Momma told me there would be days like this...

Today, if you didn’t know is Mother’s Day. I am a mother and by default of being born, I am a daughter too. I spent most of today with my mother.

My mother is dying from cancer right now. I am well aware of the fact that today may have been my last Mother’s Day with her. I took a nap today and I keep wondering if that nap will bother me next Mother’s Day.

 She lives with me and I do my best to try and help her each day through this process. It is one of the most difficult things I have done in my life. All of the reasons I find this task difficult are completely selfish and revolve around my feelings. Her feelings about her condition come in a distant second to my own on this topic.

I hate seeing her sick because it makes me very uncomfortable.  I want her to get better because I want my pain to stop. Did you catch that? “My pain to stop” Nice, huh? I cannot beat myself up on this point however because I know that if I could make myself feel any different about this situation I would. I have tried and I just can’t. So this is how just how I feel. I am given the chance to cope with those feelings every day and do my best with them.  I have no idea how I am doing.

I hate coming home and seeing her in bad shape. I feel really lost when she is having a tough day. When she looks at me it seems like she is expecting me to know what to do and I just really don’t most of the time. I do my best to make her laugh and help her feel comfortable. I see so much fear in her. She is fighting, but it seems like she is struggling against the wrong opponent.

She does seem easier to laugh these days and she does find happiness in really simple things. Today our big day consisted of buying groceries and a sandwich at Subway. She kept saying she wanted to “Eat Fresh” and she would make the word "fresh" really breathy, the way they do in the commercials. it made me chuckle every single time. That is not something she would have done before cancer.  It is a shame it took this for her to start to see the joy that is in her world, but that is one blessing of death coming slowly. It puts the important things in perspective.

My father died some time ago and his death went much the same way. He was in a great deal of pain right up until the end and really pissed off about dying. 

 Time is so funny and it has its way with each of us. Time does the same thing to us all and yet we each have our own peculiar reaction to it. In Plato’s Apology Socrates says he does not fear death because he has lived a good life. He says that death could be “the greatest blessing”. That either we go on to “heaven” or that it is like a long sleep that we never know we are having. Either way he did not fear it. Plato recounts Socrates speech in the Apology as what Socrates is saying when his own life is on the line. Did he feel that way because he was old and wise or because he was enlightened? Why is it my parents could not face death with the same resilience?

The more I learn about myself the more I understand where I have come from or maybe it is just the reverse. Both of my parents had difficult childhoods and both were molded in ways that showed the scars. My father lived a great deal of his life angry and my mother lived a great deal of her life scared. To expect them to react in any other way to their own mortality is my shortcoming, not theirs.

I am their daughter and a product of their home. I am a product of both of their lives and when this is over, both of their deaths as well. No matter what happens to them beyond death, one thing is for certain. A large part of them will live on in me because I am them.  I am their strengths and weaknesses. I am their miscalculations and misunderstandings. I am their joy and their love. Everything I am started with everything they were, are and will become. They are my biggest advantage to life and my largest hurdle to overcome.

They are my parents and soon they both will be gone. The family that started with two, then three will be down to one. I will never be anyone’s little girl again, never be anyone’s baby. I will be what is left of two lives that meant so much to my own life. The part of my life where I am the child will exist no more.

This is what time does to us all, if we are fortunate enough to live that long. This is a rite of passage and a transition that only happens to the ones who make it this far. Just like my first day of school, my first kiss or my first heartbreak… this is a gift.  A gift I don’t feel ready for-but one whose time has come. My parents are showing me how to die, even if it is in what not to do when it is my turn with my daughter. That is what parents do, they teach.  As their child I do my best to learn. Just like with so many of their lessons, I don’t want to learn this one.  

A fork stuck in the road

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

Gandhi

I am sure Gandhi knows what he is talking about. But I do think he has an unfair advantage at practicing this principle. He has been in pajamas most of his life and he doesn’t date as far as I know. He should try doing it in a pair of skinny jeans.

For me, being vulnerable feels incredibly scary. It is however getting so much easier to do. I have been given the gift of wonderful friends that I get the chance to be myself with, even while I am trying to figure out what that self is. I practice on them, I learn from them, I receive love from them and I do my best to give love right back. It has gone from feeling like I do in the “show up to school naked dreams” to only mildly uncomfortable from time to time.

Where I find trouble today is when I get into conversations with people outside of recovery. My honesty does not seem as well received out there in the real world. As a matter of fact, it seems quite frowned upon at times. This is what I have spent my life trying to avoid, the feeling of not fitting in.

