Feel Your Feelings?

A friend sent me this poem by Rumi. To live in this way that welcomes all feelings seems ridiculously courageous—but I aspire to the ridiculous. Enjoy!

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

Brene Brown TED Talk on Vulnerability and Connection

Thank you to  Kathy for introducing me to Brene Brown at TED Talks. This is an awesome 20 minute video for Out of the Woods Women. I gotta believe that what she is talking about is what we are recovering about--Enjoy this!

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Step Four: The Big Book Way

A month ago I committed to a new Fourth Step. Over the years I’ve done several but it was time again. My sponsor was doing one too so it was perfect timing. I considered formats and thought about a couple of ways to write a fourth step and I made a few notes—actually quite random notes.

Then on Saturday morning at my home group the scheduled speaker didn’t show and a woman stepped in whose recovery I admire. She spoke about how she had worked the steps several times and that after a number of years in the program she did it the way it is outlined in the Big Book—“And”, she said, “I added the fourth column—the one that is not shown but that is described.”

I did not know what she was talking about. I’ve read the Big Book many times and I could picture the example--now on page 65—the one that shows the three column format: 1. “I’m resentful at:” 2. “The Cause” and then, 3. “Affects my:” But what was this fourth required column she was talking about?

So I read the chapter. And there it is described on pages 66 and 67: “We turned back to the list, for it held the key…” And “Referring to our list again…we resolutely looked for our own mistakes….Where were we to blame?”

This is the fourth column of the Big Book format for a Fourth Step: My part. My mistakes. My wrongs. My faults. Oh dam.

So now I have begun my new chart: not as hard as I imagined. I have plenty to fill in. And yes I can see and name my part and my faults but I’m looking forward to reviewing this with my sponsor. I know that doing this with her will help me give words to more parts that are mine and that sharing the less than nice, less than pretty, less than honorable parts of me with another person will invite a deeper process of healing to begin.

My Face

Another gift from my week in Florida when I had no cosmetics. I felt so strange at first then I realized that my husband kept looking just like himself but when I looked in the mirror I looked so different.

So I decided to go without makeup for a week after I came home. I became my own experiment and my own work of art. I also decided to not talk about what I was doing. No explanations. I saw people looking at me; some asked if I was tired. I said “No”, but decided to not talk away the experience. My husband—smart man—did not ask. And I didn’t tell.

It is freeing. I love makeup and being a girly girl but I realized in my cosmetic-free week that I want make-up to be a choice. I don’t want to be afraid of my face or ashamed of my face. I want make-up to be decoration and not a mandate or a mask.

Faith Flies

Anyone who gets on an airplane has faith. They may claim to not be a believer but they believe in something big-- much bigger than themselves. They believe in physics like I believe in God.

Last week I flew home from Cleveland late at night. Sitting by the window in a small plane I could feel how fast the plane was moving. We were hurtling through darkness. I knew that the pilot couldn’t see anything. Only the little switches on the control panel might have any meaning. Yet when I looked around inside the cabin the other passengers were sleeping, reading, playing on IPods and Kindles and calmly entertaining their babies.

There in the dark, where no one could see anything, we were moving into blank space hundreds of miles an hour and simply thinking, “Oh we’re on the plane.”

That is faith.

Vengefulness

I liked this so much I copied it into my daily notebook:

“The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men and women dependent on those who have hurt them. You chain yourself to the person who harmed you and you are trapped.”

-----Laura Hillenbrand, “Unbroken”

Holiday Airports or How to Test Your Recovery

We are home. A three day holiday trip to the Mom-in-Law became 8 days. Delay, cancellation, stand by. By now you know what happened in the Northeast and consequently what happened to airplanes and airports everywhere.

In addition to no clothes, no phones, no makeup, no internet and no fruit –in Florida! I did get a great experience and test of my recovery.

Here is the bad news and the good news:

In the first day –or two—I saw my almost physical resistance to acceptance. “They do not mean our plane? Not our plane; not my plane?” (You would have thought I owned the plane). Even when the very patient airline staff member explained that Yes it was Florida and no there was no snow here but there were also no airplanes here either—I had this visceral insistence that it could not be. Then as I accepted that we’d spend the extra night, God laughed. It was explained that we’d spend at least four more nights. (It turned out to be five).

That first day I felt very unrecovered. Then I also watched myself be very nice to complete strangers but a cranky, unsettled wife to my husband. What does it say in the Big Book about how the people we love get hit the hardest?

The other not-so-recovered part of me that I got to witness for days was the shopping addiction. This was totally weird. I did not drink, smoke or take any drugs. I also did not binge on sugar or pizza or holiday goodies but I shopped at airport newsstands and at CVS like it was Saks: “Oh, look pink nail polish, I must have some; and those plastic barrettes adorable! and nude colored peds—amazing! This went on for days.

The other less than recovered part of me was my thinking—mostly about work. I called my boss who was very gracious but I could not shake the worry—“what will people think?” “I’m going to be in trouble.” “I’m such a bad employee”, etcetera etcetera etcetera. All those paperback self-help books in the airport newsstand did come in handy. New word: rumination. New list for my therapist: What the…?

But there is also good in this unexpected holiday inventory:

My first instinct was to pray. And to pray for acceptance. Even though the results were not great I did keep praying. And I kept saying, “This is what it is and this is what is happening”.

I also started a gratitude list. I was sober and stayed sober, I just bought 18-hour mascara, my manicure was the new varnish kind that lasts two weeks; I had eight days with my husband in small spaces and some of those days with his mother who sometimes called my by his ex-wife’s name—and I laughed! And I and we kept laughing.

Also on my list: not traveling with an infant—several families were; Not blind—a couple near us were BOTH blind; no one screaming at me—a husband behind us in the long wait lines kept screaming at his wife. And no drinking—we saw lots and lots of drunken people in airport bars.

But here’s the best and what I want to hold on to: In all these days all my comforts and defenses were removed from me: privacy, control, looking good, attractiveness, work—I could not please or impress or even create and I found out that even with all of that removed—I still exist.