Oh, Humility! The things that come back to haunt us in recovery. Here is one that gets every woman in recovery at some point, but this week still surprises me. I had a big crush on a man and enjoyed a couple weeks of fantasized romance and yes, lusty, sexy feelings.
This week as the crush and feelings of infatuation have slowly faded I can put some of this in a context of before and after recovery and particularly what belongs to “out of the woods” and later stage recovery.
It began like this: a friend, colleague and I had lunch. It was a spring day and I felt good and the conversation became flirtatious. Maybe I was needy that day? Maybe my heart was open? Maybe it was a spring awakening with some dormant physiological need to mate being rejuvenated? Whatever the trigger I went home infatuated and began imagining myself as the beloved. Now, to be honest look at those words, my fantasy was about me being the one desired, Ok, but never the less it was full endorphin loading. I am married so one of the pluses was a good jolt to our married love life. No apologies there. But soon it moved on to distracting day dreams, fantasies and a need for more. Ah, there’s the addicts mantra: More.
Here’s the good. In addition to all those “I feel pretty” days that followed I had a genuine boost to my libido and a realization that what I had assumed was hormonally dead was simply not. I’m over 50 so waning sexuality has been, I thought, a combo of being married long and physiology. I had lamented with friends my age that I feared becoming one of those women who write to Dear Abby to say how they wish their husbands would give up sex and just cuddle. I feared I was reluctantly becoming one of them. But no, this crush and libidinal boost showed me that my body works just fine and in fact—maybe the books are right—works even better in mid-life. Assisted by this infatuation, a healthy imagination and some triple-A batteries I was having more orgasms per day than I thought imaginable.
No, the object of the crush was not a participant. In fact he was unaware of the influence he was having. But thanks are still in order. I really am grateful for this sexy energy and to see that I could kinesthetically recall that girl I once was.
But then this: The recovering woman—kicks in. Is this wrong? Dangerous? Not sober? To know the level of my fear it helps to know that before recovery I had had some pretty bad relationships in which I was the other woman. In one case I was married, in another I was not. Short version: many people got hurt very badly including me. (Years of therapy to be able to include that “including me” part).
So here I am, a happily married, recovering woman having a crush and wild fantasies about a married man. Oh, oh. A slippery slope? Perhaps. And fear rushes in: Am I in denial that my marriage is good? Am I on a slippery slope of an affair, of a drink, of making a fool of myself, of getting hurt, of hurting another person? It didn’t feel hypothetical at all.
But here is where the recovery kicks in. Today I have habits and one of the habits I have is that as soon as I begin to feel myself having a secret my recovering instinct screams: Tell Someone. It’s truly a habit now.
So with this big infatuation I told on myself to recovering friends. The first question they ask: “Have you acted on this?” No…but they are good, they ask, “Do you feel like you could?”, and the answer is yes. So now we know the danger. Next is to tell my therapist. Yes, we look at where this is coming from. I know the list of suspects and Dad heads the list. He died when I was 18, the quintessential “unavailable man”. I still want him to look at me as only a father could and to say ‘You are so special”. That is a line reserved and appropriate for Dads and Daughters, but if you’ve been there you’ll recognize that line is also the mantra of the married man: “You are so special”, “No one but you”… and “You are the only one who…”
So I keep talking to recovering women and writing in my journal and praying. My prayers begin with: remove this obsession and keep me safe from myself, but then—and I think this is the later recovery part; the prayers become gratitude and thanks. Thanks that I have these sweet and tender feelings, thanks that my body is not dead, thanks that I do have libido (I do, I do) and thanks that I can have a crush and this person can even suspect it but I do not have to feel ashamed of this or of me. That’s the longer recovery bonus prize: I can have this, own this, tell on myself, process it—Not act on any of it—that’s key—and I can be smart but not ashamed.
