Tonight I had the chance to circle back and say thank you to two women who were very important in my early recovery but whom I had never met before.
I am at the Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders--1,000 people--clinicians, treatment professionals, interventionists, hospital folks and writers, speakers and teachers. The workshops have been terrific, and I feel like a kid in a candy store--well, maybe that's a bad metaphor since this symposium is about ALL addictions: alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, work, sex, TV and media, shopping, debt and, and, and...
But part of what I am appreciating here is that the addiction is in the person and not in the substance, and that in any family each person can have one or more different addictions as a reaction to the same trauma. So much for thinking that one drug is better/worse than another. Addiction is the disease.
When my recovery began I didn't have those words or ideas. I just had huge amounts of shame and a crazy amount of behaviors and substances that originally worked to soothe my shame but then went on to make my shame bigger. But I feel blessed and lucky that my recovery began with a group of folks who really believed in Alanon and ACOA as well as AA and OA. And we went to ACOA groups and passed around and wore out books by Claudia Black and Rokelle Lerner, who, along with Janet Woititz, were the pioneers of the Adult Children Therapy movement.
Tonight the plenary presentation was by Claudia Black, Rokelle Lerner and Jerry Moe--director of the children's program at Betty Ford. I felt like I was seeing my rock stars. It's 30 years later and they are 30 years oder too--but what inspired me is their passion for helping families and kids--of all ages. I'm grateful and inspired.
Showing posts with label alcoholic family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alcoholic family. Show all posts
Friday, September 07, 2012
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Happy Birthday Mrs. Wilson
March 4th is a special day to millions of people
in 12 step programs. It is the birthday of Lois Wilson who might, with great
affection, be called the most famous co-dependent. She was the wife of Bill
Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Ebby T., son of a prominent Albany family, first “carried
the message” to a very deteriorated Bill Wilson. The message Ebby brought to
Bill and Lois was that he had gotten sober through the help of the Oxford
Group, an evangelical Christian movement. The six steps of reformation that the
Oxford Group used were forerunner of today’s 12 steps.
At Ebby’s urging Lois and Bill began to attend Oxford Group
meetings and a few months later, on a trip to Akron, Bill reached out to
members there and met Dr. Bob Smith. From the date of their meeting--one
drinker helping another--we date the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Those early meetings were held in private homes. Wives
accompanied their husbands and took charge of the refreshments. While the men
coached each other through confession and repentance in the parlor, the wives
sat in the kitchen, confessing their own frustrations as they discovered the
common impact that alcohol had on their families.
To her dismay, Lois later wrote, Bill’s sobriety didn’t bring the happiness she expected. While he was drinking, Lois had played a central if troubled role in Bill’s life. Now, as he recovered she felt less important. This resentment over Bill finally achieving sobriety without her help troubled Lois. She and other wives, who had lived on the edge emotionally and financially, realized that the 12 steps “could also work for the wives”.
To her dismay, Lois later wrote, Bill’s sobriety didn’t bring the happiness she expected. While he was drinking, Lois had played a central if troubled role in Bill’s life. Now, as he recovered she felt less important. This resentment over Bill finally achieving sobriety without her help troubled Lois. She and other wives, who had lived on the edge emotionally and financially, realized that the 12 steps “could also work for the wives”.
Every organization has history and myth. History tells us
that the very first meetings in which the wives of alcoholics began to study
the 12 steps began in San Francisco, but the myth, always more powerful, says
that Lois Wilson began the program in New York.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. All over the country,
as AA grew, it was women who often were first to seek help for their families.
Lois and other wives offered support and promoted a spiritual program. At
conventions Lois took the podium to tell her side of the Wilson family story,
sharing with humor the lengths she went to control Bill’s drinking and the
humiliation she endured as she realized she could not.
As Bill W. took on the role of father of AA, it added a nice
symmetry to have Lois as the mother of Al-Anon. Positioning Lois atop the
recovery pantheon was strategic; She was a doctor’s daughter, with a college
education. Lois gave a respectable face to a problem that was shameful and
secretive.
In 1957 Al-Anon gained broad public recognition when Lois
Wilson appeared on the Loretta Young television show bringing the problem of
alcoholism and its impact on the family directly into America’s living rooms.
But there is always danger when one is placed on a pedestal.
