.

Or, as one parent writes in Sharing Experience, Strength and Hope: ‘Let go, or be dragged.’”

 

Matriarch

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My mother and I had a very difficult relationship for most of my life. But as I started to grow in my recovery, it was easy for me to forgive her. And as I’ve learned to forgive those who have wounded me in my life, it’s been easier to forgive myself for my own shortcomings. The healing power of forgiveness is great.

Memoir Excerpt:

“That day as I walked out of my mother’s room, I turned to look at her one more time. When she was young, she was a striking beauty, with brunette hair. As she aged her hair lost its color prematurely. I’ll never forget the dreadful blue rinse she used to put on her hair to cover the gray. Then there was the reddish dye. Finally, I’m not sure exactly when, she stopped messing with the color and one day, like a full moon against a dark sky, her hair was as white as freshly fallen snow. It was gorgeous.

Her eyes had closed and she looked so peaceful. This time, I knew, was the last time I would see her in this body. I just knew. But I didn’t feel sad. I didn’t run back to her and hug her one more time, the way we do when we want to push back death. Any anxiety, had I done that, would have transferred right to her, undoing all the journeying Hospice was at that moment attempting. But I had no anxiety. I walked away. I knew she was embarking on her own journey now, and there was only room for one passenger.”

 

My Glass Is Half Full

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Daily Word, May 7:

I Create My Own Joy

“Joyfulness is a choice. I know my thoughts can affect my feelings. If I feel resentful, angry or fearful, I take a moment to look at why I feel this way. This is my point of choice. I can consider various ways to see a situation or person. In so doing, I may be able to change my feelings from down and destructive to joyful and constructive.

I look for and find reasons to be joyful. As I choose happiness, others feel it too.”

My daughter is a drug addict, in and out of recovery for fourteen years. We are completely estranged right now. Many of us know the pain of that kind of loss, where our addicts are alive but not in our lives. Yet I also have two happy children and two wonderful grandchildren. I have more years behind me than ahead of me, and I want to make the most of my life now. I choose not to count my losses, but to celebrate my blessings. I choose joy.