What Changes in Long-term Recovery? Willingness!

Among the true markers of long recovery is a life with more peace, more compassion and more acceptance. When I hear folks with long recovery talk what impresses me most is their willingness. I hear, and I see—because it’s behavior that counts --their willingness to use the tools of recovery; their willingness to admit they are wrong; and their willingness to say, “I don’t know” and “You may be right.”

Our friends with strong recovery have a willingness to believe in a Higher Power, and a willingness to surrender their lives to that Higher Power. Yes, there is still that swing of giving and taking back our will, and no one does this perfectly, but I do admire the willingness of people in recovery who do more than just give up or go along with what is

happening. Instead they practice a kind of active willingness.

Seeing that kind of deep and amazing change is what prompted me to write about long-term recovery in the book, “Out of the Woods.”

I think of it this way: Willingness is more than just gravity. An apple falling from a tree may or may not be willing. But a person who tries sky diving, bungee jumping or slipping into the deep end of the swimming pool is demonstrating willingness. Acceptance requires willingness, and forgiveness is the product of willingness. And, as we’ve been told over the years, you only need a little bit of willingness to do any of this. Just a very little bit. 

Some of my favorite sayings about willingness are these:

“Willingness is a grace. It is a softening. It is leaving the door slightly ajar.”

“Willingness is showing up. It is showing up and letting go.”

“Willingness is a freedom and it is a step toward freedom.”

“Willingness is a movement of energy; my energy joined to God’s.”

One of the finest messages we garner from The Big Book is about willingness. It is in the story called, “Freedom from Bondage” and it describes the author wanting so badly to be free of a terrible resentment. She gets some help from a magazine article and she describes the practice this way: “If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or thing that you resent, you will be free.” The prescription suggests that we do this praying for two weeks.

The writer goes on to say, “It has worked for me many times, and it will work for me every time I am willing to work for it.”

In many ways it couldn’t be a simpler suggestion. We can seek willingness and even the willingness to be willing. 

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"Out of the Woods--A Guide to Long-term Recovery" is published by Central Recovery Press. 

Go Toward the Thing That Scares You

Yesterday I had the opportunity –yes, another growth opportunity--to practice the idea of going toward what troubles you. This is a lesson I seem to learn, forget, learn again and forget again over and over in my recovery: When someone scares you go toward them. Lean into the uncomfortable experience.

I’ve used this lesson in the workplace many times. The coworker that I “hate”, the boss that scares me, the volunteer I wish would disappear. At first I try to avoid them, hide, and limit exposure to these folks— all the while building a case in my head and sharing my brilliance with anyone who will listen to my certain rightness.

But if the feelings persist I finally remember that my work is not to stand back from these people but rather to lean into them and go toward what troubles me.

Last night I almost skipped an event because I didn’t want to be around a woman who bugs me—her demeanor stirs my blood in unattractive ways. But luckily a recovery friend said, “No I think you should go to the party and go right up to her and see what happens.”

And I did. Not happily. Not comfortably. But with some prayers and with the mantra, “Go toward her”. And in the course of the evening I saw a fuller picture and got a deeper sense of the issues underneath. (Mine certainly and maybe even hers.)

No, she is not my new friend. And no, I don’t suddenly like her. But today I am not obsessing about or worrying over this woman. That in itself is a relief.

Relief and peace, because I leaned in, and I went toward what scared me.

Willingness is an Action

My morning reading today says “Shifting one’s perspective requires a willingness to quit nursing whatever thought is behind the feeling that’s negatively affecting your well-being, then inviting your Higher Power to choose a better thought to replace it.”

There’s the action: Become willing. Ask your Higher Power.     So I can’t just whine, “I feel bad”? Sadly, no.

Here is some of the best stuff I have heard about willingness that reminds me that even “becoming willing” is an action.

“Willingness is a softening toward an idea”
“Willingness is leaving the door slightly ajar.”
“Willingness is showing up.”

And when I am really dug in to my unhappy position:

“I am willing to consider the possibility that I may not be right."

Teeny Tiny Willingness

Only 25 years later I’m starting to get the concept of willingness in a way that I can explain it to myself and begin to experience it as a practice. This is coming from the current round of step work I’m doing with my sponsor. Can I say this without sounding like the oldest of old-timers: “It’s in the steps”? It makes me laugh. There it is hidden in plain sight—it’s in the steps.

Now, willingness. It’s coming to me like this: I made a summary list of the amends I need—and want—to make. (See the blog post from July 8). I decide to give myself a quick review of that list once a day to keep the ideas fresh in my mind. And I prayed for willingness. I think that, in the past, I believed that if I really saw what needed to be changed and if I was really, really, really sincere in my willingness prayer—then swoosh!—change! But no.

