The Spirit of Christmas

Hi All,

I have been so consumed with the recent death of my Dad that I have not even had time to mention my amazing new job. I am working at a DV Shelter. It is an amazing job, filled with amazing women and kids, and possibly more amazing colleagues. I do not think it was an accident that just when I need them the most I would be surrounded by survivors. Truth be told I didnt need my job to find survivors because I live with one and, in many ways, am surrounded in my life by survivors of all sort of things, all of the time. This past week at work I had the opportunity, blessing, good fortune to be asked to help wrap Holiday presents for some of the residents, the night before I attended the Holiday party for both former and current residents. That night and the next day something happened to me. I felt around me the genuine selflessness that to me is sort of what Christmas is about.

For those maybe 12 hours I forgot myself. I forgot my own pain, my own loss, my own story. For that time I was both in other peoples stories and also a silent observer of their stories. I felt somehow transformed leaving work that day. I felt something had happened to me. That I had had this experience of waking up in a new job, with a new life, and with the very real understanding that I am not, nor have I ever been, alone and that this pain that I feel, this understanding that I now have of the fragility of life, this knowledge that I have now is something precious. It is not a bitter knowledge. It is a gentle nod.

I nod to the survivors all around me who know what it means to pick themselves up and begin again. I will happily share my time with these women for as long as it seems to be helping them. I will know deep down in my soul that there is some divine order to how things have unfold and how I have ended up here, now.

I think often lately of what my life is all about. I think about what I want it to be about. I think about my Dad and what his life was about too. I think of his quick humor or his thoughtful cards or his ever present phone calls. I think about how at the top of my own salary scale in my late twenties I was showing him my $400 wallet. I thought he'd be so impressed. He then asked me when I was going to get a new watch to go with it? He asked me when it would end--this quest for the best stuff? He was smiling, but I felt silly. I didnt know what to say. I knew right then that he was right. Deep down I knew that my Dad understood something fundamental about values. About what was important and what was not. It was less than a year later when I left NYC, black pant suits, and the advertising industry. I think I made my Dad proud when I did this. I think he knew that I had heard him. xxK

Feeling feelings.

Hi Friends,

Today is Tuesday. This past Friday there was another tragedy that impacted me. This one on a national scale, of course, the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shootings. The  impact that this tragedy had on me was predictable since what parent didnt feel this on a primal level but also was sort of weird in how it intersected with my already broken heart. I felt like I was just starting to get back up and got knocked down again. I felt broken down by the tragedy, the pointlessness, the violence, the horror. What did happen for me is that it woke me back up to the very real notion that I am certainly not the only person to feel pain, to feel loss, to feel trauma. People all over the world and every single day feel these painful feelings and deal with not only loss similar to mine but sometimes far worse. When I thought of this I felt briefly determined to see my loss in the context of all of our lives that are each filled with our own unique, but equally painful, unexpected pain and loss. The danger it seems for me is to somehow make my pain unique and different when really it is not that unique, not that different.

Today I cried a lot. I dont know why. I thought I was doing better and then I just wasnt. The roller coaster quality of grief apparently is a fairly universal thing but really is hard to handle. Sometimes I feel like I am riding the mechanical bull of grief just holding on and hoping for the best. At some points I have felt sort of ok only to five minutes later get thrown off the bull. I find myself really just learning as I go. Trying to practice the principles I've learned in recovery and praying for the continuing willingness to work hard on not just surviving this but someday, somehow, growing from it.

When I looked in the mirror tonite I could see on my face the pain, the loss etched into my eyes. I would swear that I have not looked like myself since when this horror story really began sometime around my birthday in mid November. At first this made me feel bad but when I really think about, really take the time to consider it, I dont feel bad that that pain is there. Visible. I feel that this is me, this is my face, this is where I am at now. I am glad I am not Xanaxed into oblivion looking happy when inside I am breaking up. I am glad I am not drinking 4 martinis while explaining to a stranger that my Dad just died. I am glad that I look like I how I feel. I am glad I feel how
I feel.

The first step of AA that says, We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. I would amend this, for me tonite, to say that I admitted I was powerless over my grief and that my life was becoming unmanageable. Of course the second step says, We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, and third,  Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. That is where I am at. I making a decision right here tonite to give this loss, grief, sadness, anger, confusion  to the God of my understanding. I've done enough damage to myself with it and now I think I am ready to turn it over. I know my Dad wouldnt want me dragging this stuff around either. I'll keep you posted on how it works out. xxK

Between the black and white

Hi Friends,

Today is Thursday. It has been 3 weeks since that Thursday. It feels like it has been 100 weeks. It feels like it has been years since that Thursday, years counted in sleepless nights, restless nights, tears, no tears, sadness, and anger. When people ask me how I am doing I am not even sure what to say? I want to say I'm standing here aren't I? That about sums it up. I am standing. I am doing what I am supposed to. Getting thru it. Putting one foot in front of the other...moving...maybe moving slow but moving.

I have been going to a shit load of meetings. Tons of meetings. I realized that meetings are my church. Meetings are my sacred place. My place where everything around me stops and I can just be there with people who are also there. I feel very present in meetings and very grateful. Not just for the sacred place but for the fellowship, for the honesty, for the skills that I have learned from all of the people that surround me there. I spoke last night at a meeting and I told my story and included my most recent loss at the end. I wanted people to know me and who I am right now...I wanted them to know that it is because of the fellowship and the 12 Steps that I am sane at all in the last three weeks. It is because of the fellowship and my sponsor that I am at a job that I seem to love and that I can show up even when my heart is broken and be ok.

After the meeting last night a man approached me. Because I am getting used to people approaching me I just knew he was going to tell me that someone close to him had killed themselves. I could see it in his eyes, his kindness, his sympathy...he knew. I was right but what I didnt anticipate was that this man shared that this happened to him when he was young. I think he said his early twenties. His Dad was only 40. He said he drank for the next 20 years because of the pain, trauma,loss. He also said his father shared the BiPolar diagnosis and that he has come to see his father's death as a symptom of this mental illness. It struck me that this man appeared at peace. He didnot seem sad, angry, lost. He seemed to have acceptance.

Then it got strange because the man told me that he admired his Dad for having the courage to do it. I was totally speechless at this point not because what he said particularly surprised me but because I have gone over this point in my own head a good amount lately and it confuses me. Cowardice or Strength? Courage or Weakness? This man went on to tell me how he and his girlfriend argue over this. That she had been also close to someone who killed himself and that she saw at as cowardice, weakness, giving up. I finally stammered out that I just dont know. I dont. I dont know. I want to know but I guess this is one of those things you could debate indefinitely

Here is what I do know though. I know that my Dad saw suicide as courageous. He told me so. He told me that he viewed his own mother's suicide as courageous, he made it sound noble. I know that when he said this it terrified me. I know that when this man said it last night that it scared me too. What scared me? I am not totally sure. Black and white thinking scares me. Only seeing an act as how it affects me scares me. Not recognizing that our lives are connected to many many other lives really scares me. Isnt this just how we hurt and get hurt the most? When we fail to see how our behavior impacts others not just ourselves we fail. If I fail to see that my father's death though increadibly painful to me actually ended his own suffering than I am not seeing the whole picture. If he only sees his own peace and does not recognize my pain then he has failed me too. And so it goes.

We fail people that we love. The people that we love fail us. In a black and white world this would not happen. But I've always appreciated a nice gray myself. xxxK



 

Still Standing

Hi Friends,

Today is...Sunday and I just finished putting up the Christmas Tree. It was...fun? Though I confess to not really knowing what that even means. My new version of fun I guess is not my old version of fun. My new version of fun is I am not crying, I am not totally numb, l am not totally sad, I am not actively fighting tears. I am almost in the moment. I am almost connected. Or I at least want to be. I have the desire to be connected. I vaguely have the desire to be present. I want to be doing better. I am still so irritable, so sad, so...almost, but not quite, decimated.

How I feel today is that the phrase One Day at a Time might be the most wise and brillant phrase of all time. This morning I woke up for a little while and seemed to have forgotten what happened. I was lying there sort of waking up and then I remembered--and it was just a strange thing to remember your own pain. It is sort of better when I am thinking of it right when I wake up. I am not sure why this is but I will say that the phrase that get me out of bed is One Day at a Time. Each morning since my new normal my feet have hit the floor and I have thought--I can do this, just for today, I can and will.

Anyway, tonite my son said to me that it was not fair that adults get to do whatever they want. This simple phrase almost caused a full blown breakdown except that since he was referring to my not allowing him more Hannukah gelt it was sort of funny. But his little face, pouting, looking mad, throwing himself on the sofa--saying its not fair that adults get to do whatever they want really knocked the wind out of me. I said, Sam, I really know just how you feel. And that's the thing with losing a parent that I realized tonite--it makes you feel like a little kid. And that is how I feel. Like a small child who wants to throw an adult sized temper tantrum because it really is not at all fair that adults get to do whatever they want. This is true even more when the adults getting to do whatever they want are your parents, and really  even more true when what they are doing is jumping off of a bridge on Thanksgiving Day while you sit unknowingly somewhere eating Turkey.

So there it is for me and my day. Did I get up and go buy a Christmas tree today? Yes, I did. Did I get ready for and attend my mother in laws super nice and sweet Latke Party, Yes. Did I sit and eat and act normal and make small talk. Yes and yes. I learned I can do all of these things. I can play normal. I can pretend with the best of them. Inside am I still screaming in the backyard at the starts? I am screaming No, No, No but on the outside I am and will continue to be yes. Why? Because Yes is where it is at for me. Yes, this did happen. Yes, I do have to accept it. Yes, I do have to still be a parent to my own children. Yes, I still have to be a wife. Yes, I still (thankfully) have to be a daughter and sister too. Yes, Yes, Yes. Is it hard? Yes. Does it hurt? Yes. Am I doing it anyway? Yes.