Here is what else has occurred to me this week as the crush ebbs: I can see the Promises in this. First: I prayed for help and to be safe and God is doing for me what I cannot do for myself. Mr. Crush is not responding. The temptation is all in my head. Second: I intuitively knew how to handle: I told on myself, sought guidance from recovering women and my therapist. Third: We will not regret the past: I felt the old memories and the shame of past infatuations and affairs before recovery, I remembered the pain I caused others. I sincerely regretted the damage I did to other people and my younger self but I don’t hide that part of me. But I also—here’s the intuitively part again—do not raise my hand and blab to the world all of this. Four: Self pity will disappear. Not once did I allow myself to imagine that I was a victim of unrequited love or to frame this as me being wrong to have these tender feelings. And oh yeah: We will gain interest in our fellows? That speaks for itself I think.
The other thing that I saw through all of this is that recovery really is a habit and my habits kicked in: prayer, surrender, talking to recovering friends, writing about it, getting outside help, using steps 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7—asking God to heal me and to remove what only he can. Only God can heal the hole in my heart that I may be able to describe psychologically but that I cannot fill myself.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
Mary Month Of May
I grew up in a Protestant family. My brothers and I went to Sunday school, got confirmed, and later married in the same Methodist Church on Pittsburgh’s Northside. Overall, it was a good experience. But I always envied Catholic girls, especially in May.
Our working class neighborhood was a mixture of Protestant and Catholic families. Kids were divided by schools: Spring Hill Public or Saint Ambrose Catholic. But it was a close neighborhood and we all played together after school. We were in and out of each others houses often, and one mother could stand in for another when it came to discipline or first aid. The differences were few but the Catholic girls seemed to have something special.
It was in second grade that my feelings of envy emerged. My Catholic friends were having their First Holy Communion. My friends got to wear poofy white dresses and headbands with flowers and little veils. They were given medals with pictures of saints, rosaries and most intriguing, scapulars.
A scapular is two small patches of cloth with holy pictures on them, connected by a loop of string. My girl friends told me that it protected them from evil and all manner of bad things, and it was a sin, they told me, to take it off. The idea of a passionate commitment to something, even a string with holy pictures, was very appealing.
Catholicism offered my friends other comforts. As a kid I would have liked a patron saint or a guardian angel, but the Methodist church didn’t offer any of those. Instead we were counseled, in an ecumenically respectful way, that all that stuff was Catholic and kind of magical. Now, this was at the same age that I was fascinated with writing in code, creating invisible ink, becoming a blood sister, playing with the Ouija board and making up secret societies. I was made myth and magic out of anything I could get my hands and mind around.
The best thing, though, that Catholic girls got was Mary. She was presented as motherhood and sweetness, but Catholic girls got a very clear message that there was a woman in heaven, that somebody understood the female side of things.
For Protestant girls, Mary shows up once a year-- at Christmas --to give birth. She might get dragged out again on Good Friday—but only in the background. No role model, no intercessor, no friend.
My Catholic pals had statues of Mary. Some had the plastic glow-in-the-dark kind, and the older girls had painted plaster Marys, dressed in blue robes with big doe eyes like my Barbie. And Mary was always standing on a snake. I certainly did not understand the symbolism, but I knew at ten that this 12 inch woman had some power you could not buy for Barbie.
Best of all, my friends had May altars. A May altar was basically a table with an old lace tablecloth thrown over it. They put their Mary statues on it with flowers and candles that they were allowed to light when they said their prayers.
It still strikes me how feminine those altars were. The Catholic girls had total permission to identify with the feminine in spiritual matters. But no one gave little Protestant girls such romantic, mysterious things to do or own.
This carried over into all of a Catholic girl’s life. Mary got prayers, devotions, pilgrimages and even architectural consideration: there is a Marian shrine in every Catholic Church. Talk about having a room of one’s own. Mary’s presence meant that the Catholic Church included at least one woman at a high level. In her assumption into heaven, Mary had broken Christianity’s glass ceiling.
We pretty much get the shape of our beliefs early on, and what Catholic girls got was a She and a Her, someone like them, to pray to. And they got all those accessories: medals, scapulars, rosaries, ruffled altar skirts and little white prayer books. Protestant girls got black leatherette New Testaments, Jesus stories, but nothing that said, “We’re glad you’re a girl.”
Of course, later, Catholic girls ran into, the birth control issue and the wall that said, “You can’t be a priest”. But what I saw my Catholic friends get was faith in their girlhood and an image of feminine power. That’s not a bad way to start out.