Lois was criticized because she couldn’t do in her own home what she advocated
for others: setting limits on bad behavior. While Bill did stay sober for many
years he was also a chronic womanizer. The fact of his adultery was made public
when in his will, he left part of the royalties from “the Big Book”, AA’s text,
to his last mistress.
It may be that in this very personal and painful way Lois
Wilson left us her finest legacy of recovery. Al-Anon with its mission of
respectability for families affected by alcoholism, has today more than 30,000
groups in 100 countries. She also, by her graceful life and the imperfection in
her marriage, gave us an embodiment of AA’s slogan, “Progress not
perfection”. Thank you Lois.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Getting Ready for Thanksgiving
Even though it’s been years since I had Thanksgiving with my own family I still get nervous as this holiday approaches. When I was growing up November always brought a wave of panic. My mother wanted the house to be nicer than it was, so each year we were subjected to a frenzy of last minute decorating on a shoestring.
One year she bought cases of caulking compound to remedy the drafty chill. We had that caulking goop for years and in the summer we used the guns to play Combat. Another year she decided to make over the master bedroom. Her plan was to “tent” the bed in yards of gauzy fabric. But my mother didn’t know how to sew; she could picture the end result but not how to get there. We had that fabric for years. I made togas for Latin class, we wrapped gifts in it, and ten years later, when my niece got married, we made shower decorations with the last of our pastel yard goods.
While my mother was decorating, my father cooked. He would stay up all night tending the bird. On Thanksgiving morning he the scent of baking pies was added to the aroma of roasting turkey, and that would combine with the odors of Spic & Span and dusting spray, as my mother furiously cleaned.
Tension ran high. We were shouted into baths and clean clothes. When the doorbell rang at noon, we smelled, and looked good.
Aunt Junie always arrived first and brought her own pies. Yes, she knew my father was making the dessert--he did every year--but every year she brought her own pies and acted surprised. What can I say? She was his older sister. Sibling stuff doesn’t go away, it just gets played out in new ways.
Next was Aunt Martha, who pinched us –hard –on the cheek. We’d whine to our mother, and be told, “Be nice to her, she doesn’t have any children”, as if that explained why she’d want to torture someone else’s. Then there was Uncle Elmer who had one eye that drifted to the side and a big warty growth on his cheek. We perfected air kissing to deal with holiday hellos.
Soon the house would be filled with people. The cousins went straight to chasing and teasing each other. We saw then, but only knew later, the significance of each cousin’s ways: The one who always stood back to watch is now the writer; the cousin who schmoozed with the adults became a politician, and the one who happily ran to get refills for the grown-ups--finishing off their drinks enroute—is now a speaker on the recovery circuit.
Of course we didn’t see the adult side of things. I didn’t know about the barbs my mother got about our old house from the Aunt who “married better”. I didn’t know that this pain was the fuel to my mother’s annual decorating frenzy. I also didn’t know until later that the men sitting around the kitchen table were zinging their own darts at my Dad. He was the only one who had finished school and moved “upstairs” in the plant. Now I see why he had to excuse himself so often to “check on the turkey”.
Most of our families have a version of these scenes. On Thanksgiving we’ll be humming, “We gather together….”, but mothers will sigh over daughter’s hair, the childless will offer parenting advice, and the uncle who has plenty will tell those who have none how they should invest their money. Old wounds will be given a good jab intentionally or not.
We come to this meal each year hoping for the holiday we remember from childhood, the one with laughter and fun. So if the tension rises in your dining room on Thanksgiving just consider it a warm up for the December holidays to come, and like a warning shot fired over our feelings, let’s remember to be gentle with and grateful for the people we sit down with.
One year she bought cases of caulking compound to remedy the drafty chill. We had that caulking goop for years and in the summer we used the guns to play Combat. Another year she decided to make over the master bedroom. Her plan was to “tent” the bed in yards of gauzy fabric. But my mother didn’t know how to sew; she could picture the end result but not how to get there. We had that fabric for years. I made togas for Latin class, we wrapped gifts in it, and ten years later, when my niece got married, we made shower decorations with the last of our pastel yard goods.
While my mother was decorating, my father cooked. He would stay up all night tending the bird. On Thanksgiving morning he the scent of baking pies was added to the aroma of roasting turkey, and that would combine with the odors of Spic & Span and dusting spray, as my mother furiously cleaned.
Tension ran high. We were shouted into baths and clean clothes. When the doorbell rang at noon, we smelled, and looked good.
