Not So Fast: An Insight I Didn't Want to Have

This is the  P.S. to my last post about feeling crazy. This weekend I was telling my sponsor about how stressed I feel and how much of my  stress is coming from the gifts of recovery: great job, happy marriage, many friends, community activities, lots of writing and public speaking and teaching--everything in the "Beyond My Wildest Dreams" basket.

But still--stress. So much to do. Only 24 hours, etc.

But I promised myself --and my husband--that we'd have fun during this long weekend. So we went to the movies, and out to dinner, and today we did a  beautiful hike along a fast moving creek. Just heaven.

And driving home it hit me: my thinking is all off. Most of the time when I feel stressed I try to speed up. I try to hurry up. I try to do more. I have this belief that if I can get a little bit more done then the stress will go away.

But (and you probably already see the craziness here) I realized (and really fought this like crazy):

When I am stressed I need to do LESS not more.

(Please write back quickly and tell me that this is not true).

But I think it is true: When I am stressed I need to do LESS not more.

Today's little break--a hike, new sights, moving water (and new office supplies!!!) made me so happy and relaxed.

Live and learn. (However reluctantly)  :)

Hidden in a Bottle

Yesterday a friend spoke at the Saturday meeting. He’s been sober a long time and in recovery he learned to sail and bought himself a sail boat. His face fills with light when he says the word, “sailing”. He told the group that a couple of years ago, at a craft sale, he found a stained glass sun catcher that is a picture of a sailing boat inside a bottle. He hung this in his kitchen window and each morning, when he has his coffee, he is reminded that his love of sailing was hidden for years inside his bottles of booze.

It got me thinking: What is trapped in my bottle? What is trapped in your addiction? In your box of cookies? In your pill box? In your codependence? Is your artist trapped in your husband’s sock drawer? Is your love of dance trapped in your daughter’s struggle? Is your freedom trapped in your ex-wife’s new life? Is my next book trapped in my obsession with his ex?

Picture that bottle—it could represent any addiction.--and even after years of recovery we all still have something. What’s trapped in there? You may know or you may be in for a wonderful surprise when that bottle, box of candy or too long work schedule breaks open and spills its secret delights like a big piñata.

Yes, there are painful things inside our addictions—stuff we don’t want to feel or think about or remember --but like the sailboat in a bottle we also have talents and treasures and dreams in there too. There are gifts hidden in our addictions that will light up our faces just like my friend’s face light up when he says the word, “sailing.”

Friends

The fellowship of AA is part of the practice; we join with others to heal and change and practice our new beliefs and behaviors. But the bonus and the real joy in a sober life is friendship. To have sober women friends is the most wonderful thing.

Last night I sat at supper with four other sober women—not talking step work or program literature, but talking recovery in our lives as it applies to husbands, boyfriends, mothers, family, dating, shopping, shoes and work—and yeah, food. We laughed, cried, gave advice, solicited opinions, recommended stores and made connections.

To an onlooker we were a bunch of women out on a school night—but to share all those parts of my life with women with whom I also share affection and recovery—Oh what a lucky woman I am!

Out of the Woods

When I was newly sober the old-timers in my Baltimore home group would say I should not be impatient with my recovery because, “It takes three to 5 years to get out of the woods.” Of course, like many, I thought five years was forever.

Later, near the five-year mark, I realized that it took just that long to get into the woods and to make a real dent in changing my thinking and behavior. I remember when I celebrated my five year anniversary I joked that I had by that time come to in the woods and I was just beginning to identify the plants and creatures that made up the true nature of my character defects, other subtle addictions, and just plan bad habits.

At the five to seven year phase I began to really understand that recovery is a life long process, that there would be no prizes other than a decent life and wonderful community and so I could stop trying to get an “A” in AA.

Of course that meant more changes to my program, like trying a different kind of sponsorship, taking advantage of outside help, and looking at my work and health and family as part of my deeper recovery issues.