Before recovery it was so much easier to appear pleasing. I would just lie- Problem solved.

Oh, you like basketball? So do I! (I hate basketball) How is my day? Fantastic.. never better! (Except for me crying in my car for an hour today and trying to figure out what outfit my family should put me in for my funeral after I commit suicide) You want to cover your entire body in honey, put on a tutu and jump off a bridge this weekend? Let me see if I can move some things around and I’ll join you. (Just please get the word out that I am super easy going and open to new experiences)

People were so much easier to deal with when I would just lie to them.

 Vulnerability has been kicking my ass over the past few weeks. I don’t like it and yet I keep showing up for more.  As I am typing this I realize that I keep expecting a blue ribbon for honesty from the people around me. They don’t always play along outside of recovery. Maybe I should buy some blue ribbons to give to them so they can give them to me when I see fit? I had an uncomfortable moment today at a coffee shop with the guy selling me my tea that a blue ribbon could have smoothed over nicely. I forgot I was talking to someone who was not in recovery and made a joke about doing large amount of drugs. Which, by the way was really funny if you’re in the club. However, judging by the look on his face, it was just disturbing if you are not.

At this point I am not sure my social skills were all that great before, but at least I think I passed for normal most of the time. Now it seems I can’t even fake it for a few moments without blowing my own cover. I find myself in real trouble if I get into conversations about anything deeper than the weather. You know conversations about heavy stuff…. like what kind of tea I would like to drink.

I think the issue with honesty today is I am not sure what my truth makes me. Does it mean I am crazy or insightful? Am I on the verge of greatness or another break-down? Is my personality refreshing or draining?

Going through this process is further complicated by the fact I am extremist. My first thought is to see things in only black and white (Shocking after reading that last bit I bet) So when I get push back from a few people, or when I am honest with someone and they don’t respond the way I want them to, my next thought it I am going to be alone with my cat forever because I am too socially awkward to remain in society. Hell, I am not even sure Tony Curtis is gonna stick it out with me. He seems more aloof than normal lately and there is just a judging tone in his “meow” that I am picking up on.

FUCK-

The only option that seems to be the right choice is to embrace who I am and just love the hell out of myself. Then it just will not matter as much what other people think. (There is not a total defeat font, but I am hoping the fuck in all caps did the trick in conveying it) For a woman like me it does feel like total defeat at times to just accept who I am. I keep falling prey to the delusion I am supposed to be someone else. A someone else who is of course super cool and never upsets anyone with either her words, actions or presence.

God I wish I was that cool… But clearly there is another plan for me. If you find the blueprints on my life, please send them to me. I really would love to know how it all ends up working out.

Philosophy is fun... please stop laughing. I am being serious!

I have good reason to believe today might be a glorious day.

Tony Curtis (my cat) was extra cuddly this morning, I have had little sleep but woke up the first time my alarm went off and my first thoughts were of poetry bouncing around my head. All of these reasons forced me immediately to my laptop, not to check my facebook (which I still did of course), but to write this little blog.

Last night I worked on some homework for one of my philosophy classes. The assignment was to watch the movie “A Single Man” and related to the reading of Augustine we have been doing in class. We were given specific questions to answer and asked to put together a short paper on the topic. Something about this assignment sparked something in me. Instead of worrying about writing the paper in perfect format and answering each question in some sort of perfect manner I have created in my head, I just wrote. I actually just had fun with it and in doing that I remember why I went back to school for philosophy and not a degree in business. Philosophy is fun, it is cathartic and if you allow it to, it changes you. I suppose an accounting class can do the same for some, but I am not one of those people.

The movie is about a gay) English man (not gay in the sense of happy or in the vain of My Fair Lady) living in Los Angeles during the sixties. His partner has died in a car accident and he is in the midst of a great depression. The saddest part is given the social climate he lives in, he cannot share his grief with anyone. He suffers alone and in silence.     On the day the movie finds him he is planning on killing himself.

I bet I can guess what you are thinking right now and to answer your question… yes, I did say this was fun.  If you are at this point longing to read a blog about an accounting class, it might be wise to stop reading now. The really fun part comes when I deconstruct pain and suffering in just a bit.

Who says I don’t know how to party anymore???????

So I am attaching the assignment and my paper.  You can google either Augustine or the movie to get more info on either if you care enough to.  And to warn you in advance I give the ending away in my paper.

