Saturday Night Widows

In long-term recovery we have a lot of gratitude for how far we have come and we are always thinking about “What Comes Next…”: What will come next in our relationships, in our careers, in our families. While we don’t often think that far ahead its true that what comes eventually is death and dying.

The old joke: “How do you get to be an old-timer? Answer: Don’t Drink and Don’t Die.” That’s true. Up to a point. People we love will die. That too is part of recovery.

Think about it. If we are going to stay in recovery a long time then we are agreed that we’ll experience everything that people do who live a long time: illness, injury, disability and death. I know, I know…but this does not have to be morbid.

I have just read a wonderful new book about this very human part of life: What can happen to us after our spouse or partner dies.

The book is called, “Saturday Night Widows.”  Written by Becky Aikman who was widowed at 42 after her husband’s death from cancer, this book is startling in it’s positive approach to a subject many of us turn away from even in our recovery conversations. What is refreshing about Aikman’s approach is that she tried the traditional bereavement group after her husband’s death but it was a bust. Her “failure” in traditional grief work led her to do years of research and she discovered that a lot of what we have been taught about grieving is mostly wrong.

Aikman talked to grief experts who confirmed that the Kubler-Ross “Stages of Grief” were never actually stages of grief. They were, and are, stages of the dying process. Kubler-Ross worked with people who were dying but over time we told and retold those famous “stages” as grieving gospel. Not true. No stages. More like waves that diminish over time.

Another myth that Aikman debunks: You don’t have to talk, talk talk. In fact the over-telling of grief may be re-traumatizing. Turns out that new experiences and happy experiences are the real medicine for grief. This, I think, is a great reinforcement of our process in recovery groups.

“Saturday Night Widows” is also an inspiring story of the group of women that Aikman gathered and how they cooked, shopped, traveled, cried and laughed their way to healing.

This is the book for people in recovery who have had a death in their family. It is a perfect book for a woman in recovery who has lost a partner. Aikman offers hope that while we may fear death we can be, and we will be, just fine later.

Valentine's Day in Recovery

Even after all these years of recovery I catch myself having expectations for Valentine’s Day. How many resentments it has caused. Dates, boy friends, husbands. Even knowing that Valentine’s Day is a commercially created day, the cultural pressure exists.

How do recovering people practice loving kindness for ourselves and others on Valentine’s Day?  How does sobriety guide me to make a Happy Valentine’s Day in or out of a romantic relationship?  What does love really mean in the context of recovery?

One of the joys of sobriety is watching other people grow. For me, it has been particularly moving to observe sober men as they change their lives and beliefs.

Early in recovery—just shy of two years and at the point where the fog is clearing –a man named Fred who was in his early 60’s came to my home group one morning. It was his first day out of treatment and he was in pain. His “bottom” involved devastation at both work and home. He hurt.  I listened as he spoke and I recognized his grief. Then, after the meeting ended, I watched as the men in our group surrounded Fred, gave him phone numbers and insisted that he come to breakfast with them. I watched as the men gathered him, taught him, and loved him.

Even though others in the group had had done that for me, it was then, with Fred, when I was just sober enough to understand that I was seeing love in action. I hold that moment as one of my sobriety treasures. It was the day that I could also see the love that surrounded me and I felt my heart open enough to want that love to surround another person.

Maybe it’s because one of my own wounds is about my father that this touches me so deeply.

This morning at my home group I heard men talk about how recovery changed their lives. Tough guys were softened, fathers recommitted, lost men were found, partners tried again, new romances began and they were trying to do it all differently.

It makes me happy to see men change. To know that under different circumstances my father and my brothers might have changed too. To know that there is an endless supply of love in these rooms and that we are changed by that love.

In early recovery I used to hear, “Let us love you until you can love yourself.” It felt like a puzzle, a bafflement. I didn’t think you could love someone into change. Hadn’t I tried that all those years before with disastrous results?  I know now that I didn’t really love; I was just trying to control someone or to make him take care of me. In romantic relationships, and sometimes as parents, we mistakenly try to love people into changing. It generally doesn’t work.

But in AA it does. We can be loved by our AA fellows until we can love ourselves. And when we have learned to love ourselves, we can then truly love others.

Willpower and Glucose

One of the best books that I read this year is "Willpower" by Roy Baumesiter and John Tierney. The book is about that old-fashioned idea of inner strength and grit and fortitude but these two social scientists explain the biology, psychology and science of how that works.