Thanks for listening friends and hope someday this makes more sense or any sense. xxK

 

Angry.

Hi Friends,

I apologize for the increadibly not creative subject of this post. I just feel so angry that that is all I can think about or feel. I had to write about it because who wants to talk about someone elses anger and what really is there to say? I wanted to talk about this experience I had right after I got the terrible news about my Dad. While I was sitting there trying to process the information--I had this almost dream or vision of myself running out into the dark night and screaming as I spun in circles at the stars. I felt such intense anger at...the universe. I felt so deeply angry that it was searing. I wanted to split open. On the outside I know that I appeared calm, numb, disconnected and likely was in some real shock but truthfully my insides in some deep place were screaming. Splitting open and screaming at the dark sky. How and Why did this happen? I think that is what my scream would have said. Or maybe my scream would just have said, NO...No, I will not accept this, No, I cannot accept this, take it back, now.

Somehow or somewhere along the line I lost that scream or it went away but the vision stayed with me. I got tired. The numbness spread and I walked around like a talking zombie for a few days. Then I got sad. Then I cried and cried and cried. I stopped crying and then started again. I cry every single day. Sometimes I cry a little and sometimes I cry a lot. I think if I didnt cry I would feel weird at this point. I think just thinking I have not cried today might actually make me cry. Anyway, the crying is not surprising and seems normal. The numbness seems normal and also is not surprising but the anger. The anger is surprising, and though I've read it is normal, is much harder to manage. Mainly because I dont want to be angry. I want to be accepting. It seems so much healthier and saner but pretending I am not angry when I really am does not seem sane so...here I sit, typing. Fuming.

I wish I could sort out what I am exactly angry about or who I am angry at? The simple answer is that I am angry my Dad took his own life and is gone. The longer and more complex answer is that I am angry at mental illness, the healthcare system, myself, my Dad, and every single circumstance that lead to him taking his own life. I am angry at what has happened and what I am forced to accept. And I am angry that I am angry about it. I want to run and scream and scream and never stop. I want to act out. I want to wear black nail polish and dye my hair black and only wear black torn dirty clothes. I want to drink Tequila while smoking a million cigarettes and listening to angry loud music while angry mean people sit around me. I want to act the fuck out. I want to wear a shirt that says I hate people. I want to say fuck off to every single person who looks at me like they feel sorry for me. I want to say dont feel fucking sorry for me because I hate you.

But as much as it was fun to write that, fun to read it, and fun to imagine it. I dont do that. I dont really want to do that. This is what I do do. I wake up when my alarm goes off. I drink a cup of coffee. I take a shower. I dry my hair. I wake my kids up. I make them breakfast and nag them to eat it. I get them dressed. I get myself dressed. I put my daughter on the bus. I drop my son at pre-school.  I drive to work and cry. I pull myself together. I go to work. I sit with nice people who actually care about the world and want to make things better. I say and do things that would imply I actually also want to make things better. I drive home and cry. I think about my Dad and how he is gone. I think about the Universe and what that means and try to figure out why? I think I need to learn how to accept this. I think I need to learn something. I think I will write my blog because maybe I will learn something.

I write my blog. I learn nothing much. I think it is important that I clarify that I am not going to drink Tequila nor have I seriously considered it. I think how shitty it is that when I am angry the person I still think to hurt is myself. I have a brief moment where I feel proud of myself that though I did imagine this scenario of self destruction--I did not actually particpate in it. I think this is progress in a somewhat profound way and feel something like happy for a moment or moments. I realize I am ok. I am angry but I can feel that feeling and not hurt myself and not hurt anyone else either. I am angry and I know it will pass and realize it mostly has. My anger, it seems, likes to be aknowledged and dealt with. My anger likes to be validated and the written word seems to have done the trick. I still see myself screaming at the stars in my own little nigthmare and that vision is burned into my brain. That vision is how I feel. Split open and cracked apart. Screaming at the universe. And waiting for an answer. xxK


 

Thru the pain...One Day at a Time...

Hi Friends,

Today is Sunday. Tomorrow I start a new job. I cant even believe the strange timing of having lost my Dad a week and three days ago and starting a new job tomorrow. I am glad to be returning to work though since I think I've proved to myself that I can feel my feelings and am thus ready to be distracted for 8 hours a day and hopefully feel less.

Lately I have just been feeling weird, good, bad, angry, confused, disconnected, connected. You name it and I have felt and then felt the opposite of it too--often in the same day and sometimes in the same hour. For a person who is pretty used to self analysis I finally have to throw in the towel and just let the feelings come and go. Trying to footnote each one and put it in a special spot just doesnt work and is exhausting. This was my epiphany today. I am totally fucked up and I am allowed to be and I am not going to get upset about it or judge myself. I am going to continue to honor the obligations and responsibilities that I have to myself and to my family but I am not going to hold myself to some crazy standard of emotional health--at least not in the next few weeks. I am going with feeling accomplished and (maybe even proud)when I am able to show up for my life and, so far, I have been showing up.

In the last ten days I have showed up for a lot of things that I might never have thought that I could if you had asked me before all of this. So when my friends or family is telling me that I am strong--I think quietly that I am not so much strong as just showing up. Maybe showing up is strong? Or maybe it is just what you do when you are a sober adult? Or maybe the showing up makes you strong? Perhaps this is it. Maybe I was not as strong last week as I am now? I have walked thru things in the last ten days that were painful, horrible, tragic. Have had to deal with the physicality of death--the death certificate, the autopsy, the medical examiner. And maybe even more strange I have had one of my greatest fears realized and I am still here. I did not dissolve, fall to pieces, or disappear. I am still here. I am still ok. I thought a long time ago that I would never be either of those things but I was wrong.

So what have I learned thru all of this? I have learned that 34,000 people a year kill themselves in this country. I have learned that on average 5-6 peoples lives are impacted by each person who takes their own life. I have learned that I am now one of those people and I am trying to figure out exactly what that means for me. I am not sure right now. I have learned that I am not alone and that I have amazing family and friends who have reached out to me and continue to amazing me at their warmth, affection, and empathy. I have learned that my kids actually hear what I am telling them since just yesterday my daughter said to me that I should think about the good things in my life (because she said I looked sad). When I told her that was pretty smart she said that I was silly since I told her that.

Finally, I have learned that speaking my truth makes me feel better and it truly never ceases to amaze me how often when I speak my own truth that someone else tells me theirs. To the persons who recently confided in me their own stories of suicide in their immediate family--I can only say thank you for being strong enough to share this. I will end this post by saying that my infinitely wise sponsor said these words to me when I said I was worried that I would not be able to get thru speaking at my Dads service without breaking down. She said--you are very connected to God. You have grace and dignity. You will do fine. It truly was one of the most perfect things that anyone has ever said not just because it helped me but because we ALL are this. Connected to a higher power and full of grace and dignity. xxxxK

 

Loss

Hi Friends,

Today is..I dont even know. I think today is Thursday though it feels like a blur since last week. It was Thanksgiving night when I got the call that my father had taken his own life. I learned he had jumped off of a bridge at 1:30 in the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day. From posts before it might be clear that I had been trying to get my Dad help for his bipolar or different meds or therapy or something. It took me a long time to realize that I couldnt fix him or control him. This event has really shattered me though. Has broken my heart in pieces. Has left me lost, confused, sad, and most of all empty. I miss my Dad. I miss my Dad and am confused and hurt by the intentionality of his death. I'd like to say I feel angry at him but I dont. I mostly feel angry at BiPolar Disorder. If BiPolar Disorder was a person I would run it over with my car.

I am left here, feeling lost, alone, and isolated with a particular pain that it seems not that many understand. The night my Dad died I was laying in bed reading about his death on my iPad. Online news had picked it up already. I think that was the worst part. The reading of the story as if it was a story that was separate from me. This idea that my Father was described as "an elderly man" and was made to sound like he was not loved, known, or important. There was no pain, only numbness, and more numbness in the first day or two. A feeling of disconnectedness took over my body and I wandered thru those first days feeling like a visitor from another planet. I thought, is this how my Dad felt when he was depressed? Maybe he felt worse, probably he did.
The truth is I'll never know the pain he felt, the despair, the loneliness and he'll never know the pain I felt at not being able to help him. Mental illness doesnt just hurt those who suffer in its grips..also hurt are the family members, like me, who stand helplessly on the sidelines while the people they loved are tortured and suffer.

I have read in the last few days about suicide and have learned that though I feel alone I am actually not alone. 30,000 people a year in this country kill themselves and that leaves a lot of people who are left wondering, like me, what they could have done differently to stop this from happening. As I told my own father a year or so ago when he said he felt responsible for his own mother's suicide--"Dad, that was NOT your fault"...I said this with total disbelief. I could not comprehend how my father could have truly felt responsible for his own mothers suicide just because he cancelled a visit a week before she died. Little did I know that I myself would be left to consider the very same feelings of responsibility, guilt, and grief. I wish I had known now the pain my Dad was trying to avoid or maybe just couldnt handle. I didnt. His answer was to never talk about it, pretend it didnt happen, and just move on.  It is my true belief that this pain, guilt, and loss killed my father. That his loss combined with BiPolar disorder set up the perfect storm for his death.

