Lessons Learned

"...It's not our disagreements that wound; it's our criticism, attack, and blame that wound...So it is that when we disagree with someone, our prayer should not be that their eyes be opened to our point of view, but that our eyes be opened to theirs." Everyday Grace. Marianne Williamson.

This would require a lot more humility than I have at this point in my growth. But it seems to me that this is what's up for me right now. Not only to understand, but to let the other person know that I understand. This last experiment in love ended with disagreements galore and hurt feelings on the other person's part. My part was my confidence that I was right. I realize that I'm almost always sure I'm right. Not good. I miss out on new information that way. So, the gift I take away from the experiment, is the gift of awareness that I need more humility. It isn't necessary for me to be right.

Don't tarry too long to mourn...;celebrate and rejoice in the new. The past is over. Wipe the dirt off your feet. Marianne Williamson. A Woman's Worth

It's always hard for me to know how much grief is enough or to trust my feelings. I tend toward sinking into compulsive self-examination and then despair. I don't think I need to do that now. I think I will celebrate and rejoice in the now instead.

We are always responsible for our own sobriety. Beyond that, we're also responsible for maintaining good attitudes and making sure that our own anger and pride do not make any situation worse than it already is. ~Walk in Dry Places

A wounded heart is always a good excuse for me to get angry and prideful and try to make myself the victim. That always - in the past - has made things a lot worse. It doesn't reduce my pain - just distracts me momentarily. Far better to feel the pain and then distract myself with other activities and thoughts. I need help from my higher power and other people to stay in sanity. I am so grateful for friends and family that are willing to be my support.

short time love

Grrr. New love; good-bye love. No regrets. It was worth the risk AND all the things I feared did happen. So now I am sad and feel a lot like I just fell out of a third story window and hit the ground hard. It was still worth the risk. Having a chance to love is always worth the risk.

Today I will accept whre I am in my relationships, even if that place is awkward and uncomfortable. If I am in the midst of endings, I will face and accept my grief. God, help me trust that the path I am on has been perfectly and lovingly planned for me. Help me believe that my relationships are teaching me important lessons. Help me accept and be grateful for middles, endings, and new beginnings. The Language of Letting Go. Melody Beattie

Justification

"Heaven protect me from my good friends who with only the best intentions, keep the wounds of my resentment open, weaken me by their pity, and justify my complaints." One Day at a Time in Alanon

I love that the friends I have now don't cut me any slack! I've had an upper respiratory infection for a few days and was sick enough to go to bed a few times. But no one gave me any pity. They didn't give me any pity for the resentments I was about to nourish, either. (When I'm sick, I get picky about other people's behavior.) I remember when my favorite activity was to get on the phone and complain for hours to my friends while they gave me agreement and pity - and I got sicker and sicker. Self-pity and complaining just kept me unhappy. I wanted to be "right" so that I could feel better about myself. Ego again - the source of all misery for me. I don't know who is right or wrong. I just want to live from the heart because that makes me happy and peaceful.

Seeing Myself

I love being in recovery. Being in recovery and loving someone are pretty much chained together with big thick links for me. I am feeling vulnerable. It's pretty scary trying to love someone who sees my faults and shortcomings. Hmmm. What will happen? I work on my shortcomings but they are still there. When they bother someone I love, I want to change really bad. I would much rather be seen as the perfect person I wish I was. I know that I have to have help to change though and wanting to be perfect isn't a good reason. Besides, I'm not actually in control here. If I were I would already be perfect. So, I get to see myself through someone else's eyes and tolerate the vulnerable feelings that come with love and not being perfect. Of course, he isn't perfect either. That helps - a lot.

Season of Love

I like the idea of mistletoe being a symbol of the Christmas season. It might be a little out of fashion, but maybe it should come back into fashion. I have experienced so many losses in my life that everything is filtered through that knowledge. If we only have the present moment and no guarantees of anything more, and since this is the season of love, mistletoe hung everywhere for a reminder to kiss and hug each other while we still can....