What I love about this book is that the ideas are practical and helpful and if you have been exposed to a twelve-step program you will recognize these ideas.  I love that because our "founders" knew what worked before we knew the science of any of it.

I'm attaching below a link to a YouTube video where author Roy Baumeister gives a fifteen minute talk about the ideas in the Willpower book. He talks about the relationship between willpower and glucose. Yeah, sugar.

You may remember that early AA's were told--and it's in the Big Book--that if you felt a craving for a drink you should eat a piece of candy! And we thought, "Oh what an old-fashioned idea--candy--who does that?"

And you know who does? social scientists who know that a teaspoon of sugar can restore enough willower to resist a more dangerous craving.

Crazy smart those old AA guys!

Take a look at Baumeister here on Youtube:



iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vefDeoXCBbk?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

All Encompassing Recovery

In my earliest years of recovery I had the blessing of discovering two recovery speakers who, I now know, significantly impacted how I would recover.

One was the AA speaker, Bob Earle, who told his story of progression through various addictions and an array of issues leading to deep emotional and spiritual change. In one of his earliest talks Bob told his audience, “When I am ten years sober I don’t want to go to five different Twelve Step groups for my alcoholism, food, family issues, codependence etc. I want to go to one meeting where I talk about all of me.”

The other person who influenced me was Judi Hollis, PhD an eating disorder therapist and the author of “Transferring Obsessions” published by Hazelden. That small pamphlet was part of my daily reading from my first year. I know that her ideas made early recovery really hard, but now in later recovery I thank her every day.

Hollis was writing to an audience of Overeaters Anonymous members. She talked about what happens when a woman or man in food recovery begins to let go of that addiction and how, if a Higher Power is not the replacement, we will move on to shopping, decorating, exercising, dating, sex, work and using alcohol or drugs. In those earlier days of OA there were members who still used alcohol, seeing the separation of substances but not seeing the singularity of addiction.

It was not unlike the way most professionals viewed drug addiction and alcoholism 25 years ago. At that time most hospital treatment programs for drug addiction allowed participants to drink alcohol. In some programs people completing their treatment for drug addiction were given a Beer Bash as the celebration of their 90 days of clean time. We are amazed by that today. Maybe someday we’ll be amazed by alcohol treatment that includes tobacco use or ice cream parties on Friday nights.

Now, to be clear the influence of Earle and Hollis did not stop me from swapping back and forth between alcohol, food, shopping, exercising and overwork. It just made it so much more painful because the denial was much more short-lived. When I left a department store with two shopping bags of clothes I knew it was the same as sneaking out of a grocery store with two bags of cake and cookies. And I knew that the married man that pumped up my heart rate was the same “drug” as the extra hour on the treadmill. A drug is a drug is a drug.

It’s been said that we give up our addictions in the order in which they are killing us. That was true for me. Mine went in this order: food, bulimic behavior, alcohol, drugs and then the ones that are ongoing: relationships and work. I take those tigers for a walk every day.

There are still some audiotapes of Bob Earle around. Ask the old-timers in your home group. And Judy Hollis’s “Transferring Obsessions” is still available from Hazelden. 

Mary Karr Lit and Kin

I’m re-reading the wonderful recovery memoir, Lit, by Mary Karr. This is one of those books that I can read again and again and learn something new each time. I think that’s because I keep changing and so I am open to Karr’s ideas with each stage of my own growth. I especially love to listen to this book, Lit, on cd in the car. That book saves me many days as I go to and from work.

Karr is a sensational poet and now also lyricist with her first album recently released called: Kin. On the Kin soundtrack Karr’s songs are performed by Norah Jones, Lucinda Williams, Vince Gill, Rosanne Cash and other amazing singers. This is a fine example of how a recovery life can indeed take us beyond our wildest dreams.

The beauty of the memoir, Lit and the album Kin is that you don’t need to know anything about recovery or addiction or alcoholism. You can enjoy these works of art for their sheer beauty, the poetic language, the laugh out loud gut-busting humor and Karrr’s sensational storytelling. 

Jackie Robinson's Birthday

Today is Jackie Robinson’s Birthday. All Day Google has helped to celebrate this extraordinary ball player and extraordinary man. Jackie Robinson deserves his place in baseball history. Jack Roosevelt Robinson was not only the man who was the subject of  “baseball’s greatest experiment”, who put a face on the color change in baseball, he also changed the chemistry of America’s pastime as well as its color. Sports writer Mike Lupica says of Robinson: “He played with flash and arrogance and made ferocity an art. Baseball did not look the same after Jackie Robinson.”