I believed then and I believe now that the answer to this pain is honestly sharing it with loving, compassionate, and smart professionals and friends. That, and truly feeling it. As my favorite expression goes...The only way around, is thru. I used this often in early sobriety to remind myself that there are no shortcuts. We have to go thru the experiences of our lives sober in order to grow and learn. We have to feel the pain, the loss, and the despair in order to feel the happiness, love, and joy on the other side. And we have to be willing to talk about tough things if we want to do better, feel better, and make changes in family cycles and family diseases.  Suicide is preventable. Mental Illness is treatable. But neither of these things will happen if we dont start talking about both of these things openly and without shame.

As for me, I dont know that I am going to take on suicide prevention as my next mission but I do know that it is important to me personally to speak openly with my own family and children about this. Right now they know that GrandPa's brain was sick and it made him think thoughts that made him unhappy and confused. I said I will never lie to them about this and I wont. I will not pretend that GrandPa's illness was any different then cancer or diabetes. It was chronic and it was treatable and it did make his very sick and ultimately take his life.

I miss my Dad. I miss how he used to remind me what was good, what was right. He was a gentlemen from a different time I sometimes felt.  A few weeks before he died I was panicking about his depression and we did not have easy or terribly good interactions. In retrospect I think that I knew he was going and I was mad. I was mad at him for not fighting harder.  I am not mad anymore. My Dad is with God now, is with his Mother and Father, is back to his true self...the person he was before the BiPolar, before the illness. I am glad he is back to that. At some point I know I'll be back to my true self too. I will not be the same as I was before...I will be a different new version of myself. My broken heart will heal and I hope and believe that when it does it will be just a little bit bigger than before. xx

The Truth is: Feelings are NOT Facts...

Hi Friends,

It has been too long since I have written. Mostly things had been going fairly well as I have been progressing along in my Step Work and trying to do the right thing and use my Sponsor etc. Then last week another crisis hit--someone close to me called me that he was suicidal as in right then in that moment. I felt initially panicked but pretty quickly got myself to the next right thing place and called the police. The police were really wonderful and got my loved one to a hospital fairly quickly. He remains in the hospital even as I type and hopefully will continue to stay there until he is more stable. A strange thing has happened though...I find myself more stressed out this week then I was last as the adrenaline craziness of the actual even wears off. I am left with this, what is beginning to feel like perpetual, state of fear, guilt, and anxiety. It is overwhelming.

I keep trying to take a step back to see it big picture--that the person is ok, that I am ok, that everything happened as it should have but the what ifs and the what abouts are pervasive and hard to deal with. I keep wishing I was a different person (not a good sign or something I maybe have ever thought before...) I'll think to myself I wish I was someone else and that this was not happening to me.

As I write this I notice the "to me" as being somewhat problematic as I am not sure that anyone's mental health is happening to me. The painful thing is that that is how it feels. It feels that I have been once again victimized by someone else's mental health and that hurts. I feel sorry for myself and scared about how I will get thru this. I worry that this is the new normal and that I will never feel safe and ok again. Even as I type this I know that this is not true and that ultimately my wellness is not about anyone else but me. How I think, how I choose to explain to myself what this means, and if I am able to clearly see my own fear and then refuse to act from that place. Feeling it seems reasonable--acting from it we all know is bad, bad, and more bad. Also, I need some Higher Power or more Higher Power. I need to turn this over and over and over to something spiritual--to remind myself that I am not in charge. Oddly though during these scenarios I tend to grab the wheel tighter, focus more, and start trying harder to control not just my behavior but the outcomes too. I know that I cannot and should not do this but the desire to do it is ridiculously powerful.

I used to have a terrible dream, back before I quit drinking, that I was in a car and driving and then suddenly the car would just start floating off the road. I would not be able to steer or get the car back on the ground. I would wake up terrified as I floated into space. Last night I dreamed that I was flying my kids around (yes, I was flying holding them not in a car but just my body). As I was floating off into space I realized that if I breathed deeply that I started to go back to earth. I was suddenly enjoying flying--I had figured something out and thought it was fun. I dont know much about dream analysis but I think that perhaps this is a good sign that I went from scared to using deep breathing to relax and bring myself back to earth.

I pray for myself, for my Dad, and for the rest of us who care deeply about people who struggle with mental illness or any illness really. I said to a wise lady a few days ago that I thought that maybe my Dad didnt realize how much he is loved and needed--this wise lady said to me--do any of us really understand how much we are loved and needed? It made me smile. Hope it makes you smile too. xxxx

 

Bee Stings and Buses

Hi All,

What a crazy few weeks it has been. I have found myself vacationing in East Hampton one minute (thanks to my sister and brother in law), rushing home bc of strep thought another minute (no, it was not actually strep), and in the ER because my daughter had an allergic reaction to a bee sting after that. Lastly, yesterday I put my daughter on the bus for the first time and watched it drive away--feeling at that moment a very strange mix of pride and gut wrenching pain. Separation is hard.

During this time I kept trying to blog--writing entries here and there and either accidentally deleting them or reading them when they were complete realizing that whatever I was trying to say was not working.  Today I just committed to publishing this post regardless of quality. Enough is enough. I need to get back in the game of my real life and get out of the game that is in my head. The game in my head (which you all likely are familiar with) is the one that tells me that I am not good enough, that I need to control things, that I am in control--. My ability to believe or feel that I am somehow in control of things (even a little) is my real undoing. With this belief comes the fear. The fear that I wont measure up, that I will get it wrong, that I know less then other people and that really soon everyone else is going to figure that out. This fear is insidious and has me comparing myself at every angle to any or everyone that happens to cross my path. Less then her, better then him--less then, better then, less then, better then. On and on I roll thru my life on somedays conscious not entirely of just how often my self worth is validated by these sneaky judgements.

Here is what I know so far. I am not less then or better then you or anyone else. I have unqiue skills, talents, and wisdom just like everyone else does. I am not in control of how the lives of the people that I love turn out. I am in control of my choices which seem to turn out better for myself (and everyone else) if I make them from a place of love and faith and not from a place of fear and judgement. Though I have at times found the Serenity Prayer way to simple for my complex needs (I am laughing when I write this though it is secretly true) it seems I return to it over and over anyway...changing only the things that I can is where I need to keep my focus.

The 12 steps offer me a blue print for a way of life that is different from the way that I once lived. I have a choice to consciously learn a new way to think and act. A way that is based on faith, honesty, compassion, and action. I can learn from other people how to counter my incessant negative thinking. I need to learn this way because I have a deep awareness of my inability to sustain my sobriety wihout it. I simply cannot stay sober while thinking drunk. To me, thinking drunk is just about being judgemental of myself and others and then also not doing anything to change. I read a long time ago that we cant think our way into right action. I found it so helpful that I posted that phrase all over my house--I need to act my way into right thinking. For a long time negative thinker this idea really let in the light and got me going. If I want to be different then I need to stop waiting to feel different and start acting different. I need help from a sponsor bc I often (without help) will return to my old default of negativity and obsessing sometimes without even realizing it. I need support because I get discouraged (bring on the meetings). I need love (which is my form of spirituality and higher power) because--because it gives me hope and purpose. Lastly, I need to help others because getting out of my own head is where the magic is.

So, I am nearly done my fourth step, working on my fear inventory, and have just accepted a commitment speaking at a Beginners Meeting in October. I do these things not because I will drink if I dont but because I will suffer if I dont. I will be sad, confused, and spinning my wheels all alone if I dont DO something different. I cant listen to my own head either (you have nothing to offer a beginner--you will embarass yourself, look like a fool--people wont like you or dont like you etc.). I will do the next right thing and try to have faith. I will do this because I want to be free from the mental chains that bind me even when my body is clear of alcohol and drugs. I will do this because in the end I know that we really are what we do. xxK

Encounters and Intersections

Hi All,

Saturday night. Tonite I had dinner with an old friend and two new friends. My old friend is like a sister to me and has always made me feel really loved and ok just the way that I am. My other two new friends are her old friends. I expected it to be a special night but I got all mixed up with what my expectations were of how it would be or how I would be before I got there and almost blew it. I did not expect that I would blow into this home in some weird emotional tornado, glasses on, sweaty, hot, hair a mess etc. I also could have lied and said I was sick or made an excuse to not go or I could have gone and pretended everything was cool with me but I didn't. I knew I couldn't. I gave up faking it with people I really love when I gave up drinking. Not productive.

So there I was. A mess among people that I sort of was invested in at least kind of liking me. Ugh. I had a moment of feeling totally inadequate and terrible. I just wanted to run home and hide from them and my family and myself. I had to tell myself that I was loved and then the people I was with were so amazing and basically told me that repeatedly. Because I was my real self--glasses and all--I got to be my real self with them and for good (or bad) that is who I am. I felt sort of liberated not having to be some super happy or good looking or funny or smart kind of person. I just was me. I was too tired and too hot to be someone else.

Then the craziest thing happened. I met someone who actually has a pretty good amount in common with me or I with her. I had this moment of realizing that I was right where I was supposed to be and right with who I was supposed to be with. Not only that but I was exactly how I was supposed to be. I mean I was not what I thought I should be etc but I was how I am. It is so scary sometimes to be like this. I risk being rejected or talked about or laughed at. I risk judgement from others and suffer thru my own judgements of myself (my own feelings of just not being good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, thin enough). These scary thoughts flood my brain and make me question myself. I have to stay strong and stay safe with people who I love and who love me. I have to remember that the things I tell myself are not always true. I have to call my own bluff.