Happy reading and  to paraphrase the Avett Brothers-embrace the day….. we only get so many and you have one less than yesterday.

Assignment:

Here's the prompt for A Single Man:

Focusing on the film and relating it to our reading of On Free Choice of the Will answer the following questions:

• Consider a time when you lost someone you love and compare your emotions at the time to those depicted in the film.
• Why do we suffer so greatly when we lose loved ones?
• Ultimately, given that they are all transitory, what makes our relationships worth having?
• Is it possible to reconcile the immensity of our suffering with the existence of a benevolent God?

Paper:

The line in “A Single Man” I most identified with was “It actually hurts to wake up.” I think that is as close as anyone can come to explaining the type of pain the main character George is suffering. 

I have experienced much loss in my life. Depending on how you look at it, that is either extremely unfortunate or I am incredibly privileged.  I say that because if one has an understanding of profound loss then they also must have knowledge of intense connection. You cannot have one without the other. To truly know loss you must be intimate with belonging. Belonging that touches the deepest parts of you and gives you have the sense of being whole in some way that you cannot experience on your own. Not having a clear idea of what the afterlife might entail or if there is one at all I find death not only takes the one I love, but it also kills my hopes for a reconnection with that person along with it. However, whether the loss comes from death or simply from a parting of the ways does not really matter. To feel disconnected from what was once so important is a discomfort that words do not do justice to describe.

There is a language of suffering that I think you can only hear if you have felt it. This movie beautifully depicts the exquisite nature of pain and speaks in that language fluently. Not just with the words that were said, but with the moments in time we see. When everyone around seems to be on the inside of a joke that George does not understand, when they seem brighter and more vivid than he does, when the whole world seems to have kept on moving while George is quietly wilting away. With pain, just as with love, you become quite aware that you are in fact- alive. Every moment of everyday you are reminded of your existence. I think it is fair to say a person is never more alive than when they are in love or when they are in pain.

 I practice Buddhism, so Augustine’s concepts of the temporal and the eternal in our readings seemed very familiar to me.  In the film we see how attachment to a temporal relationship, even one that was so clearly deeply felt, can cause the ultimate in suffering. In Buddhism we are taught that attachment is suffering, so I wrestle with attachment to people, places and things daily. Even though I am well aware that attachment is the cause of suffering, my heart and mind still find ways to hold on to the temporal. Just like Augustine, perhaps it is my ego that lets me think one day I shall transcend it.

There is a reason that men and women who want to deepen their relationship with God, or the universe, or their higher-selves retreat into solitude. That reason is because it is impossible to accomplish that goal and keep feeding the relationships we all find ourselves in through the normal course of life. That is especially true of romantic relationships. Even Augustine himself followed the path of solitude and it is something I have considered personally as well.  The only reason I can think of for a person who has knowledge of the nature or truth to continue to participate in these transitory relationships is that it gives them an opportunity to show compassion and grace to another. My role today is not to take love, but to give it freely.  I seek to love, rather than to be loved as was true for me in the past. That growth came only from feeling profound loss.

The more I deepen my relationship to the world around me, to my own Higher Power, the easier it is to remain giving. I would not have gotten to this place in my life without the losses and connections I have had. There would have been no reason to look for a more meaning to my life without the feeling of total emotional and spiritual bankruptcy. That was coincidently the spark for Augustine’s journey.

I think that is perhaps the reason there is loss in this life; it teaches us to be gentle with one another if we allow it to.  In the movie we see George have that same experience and then finally he comes to terms with his grief and lets it go.  I do not find it sad that he dies at the end from a heart attack, I think it speaks to the possibility that his agony was not in vain. That there was a greater good served by his suffering, even if that “good” was only his ability to connect with the world on a deeper level before his own death.  That is, in my opinion the best thing that has come out of my own understanding of the nature of relationships and my place in this world.

Do you know? Cause I don't know, you know?

“As for me, all that I know is that I know nothing.”

Socrates

I start with that today because I do not write these blogs to pretend I know anything at all. I am well aware of exactly how little I know most moments of any given day. I write these blogs to help me live in the truth of that statement a bit easier and in the hopes that someone will read them and say “me too”. There is no other reason than that, but that is reason enough today.

I have been waiting all week for an issue to be resolved with a man I have been seeing. Last night resolution came, although it was not the answer I hoped for or the way I hoped to get it, resolution was obtained.

The most amazing thing I learned this week was that after a year being sober I was able to let someone be who they are and show them love, even when I was not getting what I wanted. That is a gift of sobriety.  It is just too bad that someone wasn’t me.