Aunt Junie always arrived first and brought her own pies. Yes, she knew my father was making the dessert--he did every year--but every year she brought her own pies and acted surprised. What can I say? She was his older sister. Sibling stuff doesn’t go away, it just gets played out in new ways.
Next was Aunt Martha, who pinched us –hard –on the cheek. We’d whine to our mother, and be told, “Be nice to her, she doesn’t have any children”, as if that explained why she’d want to torture someone else’s. Then there was Uncle Elmer who had one eye that drifted to the side and a big warty growth on his cheek. We perfected air kissing to deal with holiday hellos.
Soon the house would be filled with people. The cousins went straight to chasing and teasing each other. We saw then, but only knew later, the significance of each cousin’s ways: The one who always stood back to watch is now the writer; the cousin who schmoozed with the adults became a politician, and the one who happily ran to get refills for the grown-ups--finishing off their drinks enroute—is now a speaker on the recovery circuit.
Of course we didn’t see the adult side of things. I didn’t know about the barbs my mother got about our old house from the Aunt who “married better”. I didn’t know that this pain was the fuel to my mother’s annual decorating frenzy. I also didn’t know until later that the men sitting around the kitchen table were zinging their own darts at my Dad. He was the only one who had finished school and moved “upstairs” in the plant. Now I see why he had to excuse himself so often to “check on the turkey”.
Most of our families have a version of these scenes. On Thanksgiving we’ll be humming, “We gather together….”, but mothers will sigh over daughter’s hair, the childless will offer parenting advice, and the uncle who has plenty will tell those who have none how they should invest their money. Old wounds will be given a good jab intentionally or not.
We come to this meal each year hoping for the holiday we remember from childhood, the one with laughter and fun. So if the tension rises in your dining room on Thanksgiving just consider it a warm up for the December holidays to come, and like a warning shot fired over our feelings, let’s remember to be gentle with and grateful for the people we sit down with.
Friday, March 04, 2011
Thank You Lois Wilson
March 4th is a special day to millions of people in 12 step programs. It is the birthday of Lois Wilson who might, with great affection, be called the most famous co-dependent. She was the wife of Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
It was Ebby T., son of a prominent Albany family, who first “carried the message” to a very deteriorated Bill Wilson. The message Ebby brought to Bill and Lois was that he had gotten sober through the help of the Oxford Group, an evangelical Christian movement. The six steps of reformation in the Oxford Group were the forerunner of today’s 12 steps.
At Ebby’s urging Lois and Bill began to attend Oxford Group meetings and a few months later, on a trip to Akron, Bill reached out to members there and met Dr. Bob Smith. From the date of their meeting--one drinker helping another--we date the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Those early meetings were held in private homes. Wives accompanied their husbands and took charge of the refreshments. While the men coached each other through confession and repentance in the parlor, the wives sat in the kitchen, confessing their own frustrations as they discovered the common impact that alcohol had on their families. To her dismay, Lois later wrote, Bill’s sobriety didn’t bring the happiness she expected. While he was drinking, Lois had played a central if troubled role in Bill’s life. Now, as he recovered she felt less important. This resentment over Bill finally achieving sobriety without her help troubled Lois. She and other wives, who had lived on the edge emotionally and financially, realized that the 12 steps “could also work for the wives”.
Every organization has history and myth. History tells us that the very first meetings in which the wives of alcoholics began to study the 12 steps began in San Francisco, but the myth, always more powerful, says that Lois Wilson began the program in New York.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. All over the country, as AA grew, it was women who often were first to seek help for their families. Lois and other wives offered support and promoted a spiritual program. At conventions Lois took the podium to tell her side of the Wilson family story, sharing with humor the lengths she went to control Bill’s drinking and the humiliation she endured as she realized she could not.
As Bill W. took on the role of father of AA, it added a nice symmetry to have Lois as the mother of Al-Anon. Positioning Lois atop the recovery pantheon was strategic; She was a doctor’s daughter, with a college education. Lois gave a respectable face to a problem that was shameful and secretive.
In 1957 Al-Anon gained broad public recognition when Lois Wilson appeared on the Loretta Young television show bringing the problem of alcoholism and its impact on the family directly into America’s living rooms.
But there is always danger when one is placed on a pedestal. Lois was criticized because she couldn’t do in her own home what she advocated for others: setting limits on bad behavior. While Bill did stay sober for many years he was also a chronic womanizer. The fact of his adultery was made public when in his will, he left part of the royalties from “the Big Book”, AA’s text, to his last mistress.