I have to be honest, open minded, willing. I have to do what is good for me even when it feels uncomfortable and scary. I have to do this not just for me but for all of us and you do too. The reason I have to do this is because it is in these hot, sweaty, glasses on moments that the real me gets to meet the real you. This is a special thing. This is the stuff that counts--this realness, this scary, uncomfortable, not expected, not how I wanted it really stuff is exactly what it is all about. I think the slogan Let Go, and Let God is really about this kind of. I have to give up my idea of how things are supposed to be (myself included) so that I can really embrace and appreciate exactly how things are. Amen to that. xx

Finding my true feelings AND space without sadness

Hi All,

So today has not been an easy day so far. It is only 9:48am and I want to start the day over and pretend the earlier part never happened. An agrument with my spouse over--over I dont know what has made me feel--uneasy, I guess. I am tempted (as I always am) to take all of the blame for the disagreement but the truth is that I just cannot see how it is all my fault. I feel as though we all are required, as adults, to take responsibility for what we bring to the table and when I take over responsibility then other people get to take under responsibility. The result is that we all stay in this weird dynamic that is not really healthy for anyone.

It is really challenging though because I know that I am not an--easy (?) person to be with. I have a lot of baggage and I bring it with me. I have a father that is mentally ill and so recently I have that going on while the rest of my life is going on and it feels overwhelming. I get help and I talk to other people but I know that it effects me and it drains me of energy that I should have for other people and I could (and do) justify this by saying to myself that part of life and relationships is supporting people when they are less then perfect or dealing with life on life's terms but what happens when life on life's terms seems to be constantly derailing one partner while other partner sits and tries to be supportive but ends up just pissed.  I end up with two problems. One problem being my Dad and his health and the next being how I allow him to effects me and my relationships. I need to take responsibility for how it effects me and when etc. I need to do this while not developing a resentment at the person for jsut not understanding. I would say this is the harderst part--this not developing a resentment thing.

I may have written before that I feel like a natural daughter, mother, sister but when it comes to wife I just struggle, dont get it, mess it up and have to work really hard. It feels so unnatural and hard. I know I am not alone in this yet it doesnt really help me feel better about it. Maybe it comes back to how much I hate being uncomfortable at all and how whenever I feel uncomfortable in situations or relationships I want to escape. I am a child in this way. It goes like this...ok, this is not comfortable. ok, i am not liking how this is feeling. ok, i think maybe i should run away. Then I snap back to reality and begin again with trying to see my part, trying to udnerstand, trying to be compassionate and non-judgemental to myself and to the people I love. This is not second nature to me. Somewhere the old me is kicking around already buying a bottle of Tequila and a pack of cigarettes all ready to drink, smoke, and then fight.

I guess it is progress that I dotn even really think that sounds like fun anymore. I guess I better stop procrastinating and go back to my life. One day at a time...trying to grow up...xxK

Letting Go

Hi All,

Today is Wednesday. A few days ago my Dad left to go back to NJ. Yes, my same Dad who just weeks ago was in a severe depression is now apparently not in a severe depression. What made his leaving so strange was that he told me that his plan was to stay here, to move to NY etc. I knew he was in a depression when he was making this plan but I believed him anyway. I choose to believe what I wanted to. I sort of manipulated my reality, like I am good at, to convince myself that with new meds, a new Dr, and new habits that my Dad would change and suddenly be a new and better version of himself. I thought now he will want to spend time with me and my children, now we will all heal from the losses and changes of the last 20 years.  I thought really, I will do this. I will fix him and heal him and make everything better.

Smart people pointed out to me that it is not my job to fix him, that I can only do what I can do, that I need to take care of myself etc. I knew what they meant but deep down...I guess I thought I knew better just how great a fixer I really can be. So, I went about trying to fix.  My Dad got better and then left. He didnt say thank you or I'll come back soon to live or anything. He just said...I need to go.

Now I am sitting on my couch. I have not sat on my couch for months--not really. I have been too busy doing and fixing and thinking about fixing and doing. Now, I am sitting finally. Alone. Tired. Strung out on my own attempts at being the fixer. I sit here tired but changed.

I see so clearly now what maybe other saw all along. This is not my job. It is not my job to fix my Dad. It is not my job to heal him or to make a plan for him. I tried to help him, I offered to help him, I was here and he choose not to do things the way that I suggested. He has a right to make that choice. I have a right to make other choices. I have a right to not engage in this codependent, sick, toxic, and basically sick situation anymore. It just hit me the other day--I do not have an obligation to continue to be hurt by him. I am not obligated to continue to pick up the pieces of his life while he stands and watches me and then tells me what I missed. It is his job and when I do it--guess what--he doesn't. I used to feel bad that maybe he won't do it but now I see that I cannot take responsibility for that. It is not my responsibility--it is his.

I have to let go. I have to let go of the dream that I will make my Dad be how I want him to be. I have to let go of the dream that he will be anyone other then who he really is--a sometimes loving, funny, headstrong, force to be reckoned with. A man who taught me how to ride a bike and who also taught me that sometimes what people need most is to be accepted for who they really are. Up and down. North and south. Inside and out. Back and forth. I will let my Dad go be where he is happy. He deserves that.

Now, it is time for me to go be where I am happy. Time for me to return to be fully present in my own life. A daughter, mother, sister--flawed, trying, and learning all of the time just what it means to love someone. xxK

The Forth Step Blues

Hi All,

I am just going to say it. Writing a fourth step is really hard and painful. It sucks in such a massive and complete way that I almost convinced myself to stop but I didnt. I am still working away and picking at my resentments one by one. Tonite I talked to my Sponsor about how this is hard and makes me think about things that I would like to forget and feel ways that I want to run away from. I read my lists and feel like a victim. Since I spent about 15 years drinking over this particular feeling, I think it is safe to assume that this is not a feeling that I am good at actually feeling. Frankly, I'd rather feel any other way then powerless and hurt. Sadly, this is exactly how I feel when I write my resentments. I feel both powerless and hurt. I'll say it again: I feel powerless and hurt.

Ok, so that hasn't killed me yet but it is uncomfortable. The real truth, for me, is that recovery is really about being uncomfortable. Comfortable is a  few bottle of red wine, a pack of Marlboros, and a good friend to drink with. Uncomfortable is actually looking at the things that caused me to be so comfortable with the wine. Boy does it suck.

So here I am plodding along. I wish I could say it was easy and fun. I wish I could say everyone should do this because I am having such a great time. I cant say any of that but I can say that some of the people I admire most in this world have done this. They say that once we understand why we react the ways that we do, what caused our feelings, then we can work to do better, to be better. I've said it before and I'll say it again...it really does seem that the only way around is thru. Hope you're getting thru it too. xx

Going Deep(er)

Hi All,
Ok, here we are. Smack in the middle of the fourth step. This is the time to seriously work on humor and not taking myself too seriously. My goal since my list is complete is to now work on each individual resentment. Ummm. Wow. This is not an easy task. I feel overwhelmed by it. I also feel strange about it because I do not like the hater space. Nope. Dont like it. My inner hater gets all comfortable and then I am working hard to get her back in her cage when I am done. A lot of effort but since I was just thinking tonite about how I miss drinking, I would say it is ok to keep working on my sobriety.

Which leads me to that. The missing drinking thing. It comes up. Sometimes at predictable times (stress) and other times it is more random. Anyway, today it was both. I was laying in the bath tub being relaxed or trying to be and thinking about my old college friends bc they had facebooked (yes, i just made it a verb) and I was thinking that I was so boring now and maybe it is just not worth it to be sober bc I have to sacrifice all of my fun, exciting, and crazy times for more chilled out, stable, healthy times. This is a pretty fucked up thought bc most of my fun, exciting times were more fun for others or from the outside than they actually were for me. I mean I said it was fun but I am not sure it was actually fun? And even if it was fun in the moment, it was not fun after the moment. So, it is all very tricky to get my head around and sometimes I get sort of muddled and think a margarita might just make this Friday night a little better and life is short and...and...yep, there is my disease. She is good, but I am better.

I see her coming with her life is short stuff. Jeepers. I want to live till I am 100 and be healthy and vital and happy. I dont want some crazy high strung psycho life that ends at 40. I dont want that for me or for my family. The only person who wants that life for me is my disease. She wants me dead and she wants me dead soon, but (as I've heard) she'll settle for me unhappy too.

It is Mother's Day weekend and I am a sober Mama. I am proud of that. I am proud that I am not tipping my wine glass as I type in order to relax or to feel happy. Today I can get there on my own. I am not perfect but I am trying to be a better person and I am not going to an alcoholic beverage get in my way. Not tonite. Now, back to my list. xxxK

Anger, Resentments, and Me

Hi All. Well, here I am. Today is Wednesday. I am using this writing as a tool to somewhat delay my ongoing work on my 4th step. I am proud to report that I have entered the world of my resentments and am living to tell about it. On this past Saturday I could not sleep and so I wrote the list. At first it was really tough but once I got over my self consciousness (what kind of person is mad at this many people) I sort of got into it. I got in touch with my inner hater and I have to say that she was not as hidden or hard to reach as I might have thought. Here is what I have learned so far.

#1 Hater at the office. The list of people that pissed me off is longer than I originally anticipated. One thing I noticed straight away is that I developed a lot of resentments at work--and specifically at work in advertising in NYC. This is interesting for a number of different reasons but mostly because this is when I was drinking the most, was the most unhappy, and liked myself the least. I think it is worth considering that when I was passively hating on myself by drinking myself into a nightly stupor--I was actively hating on others too. My actively was in the form of thoughts and gossiping-so while I never was violent or not law abiding--I certainly was engaging in behavior that was not helpful to anyone and was mean. Since the resentments that I have center around people being mean to me this is pretty funny.

#2 Being a hater. Once I am in the hating space it is pretty easy to just hate away. This was good for list making purposes but is an interesting thing to consider for daily life. Once I am in the negative it is not that much of a stretch to see things from that perspective. When I am in the hate space than I am a victim of everyone. It is unpleasant and downright disempowering being my kind of hater. I am glad I am not there very often these days.