Our working class neighborhood was a mixture of Protestant and Catholic families. Kids were divided by schools: Spring Hill Public or Saint Ambrose Catholic. But it was a close neighborhood and we all played together after school. We were in and out of each others houses often, and one mother could stand in for another when it came to discipline or first aid. The differences were few but the Catholic girls seemed to have something special.
It was in second grade that my feelings of envy emerged. My Catholic friends were having their First Holy Communion. My friends got to wear poofy white dresses and headbands with flowers and little veils. They were given medals with pictures of saints, rosaries and most intriguing, scapulars.
A scapular is two small patches of cloth with holy pictures on them, connected by a loop of string. My girl friends told me that it protected them from evil and all manner of bad things, and it was a sin, they told me, to take it off. The idea of a passionate commitment to something, even a string with holy pictures, was very appealing.
Catholicism offered my friends other comforts. As a kid I would have liked a patron saint or a guardian angel, but the Methodist church didn’t offer any of those. Instead we were counseled, in an ecumenically respectful way, that all that stuff was Catholic and kind of magical. Now, this was at the same age that I was fascinated with writing in code, creating invisible ink, becoming a blood sister, playing with the Ouija board and making up secret societies. I was made myth and magic out of anything I could get my hands and mind around.
The best thing, though, that Catholic girls got was Mary. She was presented as motherhood and sweetness, but Catholic girls got a very clear message that there was a woman in heaven, that somebody understood the female side of things.
For Protestant girls, Mary shows up once a year-- at Christmas --to give birth. She might get dragged out again on Good Friday—but only in the background. No role model, no intercessor, no friend.
My Catholic pals had statues of Mary. Some had the plastic glow-in-the-dark kind, and the older girls had painted plaster Marys, dressed in blue robes with big doe eyes like my Barbie. And Mary was always standing on a snake. I certainly did not understand the symbolism, but I knew at ten that this 12 inch woman had some power you could not buy for Barbie.
Best of all, my friends had May altars. A May altar was basically a table with an old lace tablecloth thrown over it. They put their Mary statues on it with flowers and candles that they were allowed to light when they said their prayers.
It still strikes me how feminine those altars were. The Catholic girls had total permission to identify with the feminine in spiritual matters. But no one gave little Protestant girls such romantic, mysterious things to do or own.
This carried over into all of a Catholic girl’s life. Mary got prayers, devotions, pilgrimages and even architectural consideration: there is a Marian shrine in every Catholic Church. Talk about having a room of one’s own. Mary’s presence meant that the Catholic Church included at least one woman at a high level. In her assumption into heaven, Mary had broken Christianity’s glass ceiling.
We pretty much get the shape of our beliefs early on, and what Catholic girls got was a She and a Her, someone like them, to pray to. And they got all those accessories: medals, scapulars, rosaries, ruffled altar skirts and little white prayer books. Protestant girls got black leatherette New Testaments, Jesus stories, but nothing that said, “We’re glad you’re a girl.”
Of course, later, Catholic girls ran into, the birth control issue and the wall that said, “You can’t be a priest”. But what I saw my Catholic friends get was faith in their girlhood and an image of feminine power. That’s not a bad way to start out.
Monday, April 16, 2007
What will I Be When I Grow Up?
It seems that I come around to this question again and again: What is my true work? What is God’s Will for me in my work life? Does God care about how I earn a living? Can a regular person—like me—have a “ministry”? I’m a writer and a teacher and a speaker. I have skills with language and persuasion. So is it ego to want to be these things publicly? To want to be recognized? In writer-land that means published. In speaking land that means invited and hired and, yes, paid.
I know I’m not alone in asking these questions in recovery. So what work should we do? And how do we know if it is God’s will?
Today sorting through files I found these three people wiser than me on this topic:
In 2005 I attended the International AA Convention in Toronto. One night, at one of the big stadium meetings. I heard one of the really old timers speak about his recovery and his work. He was a retired commissioner for corrections in a Southern state. He was sober 47 years. He described how he went from being a double-felony-manslaughter inmate to the state commissioner for corrections. He killed two people, went to jail, got sober in prison. Step by step he listened for God’s will and took each step toward doing recovery work in prisons. He had many hurdles to overcome. AS he described each hurdle, some seemed impossible at the time, He said: “If God has work for you to do the walls will come down.”