It may be that in this very personal and painful way Lois Wilson left us her finest legacy of recovery. Al-Anon with its mission of respectability for families affected by alcoholism, has today more than 30,000 groups in 100 countries. She also, by her graceful life and the imperfection in her marriage, gave us an embodiment of AA’s slogan, “Progress not perfection”. Thank you Lois.
It was Ebby T., son of a prominent Albany family, who first “carried the message” to a very deteriorated Bill Wilson. The message Ebby brought to Bill and Lois was that he had gotten sober through the help of the Oxford Group, an evangelical Christian movement. The six steps of reformation in the Oxford Group were the forerunner of today’s 12 steps.
At Ebby’s urging Lois and Bill began to attend Oxford Group meetings and a few months later, on a trip to Akron, Bill reached out to members there and met Dr. Bob Smith. From the date of their meeting--one drinker helping another--we date the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Those early meetings were held in private homes. Wives accompanied their husbands and took charge of the refreshments. While the men coached each other through confession and repentance in the parlor, the wives sat in the kitchen, confessing their own frustrations as they discovered the common impact that alcohol had on their families. To her dismay, Lois later wrote, Bill’s sobriety didn’t bring the happiness she expected. While he was drinking, Lois had played a central if troubled role in Bill’s life. Now, as he recovered she felt less important. This resentment over Bill finally achieving sobriety without her help troubled Lois. She and other wives, who had lived on the edge emotionally and financially, realized that the 12 steps “could also work for the wives”.
Every organization has history and myth. History tells us that the very first meetings in which the wives of alcoholics began to study the 12 steps began in San Francisco, but the myth, always more powerful, says that Lois Wilson began the program in New York.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. All over the country, as AA grew, it was women who often were first to seek help for their families. Lois and other wives offered support and promoted a spiritual program. At conventions Lois took the podium to tell her side of the Wilson family story, sharing with humor the lengths she went to control Bill’s drinking and the humiliation she endured as she realized she could not.
As Bill W. took on the role of father of AA, it added a nice symmetry to have Lois as the mother of Al-Anon. Positioning Lois atop the recovery pantheon was strategic; She was a doctor’s daughter, with a college education. Lois gave a respectable face to a problem that was shameful and secretive.
In 1957 Al-Anon gained broad public recognition when Lois Wilson appeared on the Loretta Young television show bringing the problem of alcoholism and its impact on the family directly into America’s living rooms.
But there is always danger when one is placed on a pedestal. Lois was criticized because she couldn’t do in her own home what she advocated for others: setting limits on bad behavior. While Bill did stay sober for many years he was also a chronic womanizer. The fact of his adultery was made public when in his will, he left part of the royalties from “the Big Book”, AA’s text, to his last mistress.
It may be that in this very personal and painful way Lois Wilson left us her finest legacy of recovery. Al-Anon with its mission of respectability for families affected by alcoholism, has today more than 30,000 groups in 100 countries. She also, by her graceful life and the imperfection in her marriage, gave us an embodiment of AA’s slogan, “Progress not perfection”. Thank you Lois.
Monday, June 28, 2010
San Antonio
Friends, I’m getting on an airplane Wednesday morning and flying to San Antonio. I’m excited. I’ve never been one for family reunions but this feels like a big one.
The 2010 International Convention begins June 30th in San Antonio Texas. Sober people ranging from 24hours to 40-plus years take over the city for four days. Meetings around the clock in every language, outdoor dances and parties, AA politics, sub-group interests, and specialty meetings for everyone sliced as finely as possible. I’m looking forward to the meetings for writers and artists and for those who are using new technology as part of sobriety and advocacy. And I’ll be looking to connect with more women who are “out of the woods” with ten-plus years.
But most of all I’m excited about the nighttime meetings when 30,000 sober people fill the Alamodome to hear great speakers, to recite the steps together and just to look around and see what I big—really big—family we are part of.
PS. If you are going to the International Convention please leave a comment here so we can connect in Texas.
The 2010 International Convention begins June 30th in San Antonio Texas. Sober people ranging from 24hours to 40-plus years take over the city for four days. Meetings around the clock in every language, outdoor dances and parties, AA politics, sub-group interests, and specialty meetings for everyone sliced as finely as possible. I’m looking forward to the meetings for writers and artists and for those who are using new technology as part of sobriety and advocacy. And I’ll be looking to connect with more women who are “out of the woods” with ten-plus years.