Hope

Autumn can be a sad time or a hopeful time for me. Something about cooling weather and falling leaves used to bring on sadness. Now - especially now - I am hopeful. I'm sure it has a lot to do with new love and a new, very different president. I hope for much this next year - hope for opportunities to make a difference in the world, hope for opportunities to contribute to a special person's life, hope for more love shared with family and friends, and hope for my continued recovery. It occurs to me that my hope often comes from gratitude for gifts I've been given. And that would be true again this year.

Gratitude

Who knew gratitude would be such a source of power? For most of my life holidays made me feel sad because I knew they would be terrible. Actually, they weren't always terrible but I felt that I wasn't living up to what I was supposed to do or be at the holidays. Early in recovery I was taught that what I put into being happy and grateful for what I did do or be would be enough. And sure enough it was. That was the foundation for doing and being more and more of what I wanted to do and be. So, now I am grateful for the holidays - however they turn out - because it's another opportunity for fun, family, friends and love.

Anti-depressant

I'm trying to remember when I last remembered to take my anti-depressant. It may have been two or three days. Usually when I miss even one, I suddenly feel as if I weigh enough to sink into the earth. I now feel just fine. I'm going to keep taking these things because it's not a good idea to just stop. I'm just very interested in the fact that being given the gift of loving someone has raised my spirits so much that I'm depression free. An extra gift, that is.

Changes

I've been stalling trying to think what I could say about the recent changes in my life that would fit in a paragraph. I still don't know, but the vacant space on my blog is too much. So, here goes: A dear friend for the past three or more years, recently proposed that we take our relationship further. I was so surprised I had to take time to think about it. It really wasn't the best idea for him and I gave him all those reasons, but he said he didn't care. I'd been carefully staying on the back side of the friendship line with him because I had no idea of being in any kind of romantic relationship and because I had no idea he was thinking of any such thing. But as it turns out....

So all is well. Marvelously well, actually. There's more I could say but not now.

Surrender

...I finally realized that surrender does not mean submission - it means I'm willing to stop fighting reality, to stop trying to do God's part and to do my own....(which is) undertaking, one day at a time, the monumental task of setting (my) world in order through a change in (my) own thinking. One Day at a Time in Alanon

Probably I should make a list of the things that I forget over and over and over. The surrender thing is one of them. I am hard wired to never ever ever give up. I had a friend once who called me bulldog because he said I was persistent to the point of insanity. And, of course, it was always about my trying to change something that I didn't have the power to change. All my intelligence, energy and creativity went into trying to change things I couldn't change, which left nothing for changing the things I could.

Then there's the thing about changing my thinking. I thought, "what in the world does my thinking have to do with it?" It took years before I accepted that my thinking was creating my world and that it was actually possible to change my thinking. My goal is to keep my thinking focused on the good I'm trying to create in my world - with the guidance of my Higher Power (a force for good in the universe). My world DOES change with my thinking!

Is Cleaning House Actually Important?

I grew up in a household where nothing was put away, nothing was cleaned, dishes were not washed, and there was a coating of black Cocker Spaniel fur on everything. My mother smoked which made everything in the environment sticky - all the better for dog hair to stick to it. When I was seven, my mother decided that it should be my job to clean the house. Unfortunately, I got no instructions on how to do it. I was a pretty precocious kid, but this was beyond me. I washed dishes after a fashion, I tried to dust and run the vacuum. I did a really bad job. I could hardly tell any difference when I finished because of all the "stuff" sitting around. My mother always said that when she saw a clean house, she knew that boring people lived there because they thought about cleaning and spent their time cleaning.

After I left home, I kept house pretty much the same way. There was always a shedding dog and I smoked. As I accumulated kids, the clutter grew. I was married twice during those years - first to a person who didn't care at all and then to someone who liked things neat and clean. Unfortunately, the neat and clean husband wasn't willing to spend very much time neatening and cleaning. He did some but quickly became discouraged. I tried really hard to get the kids to clean, but they were not as afraid of me as I was of my mother, so sometimes they cleaned and sometimes they didn't and the mess grew.