In 2006 I went to see a film on Choreographer, Bob Fosse. (If you have seen Chorus Line or Chicago or the movie Chicago you have seen his work)
When he was interviewed about his work and his distinctive style and choreography he said he had always had bad posture and so he created his dances with his now signature curved shoulders. He also said that he had "bad legs" (for a dancer)--and so rather than use turn-out like in ballet he turned his dancers legs in.
And that he started to go bald at 25 and so always wore hats to dance hence his incredible use of hats as props in all of his major works...
He said:” All of my gifts have come from my defects."
Theologian Frederick Beuchner wrote that vocation is from Latin Vocare to be called. Our vocation is the work God calls us to do. But how do we know?
Buechner gives this formula: The kind of work God usually calls you to do is the kind of work that A. You need most to do AND B. the world most needs to have done.
If you get a kick out of your work, you’ve met requirement A, but if that work is writing cigarette ads, chances are you have missed requirement B. On the other hand if you are a doctor in a leper colony you have probably met B, but if you are miserable and depressed you probably bypassed part A.
He said: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.”
It’s a way to sort this, “What am I gonna be when I grow up”? question.
I know I’m not alone in asking these questions in recovery. So what work should we do? And how do we know if it is God’s will?
Today sorting through files I found these three people wiser than me on this topic:
In 2005 I attended the International AA Convention in Toronto. One night, at one of the big stadium meetings. I heard one of the really old timers speak about his recovery and his work. He was a retired commissioner for corrections in a Southern state. He was sober 47 years. He described how he went from being a double-felony-manslaughter inmate to the state commissioner for corrections. He killed two people, went to jail, got sober in prison. Step by step he listened for God’s will and took each step toward doing recovery work in prisons. He had many hurdles to overcome. AS he described each hurdle, some seemed impossible at the time, He said: “If God has work for you to do the walls will come down.”
In 2006 I went to see a film on Choreographer, Bob Fosse. (If you have seen Chorus Line or Chicago or the movie Chicago you have seen his work)
When he was interviewed about his work and his distinctive style and choreography he said he had always had bad posture and so he created his dances with his now signature curved shoulders. He also said that he had "bad legs" (for a dancer)--and so rather than use turn-out like in ballet he turned his dancers legs in.
And that he started to go bald at 25 and so always wore hats to dance hence his incredible use of hats as props in all of his major works...
He said:” All of my gifts have come from my defects."
Theologian Frederick Beuchner wrote that vocation is from Latin Vocare to be called. Our vocation is the work God calls us to do. But how do we know?
Buechner gives this formula: The kind of work God usually calls you to do is the kind of work that A. You need most to do AND B. the world most needs to have done.
If you get a kick out of your work, you’ve met requirement A, but if that work is writing cigarette ads, chances are you have missed requirement B. On the other hand if you are a doctor in a leper colony you have probably met B, but if you are miserable and depressed you probably bypassed part A.
He said: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.”
It’s a way to sort this, “What am I gonna be when I grow up”? question.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
So Sari, A New Me
After years in recovery—teamed with years in therapy-- you can begin to believe that you have a handle on yourself. That you know some stuff and that you are onto your own tricks.
Part of this is about transferring addictions but if you’ve been around awhile that’s no surprise. I quit smoking, then drinking, then starving, getting weighed, diet pills, exercise bulimia, obsessing over wearing a certain size or the number of the scale. After most of that felt calm I saw the men stuff, the relationship issues were there all along of course, but then not dating or actually learning TO date: go out with a nice somewhat boring man, participate in a fun social activity together, share only the smallest amount of personal information, come home, say thank you at the door and do the same with a different person the next week. Dating. Who knew?
OK, so there was that to work on: more therapy and alanon and ACOA. Then of course noticing the money and the shopping and not earning enough money and not saving any money...addiction by any other name is addiction.
But here is the latest peek at myself. I’ve been looking at handbags—an old love and a fashion object. About two weeks ago in the Sundance catalog I saw a tote bag that was described as being made from old Indian Sari’s...the photos showed theree of this bag, different colors and prints, it had a long leather strap that looked like it could go across the body. Hmmm. Only $98. Of course that’s over $100 with tax and delivery but still I had paid much more and there was something about the soft fabric and the old saris, I mean it would have some other—older Indian—woman’s karma right? And for spring/summer...this soft bag across my body with kahiskirts and jeans and sandals. A nice look.