All week long was full of thoughts that the way I was feeling was just wrong. I was shoulding all over myself. “I shouldn’t be sad, I should be grateful. I shouldn’t be so attached.  I shouldn’t want what I want” All of that shoulding just served to make me feel even worse. Not once did my berating help me in the situation, for the same reason it does not help if I do it to another person. People have no control over how they feel. Telling them they are wrong for having their feelings is like telling a person what they feel does not matter. Unfortunately (or fortunately. Depending how you look at it), those “people” include me, even with all my best efforts to the contrary. Walking around telling myself that I was wrong all week was like me telling myself I don’t matter. No wonder I was so uncomfortable.  I was hanging out with a jerk all week. (I say jerk in the most loving way possible. By jerk I mean very scared and misinformed ego. I will do a 4^th step and get an amends in ASAP! I promise)

 “Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today……” I read that line often and give my best effort to apply it to others. I learned this week none of that matters if I don’t give it to myself. I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I don’t know that to be fact, but I have faith that it is true. If I could choose to move “somewhere” further along in this process I would, but I can’t. So I must be where I am supposed to be.

Now being accepting of others is not all bad and is still a completely new idea to me. An extremely long emotional email was typed and nearly sent last night. However, faith won out over self-will and it was read to a friend and put in my journal instead. It was the kind of email that was full of all the feelings that pull at a man’s heart strings and make them think twice about what they are doing. Everything in it was 100% true and I feel every word of it. Everything in it was also 100% selfish, manipulative and completely self-serving. I would have been telling that beautiful soul of a man the way he felt was wrong, that his feelings did not matter, just as I had done to myself all week.  That  is not acceptable to do today.

So here I sit in my bed, typing away on my laptop, trusty cat at my side and my phone beeping every few moments with messages of love from the women in my life. My life is how it should be today and I am how I should be today. Today what that means is that I am a bit sad about what almost was and grateful for what is. I have a heart that is open enough to hold on and a mind that is open enough to learn to let go.

I mean I think that is where I am, but as I said before…. I really don’t know.

Great Expectations

“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”

Buddha

I like to find quotes that I need to hear. Quotes that give me something simple to focus my monkey mind on. I like to post them on my facebook page and remind other people of what I need to hear too. Because I am just that cool. Today I decided to write about it instead of posting it to fb. I needed to see this one. I have been up and down uncomfortable for the past three days and I have been on this path long enough to know that growth comes from moments like the ones I am having.

I am growing like a weed today.

  I could try and point to several different things that are causing me to feel this way, but the truth is it doesn’t matter. This is just how I feel. I have a limited vantage point on my world and what I see is scaring me right now. I am not reacting to things the way I assume that I should be. I mean, for God’s sake, I have been sober a WHOLE YEAR. Shouldn’t I be perfect at this by now? What do you mean, no? Of course, I don't expect you to be perfect, just me.

 And there it is. My expectations of others pale in comparison to my expectations of myself.

I have spent most of the last three days in bed. I fought to get out of bed today to head to class and I am quite happy to report that I did win the fight….. until I went to drive away and my car would not start. A problem that was quickly corrected with the help of others, but then I would be late getting to class and I hate walking in late anywhere and I really do have a head cold and…….. back to bed I went.

I am pissed at myself that I am not in class. My hand should be in the air for every question, perfect well-articulated answers flowing freely from my brilliant brain to my eager mouth- dazzling everyone around me with my intellect…… ahh the ego, such a wonderful enemy to have. My ego lets me think that should be my day, instead of embracing what my day actually has turned out to be.

I am sitting on my bed (big surprise), hair a mess (even bigger surprise), with a crazy cat running laps around the room (not a surprise at all), while I type away on my laptop. I have cried and laughed today about my situation, called my sponsor, spoke to friends and had a VERY lengthy conversation with my Higher Power. I thought it was my place to let HP know just what I think of the path I am on and that he probably picked the wrong girl for this job. The right girl could handle disappointment with the greatest of ease and would be in class today, not hiding in her apartment like Miss Havisham, from “Great Expectations” (minus the wedding dress, however it is still early).