Now I see that willingness is incremental and tiny and momentary. Something happens and I want to mind someone else’s business; I want to touch something that isn’t mine; I want to gossip; I have begun to say something that is gossip and that list I wrote of amends comes to mind. Oh, dam. I said I didn’t want to do this anymore. Now what? Am I willing to practice that big change right here, right now in this small way? In this particular situation? Am I willing to shift/drop/just not do that thing now?

In the moment when I want to mind her business; pick up his calendar; take on her feelings; tell myself I am crap; think that God loves everyone but me—that is when I get to be willing. The choice is tenuous, momentary, achingly hard.

I’ve worked on recovery in OA also so I can see the parallel with food: I said I didn’t want to eat cookies anymore. I prayed for that willingness. Then I am at someone’s home or in my kitchen and I’m eating a cookie! Instead of thinking, “Oh the willingness failed—I’m eating this cookie.” I can—if I’m home spit it out, or if I’m out I can sit the half eaten cookie down and push the plate away.

I guess I thought that if I ‘dropped the rock” it was going to be one big rock that would fall away and the freedom and relief would be huge and immediate. But no. It’s more like we have a bag of gravel and we drop a handful, maybe one pebble, at a time. But if we do it over and over—teeny, tiny willingness--the big rock “gets gone” just as truly.

The Key of Willingness

Willingness feels like the word this week. It is another piece of brilliance in our program. After all, self help has always been about change and this time of year with New Year’s resolutions we try to stop eating sugar and go to the gym and be on time and not fight with our kids. But those are absolutes so of course they don’t work which makes us feel bad so we more easily succumb to the things we hope to avoid. But AA says “pray for willingness”. Willingness turns the key in the lock of change and when the door opens just slightly God or Higher Power can do the rest—and in a sense, after that, it’s none of our business.

So this week I am reminding myself that willingness is the key. Wearing a key is a great reminder so I’ve strung a great antique skeleton key on a satin cord to wear around my neck. It makes a chic necklace and landing right at my solar plexus I can feel this key of willingness near my heart and heart chakra all day long.

Tiny Baby Willingness

Yesterday I found myself wanting him to not like her. Wanting him to not have memories, to not have feelings, to not have loved someone he loved a long time ago. Crazy, I know, but there I was. Knowing it was crazy didn’t help me until I saw—I saw—that my focus on him and her kept me stuck on him and her—and therefore not living or thinking about my own life. Even at that I still wasn’t completely ready to let go. So I prayed. A teeny tiny prayer for a teeny tiny bit of willingness to let go. And I felt the most miniscule, tiny, imperceptible but real, teeniest, baby shift in my heart.

It was enough that I knew it was possible to change. I remembered that the book says we need just the tiniest bit of willingness to open the door. So here I am only barely sincere, hardly open-hearted, but with the teensiest bit of willingness to let go and to allow myself to be changed.

Amen

Willingness Again

I am back to willingness again. Am I willing to be restored to sanity? Am I willing to see things differently? Am I willing to let God change me? What part of willingness takes my effort and what part is a grace?

Here is what I find in a note I wrote to myself in 2005:

“Willingness is a grace. It is a softening. It is leaving the door slightly ajar. It is a movement of energy. It is a freedom.”

Today what I cling to is that image of leaving the door slightly ajar. I cannot swing the door wide open. I am too afraid and the open door feels too vulnerable. But I can leave it open a crack, a tiny bit, slightly ajar. God’s grace has an opening. I am willing to do that.

Happy Anniversary to Me

I celebrated 22 years today at a meeting on Cape Cod. The First Light meeting in Eastham, Mass. meets daily at 6:30 am. I come to this meeting when I am on vacation. This is my beach AA home. Faces are familiar but I don’t remember names. But today in this group of eight people there are two others who have 22 years. I talk about getting sober in Baltimore. I tell them about being 12-stepped by a book, Robin Norwood’s, “Women Who Love Too Much”. I tell them about a moment of grace that October when I read that book and recognized myself and how the pin ball machine in my head went bing, bing, bing when Norwood wrote, at the end of the book, that if you found yourself relating to the stories in the book that the odds were good that you had a problem with alcohol, drugs or food. I had all that. And I had willingness. I had willingness to change, to get help, to want my self to be different.

I have that desire today but I wonder if I have the same willingness. Back then the pain was much greater, the losses more public and the shame and humiliation so acute. Pain was the bottle opener. Today I still want to be restored to sanity. There have been so many meetings, inventories, sponsors, phone calls and much service work too. There has also been a lot of outside help: therapy of all kinds, spiritual direction, retreats, workshops, body work and even shamanic healing. All to the good, all towards healing. The work continues and the journey continues. On the passenger seat of my car is another new book: Never Good Enough: Healing for Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers. Another layer. More growth. More will be revealed.

Willingness

What I heard on retreat:


Willingness is showing up.
Willingness is leaving the door slightly ajar.
Willingness is freedom.
Willingness is a slight movement of energy, a shift inside of us, a softening of our attitude or position.
Willingness is a grace.

Become willing to not know.
Become willing to entertain the possibility that I may not know what is right.