So I order the bag...takes seven days. I say “expect it in ten”…I’m already trying to manage my own desire. I wait the week and three days. I pass up other purses when I shop, “Nope, the old sari quilted bag, slouched just so across my body, the worn leather, --it will be burnished after several wearings"—I can feel it all and UPS hasn’t arrived yet.
But then it does. I come home to “the box”. Here it is. I’m excited. How soon should I wear it, I wonder. But then I open the box and there is a lumpy, kind of laundry-bag looking sack. It is made of old fabric yes, but the bag part is huge and the strap is cheap thin leather with a shiny surface. It will never soften or burnish. I sling it across my body and I recognize the look. I demonstrate for my husband: I bend and scoop, bend and scoop. It looks like the kind of cloth sling/sack that women wore to pick cotton. This is not chic, not cool, not very nice, has no Karma. I’m disappointed.
But it’s what happens next that surprises me. I know that I don’t want THIS bag, and I want my money back. That is clear. My husband, laughing at my cotton picking imitation says, “Send it back and get something you like.” Yes, of course. That makes sense, that’s the right thing to do. But something is holding me back. I try the Sari hunk of cloth bag again. I put all my regular purse contents inside it hoping that somehow my things inside will transform this into MY purse. Nope. It just looks even droopier and like an old laundry bag.
So what’s holding me back? It’s not until I am filling out the return form and packing the Sari bag in the carton to go back to Sundance that I realize. It’s not just the bag I have to return, it’s the new identity that I have constructed in my head. I get it: in the ten days from ordering the bag to seeing the actual object, I had constructed a new me to go with the bag: I was going to be causally chic, I was going to BE the kind of woman who wore old sari cloth with khaki and denim and simple sandals, I was going to be the slightly bohemian, somewhat hippy-ish chick, that tossed a bag like this across her body and…
And what? Laughed more, worried less, sat in coffee shops and didn’t sweat the to-do list, was able to toss my hair back (my hair barely touches my ears) and laugh, listen, be still and relaxed. I wanted to be relaxed and this silky sari-quilted bag was supposed to bring that to me.
And now I had to send that and her back with the frumpy, lumpy bag.
In ten days I had created a new me and done a kind of geographic cure without even leaving my house. And then the UPS man delivered reality right back to me.
Part of this is about transferring addictions but if you’ve been around awhile that’s no surprise. I quit smoking, then drinking, then starving, getting weighed, diet pills, exercise bulimia, obsessing over wearing a certain size or the number of the scale. After most of that felt calm I saw the men stuff, the relationship issues were there all along of course, but then not dating or actually learning TO date: go out with a nice somewhat boring man, participate in a fun social activity together, share only the smallest amount of personal information, come home, say thank you at the door and do the same with a different person the next week. Dating. Who knew?
OK, so there was that to work on: more therapy and alanon and ACOA. Then of course noticing the money and the shopping and not earning enough money and not saving any money...addiction by any other name is addiction.
But here is the latest peek at myself. I’ve been looking at handbags—an old love and a fashion object. About two weeks ago in the Sundance catalog I saw a tote bag that was described as being made from old Indian Sari’s...the photos showed theree of this bag, different colors and prints, it had a long leather strap that looked like it could go across the body. Hmmm. Only $98. Of course that’s over $100 with tax and delivery but still I had paid much more and there was something about the soft fabric and the old saris, I mean it would have some other—older Indian—woman’s karma right? And for spring/summer...this soft bag across my body with kahiskirts and jeans and sandals. A nice look.
So I order the bag...takes seven days. I say “expect it in ten”…I’m already trying to manage my own desire. I wait the week and three days. I pass up other purses when I shop, “Nope, the old sari quilted bag, slouched just so across my body, the worn leather, --it will be burnished after several wearings"—I can feel it all and UPS hasn’t arrived yet.