By year ten I began to actually have the life that I had dreamed of in the early years. But I also saw that there were fewer and fewer people in the rooms who shared my number of years. At first I felt bad, and I said, as many do, “Where are the old timers?” “Where are the people with ten or more years?” In Baltimore where I got sober it was common to run into people with 15 years or more than 20 years but there was definitely a gap in the ten to 15 year range. What was going on?

When we ask: “Where are the people with ten or more years?” The answer is: They are living sober lives, with new careers, working in their community, often in new relationships and sometimes with new families. We have added the PTA and the Rotary and new children to lives that were once filled with two meetings a day, making coffee and sponsorship. At ten years sober alcoholics start to have what many of us wanted and failed at miserably when we were drinking. It is this very new life, the one I acknowledge with tears of gratitude, which takes me away from AA the way I used to be part of it. Managing the gifts of recovery is part of coming out of the woods.

Yes, it is a paradox, and a subject worthy of sober reflection. We need people with more than ten years to show up at meetings so newcomers can have their power of example, and because no one it automatically “fixed” AA remains a lifetime process. But it is also a time worthy of celebration as sober people are well enough and committed enough to take what they have learned in the rooms and practice that in the world outside AA.

The truth is that there really is a time of coming “out of the woods”, and often this happens as we reach double-digit sobriety. It’s an important time, and one that deserves care and attention. Just like adolescents who have to leave the nest and test their wings we still need a place to recover and to celebrate being in the world with relationships and careers and community service. But we also need to find ways to maintain our commitment and membership in AA and to still make our contribution there, though sometimes in new ways.

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.

Jill Clayburgh The Unmarried Woman

I read today that actress Jill Clayburgh has died. Her great breakthrough role was in the movie, “An Unmarried Woman.” Maybe you remember this film? Clayburgh’s character was a woman in a kind of recovery—her husband leaves her and she is devastated and then slowly with therapy, good friends and a love of art she changes. She changes so much she glows. She dances.

So many things stand out from the movie and Clayburgh’s role. The art she collected, her dancing in her white tank top and undies, the great clothes, the Coach bag!

Part of Clayburgh’s genius in this film was the subtle changes of body and movement as her therapy and consciousness-raising (yeah 1971) took hold.

I remember watching this movie over and over in the year before my recovery began. Yes, true-- I was drinking glasses of wine and crying as I watched the movie but I wanted what this woman had. Maybe in some way Jill Clayburgh got inside of me and helped me to believe that I could change too.

“An Unmarried Woman” is a great woman’s classic. If you haven’t seen this you’re missing Jill Clayburgh at her very best—and some inspiration for whatever you want to change in your life. Put this on your Netflix list for sure.

Hidden in a Bottle

Yesterday a friend spoke at the Saturday meeting. He’s been sober a long time and in recovery he learned to sail and bought a sail boat. His face fills with light when he says the word, “sailing”. He told the group that a couple of years ago, at a craft sale, he found a stained glass sun catcher that is a picture of a sailing boat inside a bottle. He hung this in his kitchen window and each morning, when he has his coffee, he is reminded that his love of sailing was hidden for years inside his bottles of booze.

It got me thinking:

What is trapped in my bottle? What is trapped in your bottle? What is trapped in your addiction? In your box of cookies? In your pill box? In your codependence? Is your artist trapped in your husband’s sock drawer? Is your love of dance trapped in your daughter’s struggles? Is your freedom trapped in your ex-wife’s new life? Is my next book trapped in my obsession with my boyfriend’s ex?

Picture that bottle—it could represent any addiction.--and even after years of recovery we still have something. What’s trapped in there? You may know or you may be in for a wonderful surprise when that bottle, box of candy or too long work schedule breaks open and spills its secret delights like a big piñata.

Yes, there are painful things inside our addictions—stuff we don’t want to feel or think about or remember --but like the sailboat in a bottle we also have talents and treasures in there too. There are gifts hidden in our addictions that will light up our faces just like my friend’s face when he says the word, “sailing.”