Eventually I made it into recovery. At first my mess didn't bother me. Then I started throwing everything from the rest of the house into my bedroom, which made it almost impossible to walk in there. I married again to a person who liked things neat and clean but who in his heart of hearts really thought it was "women's work." BOTH of us smoked and both of us were messy. Oh dear. Sooner or later, usually later, one of us would get overwhelmed by the mess and start cleaning. Then the other one would feel guilty and clean. So sometimes things were clean and sometimes they weren't. About a year and a half into recovery, both of us stopped smoking - which did cut down on the dog hair sticking to everything.

Then I grew in recovery and woke up to the fact that cleaning house wasn't about some rule somebody made but about serenity and beauty. I began to think enough of myself to want my surroundings to be serene and beautiful. In the year 2000 we had a fire and lost most of our belongings. We didn't replace a lot of stuff so in a way the fire helped us get rid of clutter. Since then my motive for cleaning is to give myself the gift of a lovely place to live. And sure enough I have a lovely place to live and it nurtures me. So I guess the answer to the question of whether cleaning house is actually important is: it depends on the goal. If I'm just trying to follow the rules - probably not. If I want to nurture myself, the answer is, "yes, defnitely."

Salt and Pepper

The 70s were a time of great upheaval and a time of great interest in self-improvement and being happier. I read tons of books but wasn't much improved or happier until I had the foundation of recovery to build on. One of the many books I read was A Conscious Person's Guide to Relationships. I think the author was Ken Keyes. The main thing I remember from the book was that we should know what we want from other people and we should always ask for it - once. He suggested that we use the voice tone that we would use to ask someone to pass the salt and pepper. Boy is that ever hard. But it's a far more peaceful way than demanding instead of requesting. So, the "salt and pepper" voice is a staple in our family - or at least that's what we strive for.

Dr Dreamy

The trip to the doctor was a pretty good one. Xrays look good but since we don't believe them, I will go for a ct scan and then we'll see how the femur really is. If that looks good, I'll be able to get on the cane. Yay! That would mean I will have one hand free and can carry something. Also, I'm released to use my left leg (from which they took a huge amount of bone to graft the other leg), as much as I want which will give me the ability to take a bath and use that leg to lift me out of the tub. It also means I can do some yoga poses that will really help my back. Yay again!

On the down side - I now have osteopina which means my bones in my legs are losing calcium from non-weight bearing for long periods. The up side is that there's a new drug that helps bone cell growth that might be useful. Down side again - the drug costs $700 a month and requires that I give myself a shot every day. Grrrr. Whatever. I will find a way to do whatever it takes. Still on the downside - I told Dr. Dreamy that I occasionally took a few steps without support since I thought it was safe to experiment. He turned a very bright red and hid his face in his hands. I knew then that I had been very very bad. He was nice about it but said I was not to do that anymore so okay I won't.

Final upside - I asked the hard question which was "what do we do if this never heals?" He said, "It will heal because we will keep grafting it until it does." I will now quit thinking about other alternatives like amputation. I don't want to give up and so I won't since I have his thinking on my side.

Day of Reckoning

I'm always nervous before the doctor appointments. I love/hate them. I always hope we'll look at the xrays and see a solid bone instead of a hole in my femur. Tomorrow I'm going to have the heart to heart talk about what the hell do we do if the damn thing never heals. I'm not looking forward/am looking forward to it. Grrrrrrrr.

I was lonely because I kept myself separate from people. I saw them as being different from myself, and so I remained the lonely and isolated victim. Strange how similar we are when we begin to share. When we get beneath culture, class and creed, we discover sensitive human beings trying to make sense of their lives. We need each other. ~Fr Leo

I spent most of my life until recovery feeling as if I was just not a worthy person. After hearing other people's stories again and again in recovery, I realized that underneath all our "acts," we are the same. I don't worry much now about what other people think of me.

