Ironic, isn’t it, that you have become my teacher and not the other way around—teacher of life, teacher of love, and beacon of surrender.
I’m so grateful that you were born, even though at times I’ve felt otherwise. God works in mysterious ways, doesn’t he? Though you haven’t been in my life long, and not always happily, it’s been your very existence that has propelled me into a serenely spiritual life, even happiness. I never would have done the work necessary to reach this place without your inspiration.
You are my child, my teacher. As I’ve stumbled on this rocky path, my thoughts of you have guided me; they guide me still.
All that I’ve become are gifts from you, my daughter: life lessons, trial by fire. How do I honor you?
Let Go and Let God (p. 28, 95, 107, 125131,n163, 220, 294, 361) “Every day there are decisions to be made and problems to be solved. When we notice irritations growing into tensions, tensions into near-panic, and old fears returning, it is time to stop and turn to God. We find that when we supply the willingness, He supplies to power.”
Remember, “our best thinking got us into the rooms.” In other words, our minds can be dangerous places to go without some help. In Al-Anon we turn to a Higher Power. It can be God, a tree, or the group itself. As long as it’s not just us. Our egos and willfulness can blind us so much to taking a healthy course of action. And we’re just trying to help our children, so it’s easy to rationalize and justify our actions. That’s where educating myself about the disease gripping my daughter has been so critical for me. Over time I finally accepted that I didn’t have the power to save her from her disease. That was a hard pill to swallow, but a necessary one. I learned to let go and concentrate on what I could control. That’s when I started to feel free and serene and able to move forward with my life. I wish the same for all my brothers and sisters in these rooms. God Bless!
What is your favorite slogan? Page quotes are from One Day At A Time:
Easy Does It (p. 19, 111, 189, 238, 301) “When we come into Al-Anon, burdened with problems and confusion, we are confronted with a bright light of hope. This may tempt us to try too hard to learn, too quickly, all there is to learn about the program.”
So, take in what you can when you can, at your own pace. Many people leave before the miracle happens because they felt overwhelmed. I’m so very glad I didn’t and stuck around.
“Serenity? What’s that? For years I was like a weather vane that spun around according to the air currents that other people generated…I attributed these mood swings to nervousness, lack of assurance, and whoever else occupied the room at the time. Serenity always seemed beyond my control…where does this serenity come from? It comes from trusting that everything in my life is exactly as it should be…it comes when I choose to care for myself rather than to fix someone else…
Thought for the day: I am powerless over many things, but my serenity is not one of them.”
Trust—a kind of steadiness— leads to surrender which leads to freedom.
This is a recipe for lemonade. But first you’ll need a few lemons. You can’t make this delicious fruit drink without the sour bitterness from the lemon tree. How you get from one to the other is not so complicated. Not if you want to live well.
Gene and I took a camping trip to Orcas Island recently. Probably just to prove to ourselves that we could still do it. Over the past thirty years, we have camped in some of the most horrible conditions imaginable: from near hurricane-force winds in the middle of the night that blew our tent off over our heads; to swarming black flies that sucked the living daylights out of me. But we were much younger then…
The first lemon on this trip was that I absentmindedly booked the 5:55 am ferry out of Anacortes. I must have been asleep when I did that. Wild horses couldn’t have gotten us to a ferry at that hour. So we showed up at 12:35 when I thought we’d be leaving.
“Sorry, but can’t you see the 5:55 am time on this receipt? Go wait in the standby line.”
“Thanks, pal.”
Lemonade? We made it onto the ferry.
The next lemon on our Orcas trip was where we camped. Now, I knew better than to wait to the last minute to make a reservation. So in December of 2023 I secured a spot in Moran State Park on the island. The last one available! I felt so lucky. But I should have known better. Sometimes I think with cotton in my brain. Why was it the very last one available? Because no one else wanted it, dummy. I knew it wasn’t close to the water, yet I didn’t realize how far away it would be to schlep our canoe and kayak into the lake. But site #83 must have easily been the worst site in the whole park. Sandwiched in between many other sites and the restroom, there was naturally a steady stream of people and screaming babies on their way to the bathroom right through our site. So, no privacy. No view. No water.
Lemonade from this lemon? We didn’t have to walk far to pee; and there was trash and a water spout right next to us.
Speaking of our boats, of all the beautiful places in Washington State to camp, we chose this state park because of all the lakes. I had recently bought a kayak and wanted to try it out in calm waters. Well, life happens, doesn’t it? My bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome acted up so violently last May that I had to have both hands surgically repaired. One in June and the second one in July, a week before our trip. Needless to say, I had no working hands to paddle either Gene’s canoe or my kayak. Terrible timing.
Lemonade? If we had taken the boats, it would have been much more physical labor that we were definitely not up to right then. And I chose to let my hands heal over proving myself in my kayak. A healthy choice.
Back to the campsite. Our tent that Gene hastily stuffed into its sack had several broken poles, so we couldn’t put it together. The backup tent was another conundrum for us. But Gene jerry-rigged its raising with a couple of walking sticks. It’s the same tent we used in Yosemite in 2006. And small. We didn’t mind practically sleeping on top of one another back then. But we do now.
Lemonade? Gene gallantly offered,
“I think I’d rather sleep out in the open air anyway, under the stars. Haven’t done this since Ely in 1999.”