#3 Jealousy. I notice that a good deal of my resentments were against women and had some sort of jealous subtext. Sort of like, you were mean to me and you were really pretty and good at your job. I felt like you judged yourself as better than me. Which really was more like: I judged you as better than me and then I felt yucky and less than and terrible and blamed you. Which really was more like: I felt yucky and terrible and blamed you.

#4 Love--or something. I have some heavy resentments in the romance department too. These are more complicated since I had some complicated entanglements. Yes, entanglements. Ok, I think what I can say about this category is that it is not that dissimilar from my work category. I felt less then and terrible and blamed you. To sum it up, I dont think anyone can love someone enough or right if that person doesnt love themselves enough or right. The men I was involved with could never have loved me enough or right back then--regardless of how much they tried, really cared, or wanted to help me. I was a lost cause dressed in black and waiting for someone else to find me, save me, and basically fix me. I think we all can see how that is not the set-up for a good relationship. My most bitter resentments stem from a time in my life, again, where I hated myself, felt so lost, and was just looking for someone to make it all better. I hate or hated some of these men so much for not loving me enough for both of us. Ouch.

So, this is all that I have learned so far. I am just beginnning to look at my actual resentments so sure there is tons more to learn. Right now I just feel totally floored at how much I blamed the people around me for feelings that I had. I feel less than and I blame you for thinking you are better than me. I feel ugly and blame you for thinking you are prettier than me. I feel stupid and inadequate and blame you for thinking you are smarter and more competent than me. It is painful to see how I did this--to others and to myself. Painful but fascinating.

I hope you are all learning something today. I know it sounds corny but last night I was trying to help my daughter figure out what to do instead of cry when she feels frustrated. Nothing against crying but it is not always productive to solving the problem at hand. So I am saying something like, when you feel like crying because you are frustrated than maybe you can just Stop and think about what you really need or want and then ask for help if you need it--this way you know what you want and other people do too. She thought about this and then agreed to try. She said something later asking how I knew what she should do. I told her that I have struggled with this crying about the problem instead of thinking about the solution for a very very long time. She laughed and said since you were 5? Yes, that sounds just about right--trust me kid, I got this one. xx K











http://silkworth.net/aa/12steps.html

Finally to Good Enough...

Hi All. Are you sick of me yet? Shit. Now that I have started writing I just cant seem to stop. So, today: today today today. Today was hard. I will write that again. Today was hard. Today I took my Dad back to the house he used to live in to put it on the market so that he can move up here with all of us. Ultimately, this is a good thing but as I sat there with him...looking around his house with all of his stuff and pictures...it did not feel like a good thing. It felt sad. Terribly sad and not much else. I resisted the urge to say something positive. He said that it felt like the end of something. I was about to say but also the beginning and stopped myself.

I thought about how sometimes life is sad and things are hard. Change is hard. Yes, there will be a silver lining, maybe many silver linings but none of that matters when you are sitting in your house and about to sell it because you realize that you can't live alone anymore. It felt somehow liberating to just be sad with him. Not to try to manipulate things around and make him feel better--which truthfully never really works anyway. There we were--just sad and sitting there.

I looked around at all of the stuff in his home. Antiques, pictures, things that had stories. His things. Things that had stories that only he knew. It felt so strange to be there with all of those stories. Deciding which ones to take back here and which to get later. Honestly, it just felt all wrong. Then I went in the bathroom and just sat there. OK, I feel sad. OK, this is sad. OK. I have to just be there for him. OK. I am leaving bathroom and returning to help my Dad. This is NOT about me.

I tried asking for help throughout the day. Relieve me of the bondage of self. Relieve me of the bondage of self. I think it sort of worked. I had moments of frustration, resentment, sadness but I had many more moments of feeling that I was doing the right thing. Of feeling that I was doing the best that I could and it was good enough. One big moment of the day was when I realized that everyone else was doing their best too. Perfect? No. Good enough, yep, good enough. Amen. xxK

Into Action and Resentments

Hi All,

Well, last night it really started. I am on my way to doing an actual and real fourth step from the Big Book (of Alcoholics Anonymous). This is interesting for lots of different reasons but mostly because I am actually doing it with my real and true sponsor, who I actually talk to twice a week at designated times. For anyone reading not in recovery (Hi Mom :) this just means that I am doing a personal inventory of people that I have resentments towards. The idea is that we basically clean out our emotional closet so we can understand our role in our resentments and, ultimately, our lives. I find it all sort of daunting since my party line usually is--who me? mad? (Said with red crazy face and clenched teeth and punctuated with a door slam.)

Trying to look back at my entire life and figure out resentments is really strange because it requires some serious (not entry level) honesty. Not if I deserve to have a resentment, but if I do. This to me is an important distinction. This is about my truth not about what I want my truth to be. So far my experience with my list is that I dont have much to work with. I am either highly evolved (nope dont think so) or have been the victim once again of my very own brand of revisionist history. Who me? Mad? This is coming from someone who often said things like I dont really get angry and I meant it. What I should have said is that when I experience an emotion that feels something like anger, I order a drink, drink it, and repeat until said emotion is gone. No wonder I thought I never felt anger, because I never really allowed myself to.

The sort of sad part of all of this is that because my drinking was my coping skill there are some emotional tools that I am only just beginning to make sense of. These are adult skills but (like many of us in recovery) I am a beginner adult at 38 and am still trying to feel my way thru the darkness of emotional honesty. Who am I angry at? Forget why, I can barely get the who? It turns out that I am actually a little afraid to face anger and/or resentments.

A long time ago when I first quit drinking I remember being afraid to cry. I just thought and maybe even said that if I started crying I might never stop. I cried for the better part of the first year of my sobriety. I am not sure over what specifically. Mourning my friend alcohol and then just trying to sort thru what it feels like to actually feel things. The answer is...surreal, exciting, and scary. In much the same way that I worried that my crying would never stop I guess I am sort of worried that there will be no end to the anger pit once I dive into it. While I know this is not true, it feels that way. All I can think is- that if we dont understand our own history for real then we really are doomed to repeat it. Here's to a fourth step that doesnt go on forever--and honest feelings for all of us. xxK

I

Sober MAMAAAAAAAAAAAA

Hi All,

Today is Monday and I am home with my sick daughter. I admit to being relieved to just get a break from the work grind and her fever is down a little so I can say that without too much mom guilt. This morning I got thinking about the unique challenges that face sober Moms. Last weekend I hit a kid's birthday party where the beverage du jour for the Moms was a giant box of wine or some vodka spiked strawberry lemonade. All of the parents in the kitchen (who seemed to be drinking) appeared to be having so much fun. I admit to a pang of not jealousy but something--envy? I thought quickly about driving my kids home with a buzz (not so cool) and then thought even more about how (for me) there was never a moderate buzz so it would be more like driving them home with a buzz, stopping at the store for a six pack, heading home--drinking the rest of the six pack and feeding my kids peantut butter and jelly--if they were lucky.  Because I have not drank since before they were born I dont know what kind of drinking Mom I would be. I pretty much assume I'd be the same alcoholic freak only with kids to haul into my drama tornado this time. Not a pretty picture.

The challenge here is being a parent without the end of the day glass of wine to take the edge off that other parents utilize--seemingly without major problems. It means that I have to find healthy ways to de-stress and/or find ways to not get that stressed in the first place. I think that line about an ounce of prevention is applicable here. Preventing stress or managing it is way easier than attempting to peel myself off the ceiling once I am already there. I have found for me that when I think about drinking is when I allow my life to get unmanageable--if I can keep things mostly together (or as together as 2 kids, a cat, a dog, a full time job, and a marriage allows) then things are a little easier.

One of the ways that I have been really working on to keep myself more sane and my life more manageable is to get organized. I realized that I spend a lot of time being frantic and frazzled because I cant find what I need. While I am looking for whatever it is (small plastic container to kids bento box) I start telling myself nice thigns like: you really need to get your act together loser. Or even my favorite just repeating to myself: wtf? wtf? wtf? over and over. This does not make for a positive or serene beginning of day.

So today I actually organized all of my plastic wear. It may sound like a small thing to all but to me this represents one small step into a more manageable morning. Skills like organization and time management dont always come easy to me. I think somewhere along the line I decided that organized people were annoying and so I discounted just how important being organized can be. Now, I see the error of myways and I am ready to humble myself before my type A counterparts to seek their advice and tips. Look out. Super K is on her way...xxK

38 going on 9

Hi All,

Today is Thursday. All here is going ok. It is not easy this business of being an adult, and being responsible, and being sober, and enjoying it. I can say that I am trying. I am trying hard to be the person that I want to be and to keep myself focused not on what I want, but on who I want to be. I memorized the Third Step Prayer which I will attempt to link to if I can figure out how to. This is not to get all AA crazy on anyone but just to show where I am at. I am working really hard on the spiritual principle of turning my will over to a power that is greater than me. My higher power. God. Or, in my case, some sort of hybrid of the God of my childhood and the Higher Power of my adulthood. I used to think that I could not mesh those two but I have come full circle with this and realized it is my God I am talking about--so it is just fine if it only makes sense to me.

I got thinking about this picture that I remember of my First Holy Communion. I was wearing this white dress and veil. I love this picture because I actually remember being really happy on that day. I remember feeling spiritually connected and special. I actually thought maybe I want to be a nun someday...no, I am not kidding. I was young but I got something on that day. I felt a taste of something divine within myself. As I grew up, I grew further away from that girl. It is funny that at 38 I find myself more like her than I was at 28 or even 18. I think maybe that girl is who I want to be again. The girl who was curious, spiritual, smart, wordy, and interested in everyone's story. That was Karen Anne and getting back to her was the distance that I have traveled in 30 years. All the way to Hong Kong I have traveled looking for someone else, something else, seeking.