Opening Our Hearts in Hell

I read the above phrase in Stephen Levine's book, Unattended Sorrow. I am reminded of it because I'm reading the Alanon book on grief (again). It talks about the propensity it seems most of us have to shut down feelings of grief. Those feelings are way too painful so we just shut down. Of course, that doesn't work. I think I need more work in this area. I spent this last weekend with some members of my high school graduating class and it was quite lovely. It's odd to me how much I enjoy these outings when I was very unhappy in high school. It probably should be another whole topic to explore. However, I noticed how much I missed Ron. He would have enjoyed the weekend so much. He was such a great companion to explore the world with. He was always enthusiastic about new things, and my pleasure was greatly enhanced by sharing with him.

Tough Communication

This time the article I read was in Psychology Today, and it was about communicating with someone who likes to explode when asked to change his/her behavior. Been there - on both sides of this one. My opinion is that exploding and throwing fits is very bad for relationships. I know that seems pretty obvious but apparently this type of communication is fairly common with couples. What I hear - and what I've thought myself - is that "I can't help it." "He/she is going to have to change - stop yelling at me - and then I'll be able to change." Well, that doesn't work either.

So, here's the answer according to the article: When neither of you are mad, sit down and talk about it without exploding. Just say, "I'm not willing to keep on having these horrible episodes. It's hurting both of us. I want us to have some ground rules for talking about problems: Talk reasonably and kindly. Try to find solutions that meet both of our needs. Do you agree?" If he/she does not agree, say: "I'm going to try to talk to you in a kind way, and if you explode I'm going to leave for 10 minutes to give you a chance to calm down, and then I'm going to try again. If you still can't talk reasonably, I will stop talking to you and leave again. You will have left me to solve the problem without your input, and you might not like the solution I come up with." Then the article says that you will need to solve the problem in such a way that he/she cannot do what they've done before. The example was that the husband invited guests without asking her first. When she tried to talk to him about it, he blew up and walked out - which was how he usually reacted when she asked him to change something. So, the writer of the article suggested that if he wouldn't agree to talking out the problem without exploding, she just tell him she would not be there to hostess guests if he invited people without asking her. And then make good on her promise by leaving and spending the day elsewhere if he did it again.

Well, I wonder how that would have worked with the people I used to have screaming fights with. Since I'm not in a relationship like that now, I won't have a chance to practice it. But it would certainly change the dynamics - and that couldn't help but be a good thing.

Tricky Business

I hate criticism. It hate to give it. I hate even worse to get it. I want nothing but positive feedback, thank you very much! I actually have people in my life that pretty much give me nothing but positive feedback. When I was supervising people I never did get the evaluation thing down. And I certainly never did get good at asking for what I wanted in my intimate/partnership relationships. I was a doormat until I couldn't stand it any more and then I blew up and attacked. I have noticed that many people (especially men, it seems to me) hear negative criticism when they're asked to do something differently or asked for help. Just the fact that I asked was enough to make sure that he would never, ever do whatever it was. It might have been a control issue or a self-esteem issue or both.

So, imagine my delight in reading about how to give and receive criticism even though I'm not supervising people and am not living in partnership with anyone right now. In the grander scheme of things when I'm looking at priorities, learning to motivate rather than chastise, seems to be a big priority. The latest issue of Real Simple has a good article on how to give and receive "motivation."

First, learn to see feedback/motivation as a good thing - a useful tool. Second, answer these questions: 1) What's working ? 2) What's not working? 3) What can we do together to fix it? Try to give feedback in such a way as to let the person feel appreciated for what's working and optimistic about changes. You could say things like, "I really appreciate...." "It would be great if you could..." "It would mean a lot if you could..."

When you're receiving feedback, ask the questions of the other person so that you're clear about what he/she wants. Listen without disagreeing or arguing. Take notes. Assume the other person has a good point. Maybe you can learn some new skills - maybe it would be fun!