But then it does. I come home to “the box”. Here it is. I’m excited. How soon should I wear it, I wonder. But then I open the box and there is a lumpy, kind of laundry-bag looking sack. It is made of old fabric yes, but the bag part is huge and the strap is cheap thin leather with a shiny surface. It will never soften or burnish. I sling it across my body and I recognize the look. I demonstrate for my husband: I bend and scoop, bend and scoop. It looks like the kind of cloth sling/sack that women wore to pick cotton. This is not chic, not cool, not very nice, has no Karma. I’m disappointed.
But it’s what happens next that surprises me. I know that I don’t want THIS bag, and I want my money back. That is clear. My husband, laughing at my cotton picking imitation says, “Send it back and get something you like.” Yes, of course. That makes sense, that’s the right thing to do. But something is holding me back. I try the Sari hunk of cloth bag again. I put all my regular purse contents inside it hoping that somehow my things inside will transform this into MY purse. Nope. It just looks even droopier and like an old laundry bag.
So what’s holding me back? It’s not until I am filling out the return form and packing the Sari bag in the carton to go back to Sundance that I realize. It’s not just the bag I have to return, it’s the new identity that I have constructed in my head. I get it: in the ten days from ordering the bag to seeing the actual object, I had constructed a new me to go with the bag: I was going to be causally chic, I was going to BE the kind of woman who wore old sari cloth with khaki and denim and simple sandals, I was going to be the slightly bohemian, somewhat hippy-ish chick, that tossed a bag like this across her body and…
And what? Laughed more, worried less, sat in coffee shops and didn’t sweat the to-do list, was able to toss my hair back (my hair barely touches my ears) and laugh, listen, be still and relaxed. I wanted to be relaxed and this silky sari-quilted bag was supposed to bring that to me.
And now I had to send that and her back with the frumpy, lumpy bag.
In ten days I had created a new me and done a kind of geographic cure without even leaving my house. And then the UPS man delivered reality right back to me.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Celebrate Lois Wilson This Week
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. Their story is chronicled in AA history books.
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 the first to seek help for their families. In New York, 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 great humor the lengths she went to control Bill’s drinking and the humiliations 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 Wilson 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 some danger when one is placed on a pedestal. Lois was criticized because she could not 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 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 the first to seek help for their families. In New York, 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 great humor the lengths she went to control Bill’s drinking and the humiliations 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 Wilson 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 some danger when one is placed on a pedestal. Lois was criticized because she could not 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 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, February 14, 2007
Humility and Humanity
I have been reading Thomas Merton and read a passage where he says the humble accept their humanity.
I talked with my therapist about this. I am a seeker and a searcher and a mighty self-improver. In that way that our strengths are our weaknesses, it has been my self-improving urgency that brought me to The Course in Miracles and from there to 12 step programs, OA and then Al-Anon and then AA. Once on the 12 step path I gobbled, perhaps binged on books, tapes, ideas, classes, workshops, retreats, teachers therapists…seeking always, wanting a better me. I had those experiences of seeing some stubborn, painful part of me finally let go gave me more hope that even more could change.
But then I began to sense that even this seeking to improve is also self seeking. And we know what AA says about that. Can I stop even the self-improving kind of self-seeking? At what point does self-improvement become a way of telling God who and how I should be? In what ways is constant self-improvement a way of not accepting myself and not trusting God?
Then I read Merton. The humble are not arrogant or proud, they accept their humanity.
So my fear and my anxiety and my wanting to be loved and wanting recognition are all parts of humanity, all things humans desire and want and experience. So can I accept these parts of me without trying to remove, edit, adjust or eliminate them?
Can I coexist with my own humanity?
When we practice the 6th and 7th steps we often begin by telling God what defects we want removed. But if we read the step carefully is says that we ask God to remove the defects that are in the way of our relationship with Him, which means he knows best. Does God want us or me to NOT be human?
Can I coexist with my humanity? And when I cannot is it a form of pride or arrogance or spiritual arrogance: I know what needs to be fixed; I know how to make the best possible me. I see the lack of humility there. I see that lack of faith and trust.