Years of my life spent looking at other people. Studying their face, their personalities, their style, their intelligence, their family, their everything that was not me. Years spent contrasting and comparing. Years drinking and thinking about just who it was going to take, what special person I could find, that would make my life special, make me happy, excited, and ok. Was it this boyfriend? That boyfriend? Someone I hadnt met yet or might. Someone I let get away? Someone I could never really get? Somewhere I just knew that he was the answer. If I could just think harder, see things more clearly, talk to him a little longer I might just be able to figure this all out.
I wonder now when I look back why I was always so sure that everyone else had something that I didnt. What made them special and me--not? Maybe the wisdom is that we are each as special as we think we are. Or maybe we are all the same amount of special and it takes us all our own journey to figure this out. Some of us think we're less special, some think they are more, and eventually we all get to our right size--right along with everyone else.

I dont know where I am going with this really. Somewhere corny? Spiritual? All I know is that I am beginning to hear that girl that I thought I had lost. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her in my daughter but more often I hear her...right here, with me. She is not a stranger. She's been right here with me this whole time. It turns out that my true self...is not an alcoholic, not selfish, not mean, or sarcastic, or melodramatic.

Dont get worried. I am not doing any strange denial thing. I accept my alcoholism as part of me forever. I accept that I need to treat it and that I cant underestiamate its power to bring me down. To twist me up. I see so clearly today how much power it had in my life. How much power I gave it. I never got that part before--that I gave it all away. I never got that I always had something to give. I heard the other day an old familiar phrase: there are no victims, only volunteers. Amen to that. xxK

http://silkworth.net/aa/3rd.html

Growing Geraniums and other first times

Hi All. Here I am. Back from my own abyss of overthinking and into accepting my life for all of its joy and pain. I have recently embarked on a new hobby. Gardening! I love it. I feel like I have finally found what I have been looking for in a hobby. I like it, I like how I feel doing it, and it makes my life more beautiful. Gardening has it all. I feel like a kid in a candy shop.

I am lucky to have moved into a home that had a nice garden already so all I really needed to do was clean it up and add what I want. I havent done that much yet but I did get some Geraniums and have replanted them and they seem to be...yes, growing. I come home and check on them. My kids water them. It has only been a few days but so far they seem to be surviving my uprooting them from my friend's really beautiful garden and bringing them here. I think what sold me on them was the smell of the leaves so peppery and basil like and a little floral and just right. I love real scents.

I love real hobbies. I love doing things that bring me closer to the earth, closer to who I want to be. Writing about old friends or (more accurately} old boyfriends is just not for me. Not for the me that I want to be. That is the old me. Obsessed with drama, chaos, and too used to it to really notice it.

I notice it now though. I see it in my last two blogs. The over thinking, the ruminating, the inability to really see the big picture. It is hard to see the big picture when you are so used to only thinking of yourself. It is also quite simply a bad habit to think that I can just have any kind of relationship that I want with anyone I want and expect others to understand exactly why this works for me. I cant tell you how many hours I really obsessed on this, thought about it, felt self righteous anger over this. And then it happened...I realized I was wrong.

This is how long it took for me to realize this. About fifteen seconds. It took someone else (to protect the innocent I will just say someone very important to me)saying something to me about this and about fifteen seconds from when they said it for me to realize that not only was I wrong, I was also playing with my own very special brand of fire. I write this here because it is tied so tightly to my drinking, wound up around it, and in between all of the spaces. My own blind spots. The things about myself that I justify, the defects in character that I explain, the truths I manipulate for my own benefit.

These are familar skills for me. Skills I developed while slurping down my third cocktail and explaining how the glasses were small, or tomorrow was a slow day, or today was a good day, a bad day, I was too sad, I was too happy, I was alone, I was in love, my boyfriend was too something, my life was not quite something enough, it was something for sure to do with someone else, or something else--if I could just explain to you how hard, easy, sad, happy, or anything in between that I was then you would understand. The message was always the same. I deserve this drink. Let me tell you that true to my advertising roots I was always on message.

When I drank, I stayed on message about why I needed to or deserved to. I learned how to twist the truth around to suit my needs. I learned this without even knowing it. Unlearning it takes some serious fucking work. It takes being willing to make sacrifices for the people that you love. It means life, people, relationships dont always turn out just the way that I want. It means I need to accept what the Universe gives me and what it takes away too.
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For today, I have my little garden. It makes me happy to grow things instead of destroy them. It makes me happy to know that I am just a little bit closer to who I want to be today then I was yesterday. Hope you are too. xx

more on love, trust, and doing something different...

Hi All. I have been thinking about my last post since I wrote it. I almost deleted it actually because it is not only not good writing but I am not even sure it is good material. I wanted to write about it because it is bugging me, because the situation is under my skin and I think reflects my very real character defects more than it really reflects anything about anyone else at all.
The defects I see are as follows 1) self centeredness, 2) impulsivity, 3) not being able to feel grateful for what I have and instead focusing on what I dont have. The self centereded stuff is obvious. When you care about a person (or claim to) than it should not be hard to do what is right for them (right?). Impulsivity. I just want what I want and then I want it now. I want to email with my friend now. I want this and I dont want to think about what is best or be a good person or be a good friend. I just want things back the way they were before--before I had to take responsibility for not just myself but for other people too. I want it easy and (I guess) all about me. Lastly, the not being able to see what I have and instead focusing on what I dont. I could cry. So ridiculous is this particular defect. I should be happy and grateful that I am happy, healthy and doing well, that my family is, that my husband and kids are. I should not be wasting my time or energy on this. And yet I am. All I can think is that deep down I just am selfish. Selfish and immature.
In my defense, because this is my blog, I will say that my real sadness comes from my recent realization that not emailing with my friend is actually--really and truly--then end of our friendship. When you dont talk to a person on the phone, dont see them in person, then all that is left is email and when that is gone we are talking about a friendship where you dont communicate which really--is not a friendship at all.
I could go on and on about what I think about asking someone I love to end a friendship but I wont because it is 1) selfish and 2) stupid since it doesnt matter. In theory, I would never do this...probably because of my own pride and my own sort of maybe twisted view of trust and independence.
On some level, I do want to protect my friend, want to defend his choice, his relationship. I do think that you should not engage knowingly in behavior that hurts your partner. I do think we often need to prioritize our time and relationships and, I guess I need to admit, that the reality is not always as pretty as the theory. Sometimes we all feel scared, threatened, or unsure. Sometimes we all need reassurance and we need our partners to do what they can to help us. I'd like to think I am the kind of wife who respect my husband enough to end a friendship that made my husband uncomfortable, but I laugh writing this since I know that the odds of him feeling this way are slim to none. I dont know how I feel tonite as I write this. I guess I am back to just sad. The connection that I shared with my friend was real to me, not romantic, definitively platonic, but perhaps intimate--if that is the right word? I dont think that is the word I'd pick, maybe natural or just plain old someone I've known a pretty long time now so there is history, context--something I value and love in friends. Time. I miss that. I never really considered I'd lose it. Maybe that is my real regret. I was arrogant. I thought that I would always have a small piece of something, a small piece of a part of my life, a small piece of me as I used to be. I was wrong and that...that being wrong...it hurts. It hurst to lose a person unexpectedly. I am glad he is healthy and happy and he is not gone from the world but it is bittersweet that he is gone for me. XxK

Trust, Love, and Honesty

Hi All,
Strange and new topic for me tonite. So, here it is. A good friend of mine (who just happens to have once been a boyfriend too) just told me recently that he is choosing to not email with me anymore. The reason is because his fiance has been hurt by our friendship and thus continuing to email with me is continuing to hurt her. Not good. Not good at all. I felt so bad about all of this and still do. Not just because someone's feelings got hurt and that always sucks but because I have been in her shoes too. Not once but a few different times. I have been the person who had their feelings hurt and each time my then boyfriend never, not once, offered to stop communicating with the said offender. Me, being me, I never wanted to say what I wanted (ie stop talking to her) and so I sat and got hurt, and felt jealous, and built resentments and insecurities one after the other.
I know deep down that I absoluely must adhere to my friends request and yet I feel...sad. I feel the loss of a friendship that I very selfishly do not want to give up. I will give it up. I will do the right thing bc that is what sober and mature people do. Also, I really want my frend to be happy and I want his relationship to be strong and healthy. I do not for one second what to be part of anything bad or complicated bc that is not how my fe works anymore. What used to be always complicated has gotten much simpler. Do the next right thing. Right action equals Right thinking. So, I will blog and move on. We all need to grow up sometime I guess. Xx

Tough Love, Gentle Love, and everything in between...

Hi All,

Today is Wednesday. I write this as I sit staring at my half cleaned house, my phone next to me awaiting a call back, and my cat asleep in the sunny but dusty sunroom. I think, I should not be writing and then I keep writing because I need to get some stuff out of my head and into the light--however dusty it is.

As I have written before I have been pretty strung out on trying to figure out how to begin to care for my Dad. I know many many people go thru this and worse and so I feel not alone in this process but also not completely connected. I find myself wanting to scream sometimes out at the universe about how life is unfair, about how the economy sucks, about how hard my Dad has worked and how sick it is that his house has lost value not gained it--as he had planned. I think about how hard it is for him to accept help and how conditioned he has been to believe that needing help makes him weak. I want to tell him that we all need help sometimes but I don't. My words get stuck in my throat.