God Bless Him!
Honestly, how long has it been since we last car camped? Maybe six years? We were so out of practice that we forgot how to pack the food in the cooler. Safely. I dutifully made lots of sandwiches beforehand so we’d had plenty of ready food to eat. Wrapped each one in plastic to protect them. Oh no! At every gas station we went to, Gene got a bag of ice and all those ice cubes cascaded down into the bottom of the cooler where I had packed our sandwiches. A day into the trip I went to get some of those sandwiches for lunch. A wet and soggy mess. I ate my peanut butter one anyway because I hate to waste food. Or maybe to self-punish. But Gene couldn’t stomach ham and cheese on soaking wet bread.
Lemonade? I relearned how to pack an ice chest. And we had plenty of good backup food to eat. Plus, Eastsound was close with great restaurants. We ate well the whole time.
I frequently get night sweats with my cancer. Annoying in my bed at home, they were a real pain in my sleeping bag. I awoke in the night to a soaking bag up around my head and neck. But, as always, I went back to sleep. Then during the night it had dried out but left a hard, crusty film on the lining of my bag. I asked Gene about it, and he said,
“It’s probably dried sodium that left your body.”
Lemonade: so that’s why I have low sodium counts in my bloodwork even though I eat enough salt every day to fill a salt shaker! Mystery solved.
For comfort, we brought two camp chairs. Gene’s broke as soon as he sat in it. My fault for leaving it outside all winter. I threw it in the trash.
Lemonade? I sat in the remaining one. Gene sat in the car, happily dozing much of the time.
Lemon: I have a case of my second memoir, Stepping Stones, that I’ve run out of places to unload. Women’s prisons are next on my list. Lemonade: I brought a few to Darvill’s in Eastsound to donate. He accepted them and will consider stocking my title. Just pass ‘em around. There’s good spiritual healing to be found in the pages.
And so I come to the end of my recipe(s) for lemonade. And it’s fitting that I end on a spiritual note. Because to reach a happy conclusion when life throws lemons at us requires some semblance of positive rationale-building. For every one of those lemons I could have whined and thrown myself into fits of hand-wringing and anxiety. I’m quite capable of doing that. But to what end? An attitude and camping experience far more bitter than most lemons taste. So…my choice these days—Gene has always had an even temperament, except when he doesn’t—is to put a positive spin on whatever was happening. A worthy challenge.
Why? Because turning lemons into delicious, sweet lemonade beats walking around with my lips pursed from sucking on sour lemons. And we did prove to ourselves that we could still go camping, as ill and infirm as we are now. Gene is still nursing a broken foot. And I’m bone-tired from lymphoma. But we did it and survived, proud that we still could.
We only get one spin around the race track. Might as well try to make it a happy one. Beats bitchin’!
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes.”
“Regardless of cause, history, or contributing factors, feeling guilty about your past role in the development of a teenager’s problem behavior will risk sabotaging your parenting goals. For a more focused relationship with your teenager,
Recognize guilt as negative self-talk that is normal, but that can be managed and stopped.
Acknowledge that a desire for relief from guilt places you at risk for changing the rules, boundaries, and standards that you want followed.
Seek professional counseling or other support to help you act more consistently and proactively, feel better about tough choices, and be less encumbered by what happened in the past.”
Feeling better about tough choices was always my Waterloo. But now I say over and over again that I did the best I could with what I knew. Now that I know better, I can do better. Repeat this mantra over and over again until you believe it.
Humor Being able to laugh out loud—at myself most of all—keeping things in perspective—is so critical, and you can’t do that by living in a bubble. I was stuck in a hole of depression, but recovery has offered me a way out.
I had to force myself out of isolation and start talking more to people. I always came away learning something and even feeling less depressed because I wasn’t alone. I learned not to take myself and my problems so seriously and smile more. The program helps me to stay focused on the solution and not the problem. The solution offers me relief because I don’t have to fix everything. What a revelation!
Learning to let go of control and determining what, in fact, is uncontrollable was a milestone for me. Remaining open to joy and beauty, and always feeling gratitude in my heart for my blessings.
The Bad Stuff When tragedy strikes us we are tested in new ways. I was bankrupt spiritually and was not equipped to deal with life’s challenges. Fortunately I picked up some important survival skills later in my life:
Gratitude: There is always something for us to be grateful for, if only the weather. Where depression and dysfunction used to be in my headspace, it’s been replaced with a new default mode. I like to keep things simple. Instead of bemoaning what I have lost, I focus on all that is left. Suffering and martyrdom had diminished my ability to live well, and I have abolished them from my life.
Acceptance and faith: If I can’t change it, whatever it is, I will accept it with as much grace as I can muster. And follow this with confidence in God’s plan,
Humor: Oh, laugh about it, Marilea. You and your problems are not that important!
From Each Day A New Beginning, July 3: “Finding humor in a situation, any situation, prevents us from succumbing to feelings of powerlessness. Feeling powerless, behaving as victims, came easily for many of us before we chose this program and the Twelve Steps to live by. Choosing a humorous response, opting to laugh at our situation, at any point in time, keeps our personal power where it belongs—with ourselves.”
A movie came out a few years ago, “Drive,” and what I remember about it is the background song by Riz Ortolani. I love the words and the meaning behind them.
“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.