I talked with my therapist about this. I am a seeker and a searcher and a mighty self-improver. In that way that our strengths are our weaknesses, it has been my self-improving urgency that brought me to The Course in Miracles and from there to 12 step programs, OA and then Al-Anon and then AA. Once on the 12 step path I gobbled, perhaps binged on books, tapes, ideas, classes, workshops, retreats, teachers therapists…seeking always, wanting a better me. I had those experiences of seeing some stubborn, painful part of me finally let go gave me more hope that even more could change.
But then I began to sense that even this seeking to improve is also self seeking. And we know what AA says about that. Can I stop even the self-improving kind of self-seeking? At what point does self-improvement become a way of telling God who and how I should be? In what ways is constant self-improvement a way of not accepting myself and not trusting God?
Then I read Merton. The humble are not arrogant or proud, they accept their humanity.
So my fear and my anxiety and my wanting to be loved and wanting recognition are all parts of humanity, all things humans desire and want and experience. So can I accept these parts of me without trying to remove, edit, adjust or eliminate them?
Can I coexist with my own humanity?
When we practice the 6th and 7th steps we often begin by telling God what defects we want removed. But if we read the step carefully is says that we ask God to remove the defects that are in the way of our relationship with Him, which means he knows best. Does God want us or me to NOT be human?
Can I coexist with my humanity? And when I cannot is it a form of pride or arrogance or spiritual arrogance: I know what needs to be fixed; I know how to make the best possible me. I see the lack of humility there. I see that lack of faith and trust.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Dorothy Day is One of My References
How many sinners does it take to make one saint? Is Dorothy Day one? Should she be? Does it matter?
Having recently come to know about her through reading Rosalie Riegle’s book of interviews, I was thrilled to have history and theology come together in this very human, human being. Perhaps it says too much about my inner workings, but I am always pleased to find out that very good people have some not so good characteristics. I guess it makes me feel like I have a chance and in fact, the not-so-goodness of good people encourages me more than the, well, sanctified, goodness of so-called saints.
Perhaps that’s why I hope she doesn’t get canonized, and why I’ve always thought it a mistake to throw Mother Teresa in the Saint bin. Rather than help the more-bad-than-good rest of us, it discourages. I mean, if she’s a saint then she had more good to begin with and maybe more celestial pull along the way. But if she was just a vain, cranky, complex, idealistic, but falling-from-ideal-daily, kind of gal, then I can struggle forward inspired by what another well-intentioned but poorly performing woman might accomplish.
Related to this question of how good do you have to be to be good, is the question about Dorothy Day that I saw emerge in the last few chapters of Riegle’s book, and that I gathered from the other readings that I gobbled up this week: The Long Loneliness and Loaves and Fishes. That is: How do you integrate the person with their work? This question is on two levels: First, how do we, as readers of stories about Dorothy Day or other spiritual leaders, balance what they did versus who they were. And, second, maybe from that, how do we, in our own lives, balance doing good work with being flawed people. I find I am living this question daily as I work in human services, aspire to Christian ideals and love clothes, shoes, books, music and art. Can a committed Christian wear an Hermes scarf knowing how many people it would feed? Yes, you can be sure I was underlining every mention of the feminine in Dorothy Day’s life!
And there were many: The handkerchiefs and the hair, the perfume, the photos by Richard Avedon and the “good” tweed suit. Reading about her and asking these questions made me recall reading of another woman who has been an inspiration for many American women: Katherine Hepburn. So often she was described as strong, independent, her singleness and trousers taken as symbols of a kind of strength women tortured themselves with by comparison. After Hepburn’s death we learned that she was in a deeply codependent relationship with a married Spencer Tracy, collapsing under his criticism, changing her every appointment, hairstyle and opinion to please him, enduring his emotional abuse and cold distance. It turns out that even Katherine Hepburn wasn’t like “Katherine Hepburn”. Ditto for Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.
I think of this as I read about Day because I wonder about the challenge of allowing a good and famous person to be revealed in their humanity. We say that the personal is political, but are there also times when the personal is irrelevant, and is there an in-between?
I know that I am asking myself a very personal question when I raise this issue. There are three paragraphs in this book I have underlined and copied: page 171: Dorothy describing The Catholic Worker as a kind of school. She wanted people “to have that formation, that experience to take into other things: We also need editors, journalists, we need teachers. These are all potentially religious vocations.” Something in me relaxes when I read this. Similarly, on page 146: “Dorothy always called it a school. She stressed everybody’s individual vocation…You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you. You will know. You will know when it is right.” So thinking and study and writing could be a religious vocation?
