Don't Do Anything Too Stupid

One of the greatest gifts I've received from my recovery program is the ability to manage emotions - especially the kind of emotions that tempt me to do things I know better than to do. I wish I could say that I have this totally managed but I don't. The thing is, I really do know that when I have strong feelings and really want to act out, it's usually fear - fear from my past experiences. My brain is trying to save me from another bad experience but my poor brain can't tell the difference between something important and something unimportant. So I react in a way that really doesn't have anything to do with the present. Knowing this gives me the power to stop and think and pray - which usually keeps me from doing anything too stupid!

Supply or Demand

The war on drugs... don't they remember about prohibition? They focused on solving the problems with the effects of alcohol on humans by banning it. Gosh. That didn't work out very well, did it? The war on drugs is going just as well. Humans are very smart and inventive when it comes to feeding our addictions. I believe prostitution is illegal also but seems to continue to thrive. Not to be too sarcastic but maybe it's time to try something else. Unless, of course, we're just going through the motions of doing what we know won't work so that people will think something is being done. I'm waiting for the day when the drug problem is addressed on the demand side instead of the supply side. With the money we're spending on the drug wars, we could probably send every addict through treatment about 10 times. The ones who didn't recover could just be locked up and given all the drugs they wanted. It would at least reduce crime! I really don't think this is going to happen in my lifetime. But it does seem to be logical.

Self Restraint

I'm reading something that makes a distinction between emotions and impulses. Good! Impulsive behavior is always a disaster in my experience. I'm usually feeling threatened so just attack when I think I've been attacked. Not good. I have a lifetime of little hurts I still have not resolved - although I'm working on it - and I'm liable to attack when I haven't actually been hurt. Then I have a mess to clean up. Then there's the other problem - when I've actually been attacked and just freeze up instead of doing something about it - which leads to resentment which in turn leads to my attacking when I haven't been attacked, etc. etc. etc. Learning to pause when I feel an impulse - oh! more valuable than gold!

Wounded Spirits

What we all want most is to be loved and accepted. Somehow we get all twisted up and refuse to love and accept until the other person loves and accepts us first. That never, ever works. We seem to think our relationship is unique and everyone else is loved and accepted in their relationships - just not us. The one we're with is just cruel and cold. But underneath that belief is the belief that we don't actually deserve to be loved. Usually we got that idea from the conditional love we got from our parents who never were unconditionally loved themselves. So we pass this mess on to our children and suffer every day from lack of love. The solution lies in the love of God but as long as we're looking to a human for it, we can't get love from God. But the love of God is real and healing and has given me the ability to love people who were not being loveable at the moment. But sustaining this knowledge is a daily struggle. But it's worth whatever I have to do on this planet full of wounded spirits.

Relationships

I'm at the beginning of another class for recovering people based on the second book by Earnie Larson, Stage II Relationships. I'm having all sorts of fun re-reading books I have in my library looking for tidbits that might be helpful to participants. I'm contantly struck by how much is known scientifically and how little is known by most people in this area. For example, "being in love" is scientifically known as a state brought on by biology to get us to mate and it always wears off in a few months. It's pretty much a state of temporary insanity that has nothing to do with love. Sadly, though, people make lifetime commitments based on it. Very scary.

Fun

What a great time I had last weekend. I drove to Dallas to visit my daughter's family. Friday night was a graduation party for my middle grandson's girlfriend. It was a lovely celebration and I was honored to get to attend . Saturday was the flute festival that my granddaughter was involved in. There were hundreds of flute players everywhere and of course they were practicing for their performances all playing different things. I love the sound of flutes anyway but this was like being in heaven. My granddaughter played well - not as well as I've heard her before but she has a new boyfriend and didn't practice as much as usual. And then there was the performance by a group called Project that was just incredible. They are famous for the variations of sounds they make on their instruments - flute, cello, and bass. I love live music. It fills my soul.

Journey

Here it is about two weeks since I've written here. As I've said before I don't write when I feel lousy. I think I should but I don't because I can't think what to say. So, I feel better than I have and am writing.

The experiment with walking on my unhealed leg in order to encourage it to heal led to it caving in - basically. The hardware broke. The xray looks like a 400 lb woman has been walking on this leg. So I'm waiting for word from the surgery scheduler at my doctor's office to call......

I am wondering if there's anything I can change to increase the odds that it will heal this time. I tend to just accept things the way they are because I'm more comfortable that way. Maybe I should work at creating a state of mind that expects the leg to heal instead of working on just accepting it the way it is. Why not?