Now the fact that my life is set up in such a way that I can have days like these and not feel guilty about it does not seem to play a huge role in the fact that I still do feel guilty about it. No, I enjoy ignoring that little detail. It is soooo much more self-deprecating to think of myself as a huge disappointment that will of course fail out of school, end up all alone in her old wedding dress talking to a boy named Pip or a cat named Tony Curtis (If I can get him to stop doing laps of course) That is far more romantic than looking at what I really am. Which, is a woman doing her best to learn how to live life in a completely new way because the way she has been doing things since the age of about 5 was totally unhealthy and would surely end, not in a blaze of glory as it was long thought , but a whimper of despair as it was almost proven.

While this whole little internal battle was started by the actions (or inactions to be more accurate) of another, it is my judgment of my emotions that has truly done me in. 

My judgments of me= my ego’s judgments of my heart’s emotions.

I understand that I cannot always get what I want, I understand that there are plenty of fish in the sea, I understand that people are just trying to do their best with what they have been given ….. I get it. I really do. What I don’t effing understand is why I have to feel emotions about it? And WHY DEAR GOD do those emotions cause me to have emotions about my emotions? Why can’t I apply the same relaxed and groovy approach I have about someone cutting in line at Starbucks to every life situation?

As I was typing that last line I remembered I do have emotions about people cutting in line at Starbucks…… DAMMIT….. Foiled again! But at least those emotions are not strong enough to force me into the land of crazy hair and too many cigarettes. 

I was talking to a friend earlier and she reminded me I am a girl/woman, and that we have emotions about things, that this was all normal and I would be fine. I reminded myself that I am blessed to not need a drink or a drug to feel better today and tonight I will go to a meeting where I will be reminded it is progress not perfection. I do need to pat myself on the back for not trying to manipulate this situation into something that will give me temporary relief and I am talking about it. Blah, Blah, Blah

I am still pissed that there is anything to talk about.

There is another quote from The Buddha that I would like to remember today. He says you can look through the whole world for someone deserving of your love and you will never find someone more deserving than yourself. I like that quote. I just wish it wasn’t so hard to do some days. But I am grateful on the days that it is I have my daughter, friends, laptop, a crazy cat and Marlboro Lights to see me through.

I wanna dance with somebody...

“Lean into the discomfort”

I read that in a book by Brene Brown. It is exactly what recovery is all about and it is exactly why recovery is so hard for some. I can’t speak for anyone else, but discomfort is what I have spent most of my life trying to avoid.

Feeling uncomfortable and vulnerable is fucking scary. Letting people see who you really are and hoping you will get love back from them is fucking scary. For me I can get love back from 1,000 people, but it is the one person who doesn’t give it back that I will remember. That is the one person I will fixate on and tear myself apart about. Because I am scared that one person sees through me and sees I am just full of shit. Even though today my first goal is honesty, I lied so much to myself and others for the last 35 years I still worry that I am just as awful as I always thought I was. Sometimes for me when I am honest I get scared and instantly I can be right back where I think I started from.

From what I have heard over the past year about recovery, it is that way for a lot of us. From what I have read in Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and Confucianism it is not special to addict and alcoholics, it is the human condition. What is special to addicts and alcoholics is how we deal with those feelings. I know, for myself, I would drown those feelings with cocaine and vodka. I would run as fast as I could from the person who was frightening. Today I still want to run, but I have a HP, sponsor, friends and program that helps me stay.

Last night a gift of my efforts happened for me. I went to a bar and had fun without drugs or alcohol. My goal was to get dressed up and go dancing, something I never thought that would be possible. Well, I did just what I set out to do. It was a ball. I danced my bum off with some fantastic sober women, who I am lucky enough to call my friends. When I went to treatment I thought I had given up fun for the rest of my life and I was okay with that. My Higher Power had humbled me to the point of total surrender and I just didn’t want to feel the way I felt anymore.

Something else happened last night too. A woman who was one of my idols as a little girl, died at the hands of the same disease I suffer from. She died alone in a hotel room, just like so many of us do.

My first thought was her daughter. This idol of mine has a daughter only one year older than my own. Last year, at about this same time, I came close to leaving this world in a similar fashion. I would have left my daughter, with what I can only guess, would be the same feelings that young woman is feeling today. I would never desire to hurt my little girl and it breaks my heart to know how close she came to not having a mother in her life. I have heard other mothers share those same feelings while in sobriety. I can only imagine that is how my idol felt too.

I have no idea why some of us are blessed to stay sober today and some are not. I don’t feel special in anyway and I know I am not smarter than most. I have no answers and sometimes I still wake up in so much fear I can’t stand myself. I am still learning how to “feel” my emotions and it makes me crazy that it is so incredibly hard to do it. But today I woke up without the urge to pick-up a drink or use a drug. Today I woke up willing to do what I could to face this day, whatever it may bring. Today I was given a gift.

