Total Commitment to Your Recovery

There is a value at looking back in recovery. Where did you come from? How did you get here? Addiction and recovery move in circles and cycles. Even though we say, “Look back but don’t stare” and there is value and sometimes efficiency in looking at your own story.  

The book, “Women Who Love Too Much” by Robin Norwood was such an important

part of my early recovery. It’s fair to say that my intervention was a book. That book. The right book at the right time. I was so unaware that I had a problem with alcohol, and I had a million rationalizations for my disordered eating, but my relationships problems were front and center. I could see them; other people could see them. So, I read the book.

I was desperate and desperate enough to turn the pages even though what Norwood was revealing was very painful. I was on every page.

And then, like a pinball machine, I felt every bell and buzzer go off when Norwood linked relationship problems to alcoholism, drug addiction and eating disorders. Dam her! And yes, thank her! --her book saved my life. Because of that relationship book I found AA and a couple more Twelve-step programs, and a therapist, and a group.

And now, 31 years later, I can hardly believe that was me. Except…

Today it’s not alcohol, drugs or food that can undo me. But my thinking still needs work. And I still need to look at issues like scarcity, fear, control, desire, and the addict’s mantra “More” …. yes, I still want more: more shoes, more work, more energy, more recognition, more comfort, more confidence, even more yoga, and things that are seemingly good for me. But there is a fine balance between desire and dependence.

So, when I did dip back into Robin Norwood’s miracle book, “Women Who Love Too Much” I find this paragraph--it's underlined, starred, and highlighted, and it’s still very relevant: 

“Total commitment to your own recovery requires that you suspend your own use of alcohol and other drugs. Mind altering substances mitigate against your fully experiencing the emotions you are uncovering. It is only through deeply experiencing them that you will also gain the healing that comes with their release.”

Happy Mother's Day Medea

 If productivity was down in your workplace this week you can blame your mother. Across the city workers were lingering through their lunch hour in card stores reading and sighing. Buying a Mother’s Day card is not easy.

For some, the card that says, “Mom, Thanks for being perfect” is fine, but for the rest of us, with complicated mothers and complicated relationships, the search for the right message is tough.

But even as children–of all ages--struggle to summarize their

maternal relationship in a card, those on the receiving end have mixed feelings too. Most of us know we don’t come close to the platitudes in those greeting cards.

What is a good mother? Do we measure up? On this day that celebrates kindness, patience and sacrifice many of us squirm remembering our less than ideal maternal moments; We wonder if we’ve done something really bad along the way and worry whether our worst day as a mother damaged our kids.

Mothers who hurt their children is a painful topic. The reality of mothers’ hostile impulses against their children is old news in psychological circles and parenting books, but we rarely allow parents to admit those feelings.

Thank goodness, most of us don’t act on our thoughts, but some mothers have struggled with the limits and lost. When we hear about them, many of us know--in the privacy of our hearts--that it was just the grace of God, good friends, a reliable baby-sitter and money in the bank that kept us from taking their place.

 So maybe we should, especially on Mother’s Day, have some compassion for the mothers who lost it, those women who did the unthinkable; they hurt their own child. If some mothers weren’t so newsworthy for their sheer failure at mothering the rest of us would not know where to draw the line in self-judgment.

We can count ourselves lucky and a little grateful that most of us have slapped but did not scald, screamed but did not hit, or cursed but did not kill. When we react to a child-abuse horror story with the common, “Can you imagine?” the truth is that most of us can.

We owe a debt to those mothers because they give us the outside limit from which to measure our parenting. The “bad” mother relieves us of the shadowy fear we all carry. 

We can’t talk about bad mothers without mentioning Medea; the mythological woman who killed her kids to punish their philandering father. But Medea got to her breaking point after a world tour of abuse, abandonment and humiliation.

After being dumped in a strange country with no way home, she lost it and she killed. Medea’s story is a myth but, as with all myths, it points to something real in the human psyche. When we read about women who hurt their kids a healthy mother has to stop and ask herself, “How did that woman get there?”  Nobody starts out wanting to kill their children; nobody starts out thinking scalding is reasonable discipline. It’s baby steps all the way.

Every mother who lost it at least once, or who did something she swore she’d never do, can be grateful for everything that keeps her from crossing over to the territory of the terrible mother.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist, wrote: “If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and we could separate them from us and destroy them, but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” That includes yours and mine.

So for Mother’s Day let’s thank the good mothers and show a moment of compassion for the “Medeas” of the world, who in their tragic solution to life’s problems show us where we ought not to go.     

Taking Recovery to Work: Making Decisions

The Practice of Discernment

One friend asks, “Should she change jobs?” Another thinks about changing her whole career. A coworker debates, “Should she buy a house or continue to rent?” Someone else talks about graduate school versus yoga teacher training. 

“A choice between goods” is one definition of discernment. Not right or wrong, good or bad, but a choice between goods.

But how do you “do” discernment? 

Years ago my spiritual director gave me this list of tools for discernment:

Prayer

Quiet

Sitting still

Asking God

Listening

Get quiet and listen for the subtle

Think and feel

Wait

Then use your gut, your courage and your integrity.

Another good discernment practice, if you have time, is this:

Fully describe option A to yourself: the graduate program, the classes, location, books, homework, money, and benefits, people. Declare (to yourself) that this is the choice you have made. Live as if that is the final choice—that and only that for two weeks. Pretend to yourself it’s a done deal and go about your life as if that is true. Pay attention to your body, energy, heart and head.

After two weeks again fully commit yourself, but now to option B. Again, make full mental commitment—two whole weeks. Now what do you notice or sense in your body, mind, heart, energy? Write about what you notice and sense. What messages do you get?

Talk to people who have chosen either options –or similar ones—and then pray for a sign.

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For more on discernment in recovery take a look at "Out of the Woods--A Woman's Guide to Long-term Recovery" published by Central Recovery Press.