Magic

It's the one thing I can't explain about 12 Step meetings - the magic. I have a friend that calls it angel dust that falls on us from the angel wings in meetings. I personally think it's probably all the loving energy at such high levels that we are all healed as soon as we walk in the door. A guy I know once said that he thought God came to AA meetings to have a vacation - no one there wants anything - we've already received the miracles and are exuding gratitude. Whatever. Yesterday was the quarterly women's brunch and meeting. I got to have it at my house although it's small, because there wasn't another place available. We had exactly the right number of people for the chairs I had (miracle). I have a refrigerator full of food - enough to feed me this week. I had a deviled egg and spinach salad for breakfast. But most of all my house is full of angel dust or loving energy - whichever.

Acceptance

Another of my old poems:

I liked it when it was simple
I just wanted
to get what I wanted
I usually didn't get it
but it was SO simple

Now I just want
to want what I get
I can ALWAYS get it
but it sure ain't simple to want it

Stories

"I will rest from my thoughts. I will give my attention wholly to the present. Therein will come solutions, and when least expected." Each Day a New Beginning"

I had the wonderful opportunity to have lunch this weekend with classmates (women) from the graduating class of 1959. We told a lot of stories about ourselves, each other and other people in the class who were not present. Basically gossip but fascinating. The thing is, they were pretty much all sad stories about husbands who ran off with the Spanish maid, guys who committed suicide, etc. It struck me that it was a good thing they were all in the past! Now we are getting up in age and have learned a lot of lessons, so we can have as much fun as possible in the present. And we did!

Fun

I went with my son-in-law's mother to Dallas to help celebrate my son-in-law's 50th birthday. It was a great weekend and a great party.

My middle daughter was born in Korea. She doesn't remember coming to the U.S. because she was too young. For a long time, she resisted knowing anything about where she came from because she hated being different. Now that she's quite a lot older, she's started being interested. Rebecca, my granddaughter, has a friend who is from Korea. I'm posting a picture of Bec's friend's mother in traditional Korean dress. She was Miss Korea at one time. I hope my middle daughter can meet her sometime and be proud of her heritage.

Grrr

I hate writing when I feel crummy. I have been feeling crummy. And I've been feeling crummy for no particular reason which usually means there's something going on that hasn't reached consciousness. I have some strategies for dealing with this condition but the problem is I don't think of them at the time I need them most. I finally came to my senses and dealt with it and now I feel better. In order to deal with these seemingly inevitable pauses, I put the strategies into place so that I don't have to remember. Boy I hope this works.

Dreams

Another amazing dream that made me wake up laughing: I dreamed that I found a green flying bug - about 4 inches from wing tip to wing tip. It turns out that it could also talk. It had the sweetest personality and soon I was extremely attached to it. But I began to worry that something would happen to it when it was out in the world so I built a cage for it for safety. Boy did it ever hat e the cage. It begged me to let it out. Since I loved it so much I did let it out but then I worried incessantly about something hurting it. So I followed it around everywhere it went, which was really tough since it could fly and I couldn't. (Although in some of my dreams I can fly, this wasn't one of them.) That was my whole dream. I ran from place to place trying to keep an eye on this wonderful bug in order to keep it safe. It didn't seem to have good sense and just constantly defied safety by investigating everything that interested it. Hmmm. I was really stressed! Hmmm. Seems like I have experienced this scenario in some of my real life relationships. Ha!

Lagniappe

Creole word meaning "a little bit extra." Pronounced "lanyap." A new word for me. However, it seems that everyone I know who has spent some time in Louisiana knows this wonderful word. I think this word is quite profound. Why not always give "a little bit extra?" Wouldn't that feel good? Wouldn't it be better than trying to give as little as possible? Since 1991 I have supervised people and found that many, many of them try to earn their paychecks by giving just a little bit less than I hoped. I think I may have done this too at some points in my life. It doesn't work. But giving a little bit extra makes everyone happy - especially the giver.

Happy April Fools Day!

This is a very special day because Ron and I went to Eureka Springs on April Fools Day in 1986 to get our marriage license and decide where we wanted to get married. We didn't think about what day it was until we were already there. Then we joked that we could always change our minds since we were getting a marriage license on that day. We laughed about it every year and celebrated it like it was our actual anniversary which was April 16. We were certainly like April Fools. We were in love and frightened half to death. And that was our story for the next 20 years.

More about Loss

If you haven't already, you will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply beloved person. But this is also good news. The person lives forever, in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through, and you learn to dance with the banged-up heart. You dance to the absurdities of life; you dance to the minuet of old friendships." Anne Lamott. PLAN B: Further Thoughts on Faith.

Folks, this quote tells the exact and total truth of my experience. I am a completely different person than I was before the death of my first child. I am a completely different person than I was before the death of my third child. And I am a completely different person than I was before the death of my soul mate. And there's good and bad news in the changes.