I look at him. So sad. So depressed. So seemingly hopeless. I want to cry for him and for me. For his suffering. For my suffering. I want to cry for the dreamy, happy, simple life that he planned for and assumed was his birthright. I want to cry for the entitlement, insensitivity, and rigidness of his thinking. I want to cry for the mental illness that causes him so much shame and renders him incapable of being the person that I remember as so capable--as so strong. I want to cry, but I dont.

I make phone calls. I try to look at the bright side. I sometimes do actually look at the bright side. I see physical health. I see life and family and love. I see abundance that is not financial. I think about how what we see determines everything. I think more about what I choose to see and what I leave out.

I go to meetings. I sit and listen to sober people getting thru it. I think of us all trudging along. Trying. I think how we are all on plan B at some point and what that means for each of us. I think none of us really planned for this--whatever it is. This life--the surprises (good and not so good), the pain, the joy in unexpected places, the love in unexpected places. I try.

I come home at night tired, hopeful, confused, determined--wondering how will this turn out? My Mom told me that the other day my Dad said this to her...that he was confused about where he would be? About how he would be? It made me a little sad, until I realized maybe we're all a little confused about that. We need faith, family, friends, and love. We need to remind each other that we are all in this together...a little uncertain, a little scared, but not alone. xxK

Love

Hi Friends,

Tuesday night. The last week has been really hectic. My Dad is in the hospital and (once again) I feel totally powerless and stuck in fear. I have been talking about it as much as I can but I admit that is not that much. I hate talking about it because I hate thinking about it. I want to pretend it is not happening but the truth is that cant. I try to pretend by sleeping or eating or not sleeping or not eating or wasting time on facebook or pinterest or even reading bad book but it is always there. My pain is always with me. My sadness is with me. My fear is with me. I spend so much energy trying to push it down and I only end up tired.

Last night I sat at a meeting and talked about Scotch. I was not a huge Scotch drinker but I oddly seem to equate this particular drink with total and pure annihilation and therefore seem to think of it when I want that. So there is my Scotch idea, picture, dream lingering in my head. I drive home considering how much work I do to not have this idea and yet, here it is. I quickly establish this is not a good thought. I pick up cell phone. I put down cell phone. I put on radio. I drive. I drive home thinking about why I am not calling anyone. I think about why I am thinking about a drink. I am sure of this one. I am thinking about a drink bc I am a recovering alcoholic who is scared and sad. That was simple.

I drive home. I know I will not have a Scotch, buy a Scotch, or even get close enough to one to smell it. Not today and hopefully not tomorrow either. I know there is no solace for me there, not really. I know that the simple solution I crave, the escape, the instantly better, the no more pain, the everything feels fine moment is one giant mirage for me. A mirage that leads me to pain, loneliness, shame, and a bottomless pit of self loathing. I know this all.

I think about how I need conscious contact with a higher power. I need a spiritual solution. I look at nature. I look at my kids. I think higher power. I feel not that much of anything. I talk to my sponsor later that night...I say I cant feel conscious contact and I am scared or I do feel it but not enough, not the way that I should, not the way that I want to feel it. I want to feel so much God or Higher Power that I dont feel anything else. I want a God binge. I dont think it works this way.

My Sponsor says that Faith is believing even when you dont feel it. It is remembering that you have and hanging on. I think this makes sense. It is anticlimatic but it makes sense. I have faith. I believe. I know I will feel again. I know my kids break thru my sadness. I know their smell and hair and skin is like my own special religion. I kneel down before them, before this warm house full of food, before this life full of love and sadness too. I kneel down and pray for an open heart, for love, for acceptance, for compassion--not just for me, but for you too. xxK

3 questions

Hi All, I heard these 3 questions last night at a meeting and I just had to get them down before I forget. Someone was suggesting that we write these three questions down on a paper and keep them with us at all times. Here they are: 1) Does it need to be said? 2) Does it need to be said now? and 3) Does it need to be me that says it? I thought these were such interesting questions to ask ourselves. Why? So often it seems I get myself into trouble by saying things that I later realize I ever needed even to be thinking about--let alone talking about.

What is my business and what is not? Where does it make sense for me to put my energy and where am I wasting my time? These three questions really distill this down. Why? Because it is true that often we do need to say something about our own feelings or thoughts. Often it is important to do this for our own process and so that other people can relate to us, but the key here is that I know that when I speak about my own experiences then it only can be me talking. Once I start getting involved with my opionions/comments/and theories about other people's lives and choices then I am defintely entering some murky waters.

The truth is that I am not sure I belong in those waters at all. Often times I fear I end up there bc my own waters are not looking terribly appealing and so rather then clean up my own water--I dive head first into your water and start figuring out what you need to do in order to get things back the way that I want them. It is funny thinking about it this way. It is funny to think how easy and quick it is to judge other people and get involved in their lives when really I have enough to deal with just handling my own life.

I am left to consider the realities of life and recovery. To me, the very essence of recovery is taking responsibility for my life and my choices. It means that I do not get to point the finger at someone else and blame them for my life. I just don't. I gave up that option along with the six pack and joint that went with it. I admit that sometimes I miss this safety blanket--I remember how comfortable it was for me there. All wrapped up and comfortable in my victim blanket. Warm and cozy. Safe from all of the introspection, thought, and growth that comes from taking responsibility for my life--I could have easily stayed there stuck and alone.

I admit it, it has not been easy to learn how to own my life. It has been hard and more often then I like to admit I find myself sliding easily into the blame someone else thinking. The only difference now is that I dont stay there so long. I get there to my victim place--look around and realize that I dont want to be there. I know better now. I hope you do too. xxK

smile and know you are taken care of

Hi All. I have been getting some really good advice lately. The title of this blog is not advice I received but it really fits in with some stuff that I have been thinking about and considering--namely faith. My faith in something divine-like in divine order or in a power greater than myself is both strong and sort of cloudy and fluffy--like I cant quite get my head around what I think. Add to that this sort of background skepticism/ logical side that I have and things get muddy, quick. It has been hard for me to accept a higher power as an integral part of recovery and of life for a long time. I have always sort of felt that yes, I believed in something but no, I dont think I need to in order to be sober. I almost hate writing that because I dont want to mess anyone else up but it is my truth. I always have depended so much on my mind to think me out of things, come up with the words, figure it out.

The really funny thing is that my mind never helped me get better. My mind generally keeps me sick. The changes that I have made that have really helped me, that have changed me, are the ones that I made from my heart and my gut. The deep part of me that just said--do this or dont do this anymore. My head was too busy saying things to me like--dont worry about it, everyone else does it, and telling me to just relax and have a drink. Addiction is a mental illness, this is something I would never deny or could never. Once I quit drinking, I got to take a look at the obsessive nature of my mind (even away from my drinking) and to begin to attend to dealing with that--as the fundamental source of the problem.

You can see in this crazy blog that my mind just rattles on sometimes forward and often around and around over the same worries, anxieties, and insecurities. Round and round like a hamster on a wheel my mind goes. It takes so much work and time to do things differently, to think different. Sometimes I feel as though it is futile and I will never really change and then something happens and I realize I am actually thinking about things different, behaving differently, and I feel hopeful.

A few days ago someone told me that I should "invite god into the room" before an important meeting. That I should go early and just be in the space by myself and invite the presence of my higher power or divine spirit or whatever i believe into the room with me. That I should remember that no one has that much power in my life--unless I give it to them. what they didnt say but I thought was that I need to remember that I am being taken care of--because I do believe that I am--I do believe that there is a divine order and purpose to the events of our lives that we dont always know but that is real. I know there are a million reasons to shoot down this idea but as I sit here, I do smile. I do feel as though I am taken care of. I am ok. I am finding my voice and I am realizing who I am and what is really important to me. Maybe I am not who or what I thought I would be, but I am not disappointed in who I have found either. I am exactly as I am supposed to be and exactly where I am supposed to be--just like you are. xxK

nothing changes until we do

hi all. today is saturday. yesterday, i got my hair cut and my hair dresser gave me a manicure on the house. i now have dark dark green metallic looking short nails and an updated tousledish bob like hair cut. i am sitting here drinking my first coffee (ouch, it is 1:49p) and attempting to wake up from working my overnite shift--again. this job is one of those jobs that i have enjoyed but also seems to have taken as much has given in terms of my life and the lives of the people close to me. working residential is not family friendly. a few days ago i had the thought (again) that it might be ironic if i was neglecting my own children to help heal someone else's--that maybe one was cancelling the other out and that i might need to really look at who is important to me and needs me and who is important but also could be helped by other people too.

my kids need me. not all of the time, of course. they have great and amazing teachers at Discovery PreSchool, amazing friends there, and a nice set of parents who are always around too. we are so lucky there. my kids have their amazing father, their mima, their nana and grandpa, their aunt kristin and uncle marc, cousin cora, grandpa Bud and lots of other great people in their lives but none of those people can take the place of me, their mama and how they do need me--for real and not someone else. they say it takes a village and i am the first to agree but the village cannot replace the mommy. we all know it. it is true. kids need their parents. and this mommy needs a job that does not cause her to miss out on weekends and week nights with them while they still like me and want to be around me. i realize this is a situation that i cant take for granted. so when i am all grown up and ready to spend "quality time" with them and not distracted and impatient--that they will say ok good mom, we've been waiting for you, lets hang out and read and snuggle. kids dont wait for us that way. life doesnt wait for us that way.

if i have to work at this job because after looking--i cant find another then that is one thing. sometimes we have to make hard choices for our family. i am not saying all mothers, in all situations need to make changes, our choices are in many ways limited by many things outside of our control. but we do need to see what our choices really are...each of us. to look at our options and take responsibility for what we've chosen--for better and for worse.

i interviewed for a new job at (gulp) a health insurance giant a few weeks ago. this is after countless applications to other rehabs for day positions. i realized i need to work to make money and to (maybe) have benefits if we need them. right now, i need to work for my family not for me. i am passionate about helping people and about recovery, but there are more ways then one to do both of these things. and maybe the universe wants me somewhere else right now--like home with the kids who really need my help--my own.

it takes humility and a certain amount of self sacrifice to make a step away from what i think i want professionally but i also have some added insight that i am taking a step towards what i want personally--to have time with my kids. to have enough money to not spend the time i am with them, worried about how to pay for things they need or want. (i admit they need way less then i think btw.)

the health insurance place called last week and left a message that they were looking forward to talking to me. the interviews went well. i am interested to see what will happen next and where i will end up in a few weeks. i know that things that i was blogging abotu at work a few weeks ago really opened my eyes up to the simple truth that i was working hard for people who didnt appreciate it and who had no idea how to be professional. not to me and not to anyone else either. i had a choice to make about where i want to be and who i want to work with. i think i have made my choice. enough being the victim of my job. we all have choices. xxK

trusting in the process?