I like to think we are all given the same gifts every day. I imagine that the beauty of life has always been all around me and I was just blind to it before. In Buddhism, the Buddha teaches that some only have “a little dust in their eyes” and if that dust is removed, they can be awakened.    Maybe that’s it, maybe not.

I am sending lots of love to that beautiful woman who lost her fight last night with this disease.  I hope wherever she is now, there is love, peace and joy all around her.  I am grateful that today, even when I can’t constantly feel it, I do try and remember, there is love, peace and joy around me….. always.

R.I.P. WH

You helped countless others stay sober today.

Rape is not a four letter word

I have been raped and sexually assaulted 9 times in my life.

Once at 2-years old by a female babysitter with another little boy who lived in my neighborhood

Once at 6-years old by an adult male in my neighborhood

Once at 9-years old by the same little boy involved in what happened when I was 2

Twice in two months at age 12, one time by a group of three 16-year old boys and the other by just one man

I passed out one night at a party when I was 16-years old and woke up with a boy on top of me and inside me. A friend of his came down when he was done to take his turn as well. I didn’t even fight him

Once at 21-years old I went out with some co-workers. I had too much to drink and passed out in the back of a male co-worker’s car. While he was driving me home he decided to pull over to the side of the rode. Again, woke up to him on me and inside me. I remember I had just started dating someone and was scared that what was happening meant I was cheating on him. I had to work with this man for the next 6-months.

And finally, at the age of 30, I went out with some friends and we met a group of guys at the bar. The rest is really fuzzy.  I am assuming they put something in my drink. I woke up in a hotel room with a group of men surrounding the bed. My skirt was up and my panties were down.  I crawled out of that room while those men laughed at me. I was married at the time and never told my husband what happened. He was understandably upset with me that night when I came home so late. It was shortly after that I asked my ex-husband for a divorce.

I never told anyone that could help me what happened. I took all the blame and buried it deep inside me. As I type this I can feel that very familiar feeling of shame creep up my spine and into my throat. I can feel my body tense and my stomach turn. I feel instantly dirty and want to crawl into a hole.

I have been reliving these emotions all week because a new man in my life showed me physical affection.

I am pissed about it.

For years I would only ever talk about any of this stuff when I was completely loaded and with my very closest friends.  If I talked about it too much it made it all real and I knew I could not deal with it if these events became real.  Now I am more open to talk about it, but then I worry about the way it affects the people I am telling. When I laid it all out there in treatment, the reactions I saw scared me. I thought the group was upset with me, it was not until later, after it was explained to me I found out they were upset for me. It was shortly after I shared all of this in rehab that my insurance company said I was “too emotionally damaged to benefit from further treatment”.

These events defined me for an incredibly long time and I have put a great deal of effort into working through them over the past year. All of that effort seemed to go out the window the other night when I was being kissed. I panicked, went into robot mode, shut down, hurt the man’s feelings and ran like there was no tomorrow as soon as I could.  Not my most attractive look.

My sponsor suggested I write all of this out and get it out of my head and my dear sweet friends remind me to be gentle with myself,  because I won’t be. I want what I want when I want it. What I want right now is not to have to deal with these emotions, but that is not the case. I have them and I cannot afford to ignore them anymore.  

A woman very dear to me sent me an email today. In her email she shared with me some equally awful experiences. I received an email from another woman a few days ago who shared something she too is feeling shame over.

What I told them both is that shame is not real, love is. I believe that to be true.

What I am feeling right now is not based in reality, it is based in fear. I did NOTHING to deserve what happened to me. I do not have to let these feelings control me. I do not have to be ashamed of what my story is. It is mine and it has made me who I am today. I am a sober woman facing these things the best way I know how to and there is nothing shameful about that.

So I am stepping out in love and hoping that someone else will find this helps them. But even if it doesn’t, it has helped me. I do not have to hide who I am anymore. The fact I am able to write all of this out without reaching for a drink or a drug shows the power of the program I work. All I am doing is being honest about who I am and that can never be wrong. I do not have to hold on to these things anymore and so I am letting them go today, even if it is just for today.

I don’t understand why things happen in this world. I don’t understand why things happened the way they did for me. But what I do understand is that if I change my perception I can change my day and if I do that enough days, I can change my life.

Today I am not a victim, today I am a survivor. Today I will practice gratitude for these feelings. Today I will share them and send love ahead.

Love and light….