But most of all I’m excited about the nighttime meetings when 30,000 sober people fill the Alamodome to hear great speakers, to recite the steps together and just to look around and see what I big—really big—family we are part of.
PS. If you are going to the International Convention please leave a comment here so we can connect in Texas.
Friday, May 28, 2010
ACOA Management Training
Or why growing up in an alcoholic home prepares you for success:
First it makes us what therapists call “high screeners”. It’s kind of an evolutionary adaptation. Kids in alcoholic families can hear what’s happening two houses away. At work this means we don't have to leave our desks to hear coworkers grumbling or gossiping.
It also means we have powerful intuition. In fact it’s our survival screening again: we have learned to read the slightest shift in a facial expression. We can read subliminal expressions which are the tiny, almost minute, changes to a person’s face that occur before they are able to naturally adapt to a socially acceptable expression. That’s how we know someone is angry even when they insist in a terribly professional voice that, “No, I’m not angry at all, just concerned.” (Research has shown that those expressions are on one’s face for less than a tenth of a second so only a highly trained psychologist, interrogator, psychic or ACOA can read them.)
In addition to faces we read mood, tone of voice, body language and changes to patterns as if our life depended on it. (Because of course, our young lives did depend on it.)
For managers, team leaders, and especially people in sales, this is a gift.
Another gift from the alcoholic home is our corresponding attention to detail. We’re great proof readers, designers, event coordinators, and sales people. Yes, basically perfectionists. A big plus and minus there. We can tell the difference between Newport Blue and Marine Blue in 10-point type and when told that you need six identical packets for a proposal, they are identical!
This characteristic can also doom one’s career if taken too far. Years ago I worked for a manager who terrorized her staff with requirements to iron out creases in paper table cloths and who nightly drove around the building to ensure that the window blinds –in all 26 offices—were pulled to an exact (not off by a half inch, dam it!) center mark so that the building had a “pleasing symmetry” to any passerby. I was not surprised to learn that both of her parents “drank too much.”
There are more skills that we gained in our alcoholic homes. We'll figure these out. In the meantime this can be the start of another gratitude list for the circumstances that gave us these skills and for the subsequent recovery program that kept them from ruining us as well.
How about in your life? What are some work or business skills you gained as a result of a difficult start in life? What qualities that were once part of the problem are now part of your success?
First it makes us what therapists call “high screeners”. It’s kind of an evolutionary adaptation. Kids in alcoholic families can hear what’s happening two houses away. At work this means we don't have to leave our desks to hear coworkers grumbling or gossiping.
It also means we have powerful intuition. In fact it’s our survival screening again: we have learned to read the slightest shift in a facial expression. We can read subliminal expressions which are the tiny, almost minute, changes to a person’s face that occur before they are able to naturally adapt to a socially acceptable expression. That’s how we know someone is angry even when they insist in a terribly professional voice that, “No, I’m not angry at all, just concerned.” (Research has shown that those expressions are on one’s face for less than a tenth of a second so only a highly trained psychologist, interrogator, psychic or ACOA can read them.)
In addition to faces we read mood, tone of voice, body language and changes to patterns as if our life depended on it. (Because of course, our young lives did depend on it.)
For managers, team leaders, and especially people in sales, this is a gift.
Another gift from the alcoholic home is our corresponding attention to detail. We’re great proof readers, designers, event coordinators, and sales people. Yes, basically perfectionists. A big plus and minus there. We can tell the difference between Newport Blue and Marine Blue in 10-point type and when told that you need six identical packets for a proposal, they are identical!
This characteristic can also doom one’s career if taken too far. Years ago I worked for a manager who terrorized her staff with requirements to iron out creases in paper table cloths and who nightly drove around the building to ensure that the window blinds –in all 26 offices—were pulled to an exact (not off by a half inch, dam it!) center mark so that the building had a “pleasing symmetry” to any passerby. I was not surprised to learn that both of her parents “drank too much.”
There are more skills that we gained in our alcoholic homes. We'll figure these out. In the meantime this can be the start of another gratitude list for the circumstances that gave us these skills and for the subsequent recovery program that kept them from ruining us as well.
How about in your life? What are some work or business skills you gained as a result of a difficult start in life? What qualities that were once part of the problem are now part of your success?
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