Hi Friends. Today is Wednesday. Usually I work on Wednesdays but things at work have been strange and I find myself with a different schedule--interestingly this schedule seems to work a little better for me--so this is a good thing. Anyway, today I start out over sleeping because I was so excited to sleep in and not get up before 6am and then dropping my kids off late at preschool (not a new thing for me) and then feeling bad about myself already and the day just started. I realize a few things that I need to work on for real...organization and time management. Both of these are areas that really dont interest me at all but I can see that my lack of interest in them leads me to be lacking in skills in both. If I want to be on time then I need to make that a priority and work on it--after 38 years I should know that just expecting things to be different w/o work is not so realistic. Ok, that said I will now try to let that go and move on with my day. I am going to organize my closet after this post and I am hopeful that this will give me a little extra help in my morning dash.

The work situation that I wrote about last is still lingering in my mind. I guess it was sort of resolved but what I learned was that I am not working at the right place for me. I can see that it might be the right place for someone else but I need a place that is more flexible and that invests more in their employees. This experience showed me that there is a fundamental disconnect between what I believe and my vision and what some people around (and above) me believe and their vision. I think it is easy to fall into the trap of working solely with the goal of avoiding making mistakes. While this may be a safe way to work it is not a great way to work nor is it the way that I want to work. I want to think big and bold and make a difference. I dont want to focus solely on avoiding errors. No, no thank you. Mistakes are inevitable. It is what we do with them and learn from them that I want to count in my work not how cleverly we avoided an error or covered it up.

Enough on that.

So, I find myself in flux again. Trying to have faith and see what the Universe has in store for me. Am I supposed to be where I am and if so, what am I supposed to be learning? Am I supposed to be somewhere else and if so, where? and doing what? I hate to think about not working with teenagers but I also hate to think about continuing to work in an environment that is not healthy for me. I am torn. I feel sort of lost and floudering and (to be honest) my ego is not really loving the idea of taking another entry level job in a new field. I feel like I have "paid my dues" in both advertising and social work and the addictions field. I am feeling a little done with dues paying. I know this attitude is not helpful though and I am trying to work on it. I need humility and faith to get me out of myself, my fears, and my projections.

I am feeling better emotionally though and this helps me be able to see things more clearly. To not personalize other people's issues and to not make my work environment about me. It is not. I also need to try to avoid the trap of making what I do for a job define who I am as a person. I need to peel this stuff apart and look at why it is so easy for me to make my career define me. I have some theories about why I do this or why anyone would but I'll save that for another time. For today I am just going to focus on being able to find my black leggings in my closet when I need them and not beating myself up about my tardiness.

Thanks for listening--again.
xx
K

turning it over and over and over

Hi All. Today is Tuesday--I am supposed to be at work now but my kids had a 3 hour delay at school. I cant tell you how hard it is for me to sometimes make these minor adjustments in my schedule. Even when I know the weather could be bad and school could be closed or cancelled--I still struggle to be flexible and to accept the day as it unfolds and not as I had planned. Also, despite my new Zoloft I am still anxious about some work drama that is going on and feel sort of twisted over what will happen. I sort of just wanted to go to work and get on with dealing with it. The delay could be torturous if I let it, so I thought I'd write instead of worry or at least do both.

My work situation is a strange thing since it involves me behaving in a pretty unusual way at work which is to be someone who becomes so angry that they have to leave a meeting or risk saying something inappropriate or unfixable. Having never really experienced this level of anger at work I am trying to sort out how I contributed to this situation and what I can do to fix up my part without taking over responsibility. Mostly I can see that what I did was engage with a sick person and expect them to respond to me like a healthy person. I was being ration with someone who was not in a rational space. I know better, usually. Upon further reflection and with some help from the 4th Step I can see that I had some resentments building with this person that I had left unaddressed--thinking it was better to just let them go--which might have been true if I had actually let them go but holding on to them and doing nothing about them is not a good plan for resolution or healthy and direct communication. I learned that in the future I need to address issues when they happen--even if that means being uncomfortable.

For today, my goal is to stay connected to my highest self. The part of me that is confident, safe, and spiritually centered. I cannot let myself go to the fear place because when I act from there--weird shit happens. I end up ANGRY or weak and scared. Someone very high level where I work accused me of being fragile--in a public forum when I was not present. I was so mad when I learned this that I was back in the situation that I had to leave all over again. I need to stay in my safe place or I react instead of act. I want to be in a place of quiet confidence, stable, humble, certain. I hope I can do that today and not fall into the trap of getting scared and then angry. I am smarter then that.

My fourth step showed me that I was giving people I work with too much power in my life. That I was not trusting in my higher power or really connected to it. Blah, what a mess I got into. Here it is though, I am committed to learning from it and to hopefully learning more about some of the areas in my life that still need work.

I hope you are all trying to see your "mistakes" as opportunities too. It is not easy, but it is rewarding and so much better then staying in the anger and carrying resentments around. xxK

Mommy, You said to remind you if you start to yell at us...

Hi All, I am back on the blogging. Now I cant stop. So this entry is a sort of parantheses to my last blog about my story and my drinking. I am writing this because I just reread my blog description and realized I very rarely write about motherhood. This is laughable since I seem to have so many different thoughts on the topic. You can see tonite's topic based on my title.

So a few posts ago I mentioned that I started taking Zoloft because I was tired of yelling at my kids. This is an over simplification but is also essentially the truth. I started a month ago when in my rushing to get my kids (already late) to PreSchool I yelled at my daughter. She wasnt listening and I was not in the mood to debate the finer points of getting in the car now or playing a few minutes longer in the first snow dusting we had on the ground. I yelled her name and then some other stuff and then her name etc. After this I picked her up and put her in the car and was pissed. I was pissed nearly the entire ride to her school. I was thinking: What the fuck do I have to do to get my child to listen to me? I thought: other moms do not yell at their children like psychos because they are running late to PreSchool. I thought this is just another area of my life where I am underachieving AND this is the most important area...shit.

Then we get to PreSchool and my baby girl draws me a picture of our fight and tells me to take it home. We make up. I drive home. I get home and sit and look at the picture. On red construction paper my stick figure self can be seen with mean eyebrows and a nice big thought bubble above my head yelling her name in all caps. Point taken. I pick up the telephone and call my Doctor. I make an appointment to see her in 45 minutes. I go.
I tell her about how I dont feel like myself and I am so irritable and it is terrible and I dont like myself and I just want to crawl into bed and I cant. I tell her that my husband is worried bc I am seem so frustrated (true) and that I really wouldnt even care except I just yelled at my daughter (who is actually really good) again and while I do not mind hurting myself--I will not hurth my kids. My pride is not that big. My ego is not that big. If that pill will help me be nice to them and sleep and not freak out--fuck it, I'll take it.

She writes a prescription for a new SSRI (having tried Lexapro last winter and having given up on it because of yucky side effects despite feeling better). I realize that it is all ego and pride and other people's opinions about meds but that none of it is important if it can help me. I take the meds. It has been about 3 weeks now. I will say that I began to feel less impulsive with my yelling and started to feel calm enough to play with kids and enjoy it. I have recently found myself feeling like me--the me that I was before I was not me. This is not a perfect person...I still feel frustrated, tired, pissed etc but I do not feel so irritated I cant think or so frustrated I want to scream. I feel ok. I will say it again. I feel ok.

Having felt not ok on and off for a long time, feeling ok is pretty fucking great. I am open to other opinions on this but let me say that if an anxiety problem fueld my drinking then taking meds for that anxiety problem is fueling my recovery. Please know that I always only speak for myself and dont assume to know what is right for anyone else. I also know that a month from now I might be writing abotu how I stopped taking this because I changed my mind but for now this is where I am at.

Being a working Mommy of small children (age 3 and 4.5) is not always easy. I often find myself having to make the sacrifices that all parents have to make between what is right for me and what is right for them. In a perfect world these are the same. In the real world they are not always. For today, I am trying to do both and make the time I am with them be time that is good for us all. Not perfect, but good. Someday I will tell my kids about my struggles and how I want to be the best parent and person that I can be. That I want to be honest about what I am good at and what I need to work on. I feel this is important. That is why I told my daughter to remind me if I start to yell because Mommy is working on not yelling but sometimes she forgets. It is a bad habit that Mommy started and now needs to stop. No worries though kids, Mommy has some experience with breaking bad habits. xxx K