And then this powerful idea on page 139: “Instead of rules she had these deep references. She read a lot and prayed a lot, so that kept her focus…When you make choices all the time with that constant inner reference to something like the gospel or the way Dostoevsky sees the world, you’re going to land in the same place over and over again. So it’s not rules exactly but something deeper.”
That quote raises a wonderful question to think about and ask each other: “What are your references?” What if we asked people that in a job interview? What if our references were not people who knew us, but rather people we carried inside us hoping to know? I think that Dorothy Day can now be one of mine.
Having recently come to know about her through reading Rosalie Riegle’s book of interviews, I was thrilled to have history and theology come together in this very human, human being. Perhaps it says too much about my inner workings, but I am always pleased to find out that very good people have some not so good characteristics. I guess it makes me feel like I have a chance and in fact, the not-so-goodness of good people encourages me more than the, well, sanctified, goodness of so-called saints.
Perhaps that’s why I hope she doesn’t get canonized, and why I’ve always thought it a mistake to throw Mother Teresa in the Saint bin. Rather than help the more-bad-than-good rest of us, it discourages. I mean, if she’s a saint then she had more good to begin with and maybe more celestial pull along the way. But if she was just a vain, cranky, complex, idealistic, but falling-from-ideal-daily, kind of gal, then I can struggle forward inspired by what another well-intentioned but poorly performing woman might accomplish.
Related to this question of how good do you have to be to be good, is the question about Dorothy Day that I saw emerge in the last few chapters of Riegle’s book, and that I gathered from the other readings that I gobbled up this week: The Long Loneliness and Loaves and Fishes. That is: How do you integrate the person with their work? This question is on two levels: First, how do we, as readers of stories about Dorothy Day or other spiritual leaders, balance what they did versus who they were. And, second, maybe from that, how do we, in our own lives, balance doing good work with being flawed people. I find I am living this question daily as I work in human services, aspire to Christian ideals and love clothes, shoes, books, music and art. Can a committed Christian wear an Hermes scarf knowing how many people it would feed? Yes, you can be sure I was underlining every mention of the feminine in Dorothy Day’s life!
And there were many: The handkerchiefs and the hair, the perfume, the photos by Richard Avedon and the “good” tweed suit. Reading about her and asking these questions made me recall reading of another woman who has been an inspiration for many American women: Katherine Hepburn. So often she was described as strong, independent, her singleness and trousers taken as symbols of a kind of strength women tortured themselves with by comparison. After Hepburn’s death we learned that she was in a deeply codependent relationship with a married Spencer Tracy, collapsing under his criticism, changing her every appointment, hairstyle and opinion to please him, enduring his emotional abuse and cold distance. It turns out that even Katherine Hepburn wasn’t like “Katherine Hepburn”. Ditto for Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.
I think of this as I read about Day because I wonder about the challenge of allowing a good and famous person to be revealed in their humanity. We say that the personal is political, but are there also times when the personal is irrelevant, and is there an in-between?
I know that I am asking myself a very personal question when I raise this issue. There are three paragraphs in this book I have underlined and copied: page 171: Dorothy describing The Catholic Worker as a kind of school. She wanted people “to have that formation, that experience to take into other things: We also need editors, journalists, we need teachers. These are all potentially religious vocations.” Something in me relaxes when I read this. Similarly, on page 146: “Dorothy always called it a school. She stressed everybody’s individual vocation…You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you. You will know. You will know when it is right.” So thinking and study and writing could be a religious vocation?
And then this powerful idea on page 139: “Instead of rules she had these deep references. She read a lot and prayed a lot, so that kept her focus…When you make choices all the time with that constant inner reference to something like the gospel or the way Dostoevsky sees the world, you’re going to land in the same place over and over again. So it’s not rules exactly but something deeper.”
That quote raises a wonderful question to think about and ask each other: “What are your references?” What if we asked people that in a job interview? What if our references were not people who knew us, but rather people we carried inside us hoping to know? I think that Dorothy Day can now be one of mine.
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