The bad news: I probably will never be as completely happy as I was capable of before the first big loss. Knowledge of the pain of loss makes the whole world look different. It is no longer possible to believe that everything will eventually be wonderful and stay that way forever. I knew that everything is completely and arbitrarily temporary. After the death of my first child, I believed that at least nothing that awful would happen to me again. It just didn't seem possible. Guess what! There are no such guarantees. For a long time I reacted to that truth by standing back from life as much as I could. That is bad news.

The good news: It is possible to accept the certainty that loss is a consistent part of life and use that truth to sharpen one's connection to life and love. Dancing with a banged up heart is a lot more interesting when you're sure you must seize the moment.

Reunion

Here we are - reunited after 30 years... My first husband's brother, Sam, who is a great guy and was a great kid, plus my daughter, Liz, and her daughter, Rebecca. I am never endingly amazed at how good feelings for someone can last over so much time without any contact. As soon as I saw Sam I felt just as I felt 30 years ago - how much I liked him and had fun with him when we were kids. I think it must be a gift we're given to hold on to good feelings and forget bad ones.

Fun

When I take time to play, to laugh, and to enjoy. I am taking care of myself and giving My Higher Power some room to take care of the rest. Courage to Change

It's Spring Break and for several years now I've spent time with grandchildren in one way or another. For a long time it was my middle child grandson who spent his spring break with me to experience being an only child for a few days. This year my daughter and her 14 year old daughter are here. Of course it's always wonderful to have visitor grandchildren and my daughter. But the side benefit is that I take several days off and just have fun. It's a requirement! This year we're visiting relatives in Springfield and will be visiting Fantastic Caverns. I don't know what it is about caves, but I just love thm. One time I was mad at Ron - don't remember why. He took me to Fantastic Caverns and I got over it!

Tears

There is nothing unenlightened about crying over the tragedy of human suffering; perhaps what is neurotic is how infrequently we do. Marianne Williamson. Everyday Grace.

I have had a week with a lot of challenges. One of the volunteers that worked with us on our big event that was so successful took a lot of liberties and caused a lot of problems that we have spent days trying to straighten out. Once again a dear friend came to my aid and has helped a lot but there still a long way to go. Expending energy on solving problems isn't something that bothers me. On the other hand I have so little energy that the effort costs me days to recover or evenings when I go to bed at 6:00 p.m. and wake up at 8:30 a.m. I'm not used to having so little physical strength. These problems aren't tragedies but I suspect that the volunteer was suffering and probably has been her whole life. It's sad to watch people hurt themselves by their own bad behavior when what they are trying to do is make their lives better. I've been there. I know how bad it hurts. I'm grateful not to be living like that anymore.

Journey Update

Every time I start to do an update on my journey, I resist. I would rather just live day to day and not take an overall look at where I am. But it seems to be very useful to check myself out to see how I'm doing.

When I went to the doctor in January we still couldn't see from the xray whether my femur was healing or not. There's no way to be sure other than opening my leg up and looking - which isn't an option. So, he said to start using the cane and then walk without it and see how that went. So, here I am two plus months later. I walk a little without the cane at home, but my leg does hurt if I do much of that. That tells me the bone is not solid and that the rod that holds my leg together is probably moving. But I can get around with the cane like a house afire. I'm able to walk a lot and pretty fast. It feels so good to be able to go up and down stairs and go wherever I want - yay!

I wonder when, if ever, I will quit thinking about Ron. Maybe I will have to be without him for as long as we were together before he is not such a big part of my life and thoughts still. Of course, enough time has passed now that thinking about him doesn't cause me great pain. He's just there. I'm finishing up a fourth step and our relationship is a big part of what I'm inventorying. But I probably won't know what it all means until the 5th step or maybe even through 9.

I'm going through a tremendous amount of change right now. All good things but very challenging. I'm doing the first in a series of classes for recovering people that Ron and I talked about doing but never did due to his health problems. We'll see how that goes. I think it is time for me to look for other ways to earn a living other than working for the Alzheimer's Association. I need a less stressful kind of work so that my body can heal without having to deal with stress. I'm also committed to working toward being a published writer. I haven't made much progress there because I'm still trying to finish all the odds and ends that are left from the wreck. I still need to clean out some of Ron's stuff - especially in the garage. I'm making my will and doing all my "end of life" stuff that needs to be changed. I'm almost there but not quite. When I get that stuff done, I will have serious time to write.

All in all, I'm satisfied with where I am. I wish I were farther along but considering the barriers I have, I think I've done pretty well. I have more energy now than I did and my sleep patterns are not as screwy. My eating is healthier and I've lost a tiny amount of weight. The foundation for everything is my physical well being and I've made more progress there than anywhere else. Thank you, God, family and friends for all you give me. Nothing would be working without that support.