Addiction and Recovery

Addiction sucks.  Whether it's my own, or my husband's, or in the life of my friends...it sucks.  There's nothing pretty about it.  It's ugly and nasty and sucks the life out of everyone that it touches.

I hate:
my own addictions - self-harm, nicotine, food, codependency
my husband's addiction - intimacy anorexia (IA)
addictions in the lives of my friends - food, drugs, alcohol, food, sex, nicotine, codependency, IA

I love:
the wholeness of recovery
the miracles I get to witness
that beauty is made out of ashes in front of my eyes every day

I struggle:
with the process
the setbacks and relapses
with the pain inflicted

Here's what I'm learning though.  There is beauty in the authenticity of living my recovery.  There is freedom in living a life without secrets.  There is an aliveness, a rawness in living without medicating my feelings.

It's hard work.  It's living with an openness of my heart towards others that is not easy, especially when those others are in pain or causing me pain.  It also means learning boundaries and self-respect.

I am amazed at how far I have come.  I was the girl who said that there was no way, no how that a 12 step program would help me.  I was too different and besides, my issues stemmed from the spiritual, emotional, verbal, psychological, physical and sexual abuses that were inflicted on me for most of my life.  Oh how wrong I was - and I'm so glad that I was wrong.  Recovery allows me to see my healing as a process, a journey, one which requires me, my Higher Power and my community.

I'm grateful for the people that have come into my life because of my recovery.  I'm currently leading a group for partners and spouses of addicts. They are beautiful women that I am so amazed by each and every week. It's holy, humbling work. It's stretching and growing me in ways that I didn't know I could be stretched.

Recovery has shaped me into the woman that I am today. I wouldn't be alive without it.  I wouldn't have a marriage without it.  Living out the steps has given me back my life.  I am profoundly grateful that God has used recovery to bring in pieces that I was missing in my healing journey.

Temper Tantrums and Next Steps

Like most people I have patterns of behaviour in my life that are relatively predictable.  One of those patterns is my temper tantrums.  Every time I do something new, take another step forward or am placed in a situation that requires growth I inwardly throw a tantrum.  It goes something like this:

You can't make me.  I won't do it.  Nuh-uh this is stupid and it doesn't fit me anyway.  I'm too broken for this.  I'm further along now in my healing and I don't need this.  I don't get it.  I don't see the point.  YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!! YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T!

I usually then plop down right where I am in a storm of angry tears.  See I resist because I'm afraid.  Every new step brings up all the fears.  I don't do well being pushed into things.  I sniff out unvoiced expectations like a blood hound.  Even when I know that one step comes after where I am, I still resist at first.

In my first time through the Twelve Steps, it became quickly apparent that every time we moved onto a new step my response would be "You can't make me do this."  I was blessed with leaders who were willing to stand out of the way and affirm that they weren't going to even try to make me do it.  I desperately need to know that I have a choice, one without strings attached to it.  I didn't have choices as a child and the choices that I made got me hurt even more.

The pattern is still here though.  Every time I run into something new, something that stretches me I throw myself down for a good old-fashioned tantrum.  God is so patient with me.  He's never shamed me for my tantrums.  He knows I'm scared.  He knows that I need the space to feel free to choose to take the step in front of me.

I get frustrated that this is the way that it is.  Too often I'm standing over my scared little girl-self screaming at her to grow up, stand up.  Telling her that is no way to behave and would she just do as I say because she's embarrassing me.  I'm a grown up and she doesn't get to carry on like this.  It's just not done.  I heap insults on her.  Rarely do I stoop down into her dirt and see her.  Often I grab her arm and drag her behind me, still kicking and screaming.

It doesn't work.  I always have to go back to her and make yet another amends, praying that God would please show me how to make her do what I need her to do.  It's the wrong kind of prayer though.  This time I'm asking that He would show me how to get down in the dirt with her and see her - her fears, her rage, her beauty.  She is fierce. Truth is, I need her.

Can I learn to touch her with gentleness, compassion, tenderness?  Can I learn to stop heaping judgement on her and instead wrap her in mercy?  I need to learn.  I must learn.  God help me learn.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

Breathe in

Breathe out

Breathe in

Breathe out

This seems to be what I can do today.  I can breathe.  A couple conversations over the course of my day have brought some cracks in my walls.  I risked being seen and was welcomed with love.  I am grateful.  Grateful to have women in my life who see me and love me.  It's still so new and I'm continuing to learn how to open up these deep places in myself to others.

Letting go of the judging mind feels like letting go of knowing what could hurt us, surrendering our most potent weapon for survival.  If we stop judging ourselves and everyone else so rigorously, how will we know what is true? How will we protect ourselves from harm? (p64 - Legacy of the Heart, Wayne Muller)

 I've been re-reading Muller's chapter on Judgement and Mercy this afternoon and finding hope.  I'm hearing my own voice and seeing the damage that judgement has caused me over and over.  I'm hearing my own fears of letting it go.  It has been so important to me for so very long.  I'm brought back to Steps 6 and 7.  Once again I'm being asked to be entirely ready to allow my Higher Power to remove this from my life and then humbly asking for it to be removed.

Cultivating nonharming toward ourselves is a tremendous step toward allowing healing love into our broken hearts - especially for those of us who, feeling the sting of physical or emotional pain as children, have internalized much of that judgement and violence in our souls.  We are so in need of mercy and care, and so clumsy in allowing it to be born in our own lives. (p69 - Legacy of the Heart, Wayne Muller) 

I have a place to start. A place that begins with allowing myself the space to simply breathe in and breathe out.  In this way I can release my judgement and welcome mercy with every single breath that I take.