Monday night. Third post. At some point I have to stop numbering these posts but this is all still a novelty. So. Today is the eve of my son's first birthday. What an accomplishment it feels like to me that I have gotten both of us this far. It was a tough year full of everything. It both flew and crept by. It is strange how time seems to do that--both speed up in terms of weeks, months and then slow down in terms of minutes, hours. I noticed this when I first quit drinking and I notice it all of the time with kids. Sunday morning is eternal and all of last year is a blur. This baffles me. Parenting mixed with sobriety really baffles me. I guess they are sort of natural companions--who really wants to be a drunk or stoned parent? But there are so many mixed messages. Put your sobriety first. Whatever you put in front of your sobriety you lose. Then. Your kids always come first. Nothing is more important then your children. I dont know if people without addiction stuff deal with this but for me it is just one of those things that I could argue both sides of forever.

Recently I was thinking you need to do both. You need to both put yourself (ie your sobriety) and your kids first. It is almost like you have to combine it all into one thing called a healthy life and make that the priority. If I start breaking it down into me or my kids all hell breaks loose. I am my kids. My kids are me. We're all ourselves and each other. We are all connected in this crazy web of life. When I feel connected (at meetings, in good conversations, when I am working, or cooking, or playing) all is well and when I am not--all pretty much sucks. I generally start deconstructing the universe when I dont feel connected. That is where the trouble starts for me. I start breaking things apart that really are all connected. I think this is obvious stuff but for me this is like a psychic breakthru.

AA is good for me to the extent that I can use it to feel connected and can mess with my mind when I take it too literally. I wish more people could go to AA or to any other 12 step meeting or support group for recovery only because I keep encountering young women in particular who could benefit from having some friends that were not getting high. At some point I was one of those girls though and I would have laughed myself to the bar if someone had suggested I hit a meeting and not happy hour. It is confusing. People have to get there on their own and yet I keep wanting to sow seeds or whatever dumb phrases we human svc workers tell ourselves we are doing so we dont feel bad about seeing no results for all of our work. We're sowing seeds.

As far as this night goes and me. I am sober. And I am actually grateful--for real. Tonite at a red light listening to this Joni Mitchell song called How do you Stop or soemthing like that...I actually stopped, for a minute. I turned around and looked at my daughter. She was just perfect. Just this little moment of perfect. She looked so grown up though and I realized then why parents get so nostalgic. All of this work to get kids to grow up and then they do. It was a painful moment but I did think. I am grateful. This is gratitude. I dont always hit the gratitude mark so well. I can always say it but feel it, for real. Way way harder. Hit the mark tonite though. Bingo. Bulls eye. Amen.