But we have to remember that history rarely happens in big events and single moments. There were other people who were critical to Robinson’s being able to do take those courageous steps on April 15, 1947.

 Jackie Robinson was not the first black to play professional baseball. It might be more correct to say that he was the first black to cross the color line who was allowed to stay.  The very first black to play professional baseball in America was Moses Fleetwood Walker. Walker holds the dubious honor of being the first black to play pro ball and the last to still be playing before the final shut out of blacks in baseball by Jim Crow laws.  Walker, a catcher from Ohio, was educated at Oberlin College and the University of Michigan and played ball at both schools before joining Toledo’s professional team in 1884.  Moses Fleetwood Walker set a precedent.

The refusal to allow blacks in pro ball meant that black ball players had to form their own teams and their own leagues. This formation of all black teams led to one of the most glorious periods in baseball history.

 There is a tendency I think for baseball fans to look at the Negro Leagues as the poor cousin to “real” baseball. Stories of barnstorming days give the sense that black baseball was an inferior game and organization. This could not be farther from the truth. Most of the bad conditions for Negro leaguers came after integration of the game. In their prime The Negro Leagues were multi-million dollar operations, among the largest black businesses in the United States, which sent millions of dollars into and through the community. .

Negro League star Josh Gibson was the greatest player of that time. He is now considered by most baseball historians to be the greatest baseball player of all time. One of the games most natural hitters, Gibson played for Pittsburgh’s Homestead Grays. Gibson’s hitting prowess outshined Babe Ruth. In one season Gibson hit 89 home runs, 29 more than Ruth’s record. And Gibson is the only player to ever hit a home run out of Yankee Stadium.

Without Josh Gibson Jackie Robinson’s moment would never have come. Josh Gibson showed fans what black ball players could do and he showed major league owners what black fans could mean to the business of baseball.  The Homestead Grays, who played in any town that had a ballpark available for rent, set attendance records in most of the big league parks along the east coast and through the mid west. Josh Gibson was the hot draw and fans- black and white -- came from all over and sold out every game to see him play.

Those sold out houses were not lost on another important baseball man, Branch Rickey, president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Rickey had been managing baseball teams all of his adult life, and when he came to the Dodgers he inherited an aging team and declining audience. He wanted to win a pennant and he knew that the hottest talent in the game was in the Negro Leagues. Rickey knew that the draw for those games while mostly black included white fans who loved the more energetic brand of baseball played by the all black teams. Rickey spent more than two years orchestrating Robinson’s first step onto Ebbets Field. Rickey was willing to endure the scorn of all of the other major league owners and managers.

But ultimately it was Jackie Robinson who had to step onto that field, and who agreed to Rickey’s offer and Rickey’s terms. And the terms were tough: Robinson promised, “no reaction, no matter what” for three years. That was not easy for Jackie. He had to put up with bean balls aimed at his head, spikes aimed at his shins and the ugly names aimed at him and at his family.

Rickey admitted later that, “Jackie had to turn the other cheek so often that he had no other cheek left – both were beaten off.” But Jackie Robinson was not Jesus and not Gandhi. It is unfair to characterize him as a man of superior spiritual character who took his enemies racist hatred and returned compassion and forgiveness. He did not. Robinson swallowed a lot of that hatred. He was smart enough to know that this was the only way the “experiment” would work and he was wise enough to know that the men waiting behind him in the Negro Leagues depended on his fitting in.  

Robinson was the man who took the risk, who played the game and who changed its play in so many ways. But Branch Rickey can also be a role model for showing us that winning and making a profit do not have to be separate from making important social change.

Looking at these others who set the stage for Jackie Robinson doesn’t take anything away from him on this special day. Rather it may let us take away something that we can apply to our lives. There are many parts to play in making great social change. Most of them come without recognition and they can, like Rickey’s, come with very mixed motivations.

Few of us will have the opportunity to be the man or woman of the moment, to publicly enact history in such a dramatic way, but we all have opportunities to be one of the unnamed others, who, though unrecognized, are necessary to building the momentum and critical mass that allows the historical moment to happen.                          

What are Your Character Strengths?

Last week I took the coolest test. It is The VIA Character Strengths Survey.  It's an online test and it's free and it gives you a very accurate outline of your personality or character strengths. We have all done Fourth Step inventories and we mostly know--from recovery or therapy--what our character defects are...but here's a chance to do the rest of that of inventory and find out what your strengths are.

Again: It's free and it's online. It takes maybe, 35 minutes to do the test. It's highly reliable having been developed by the folks at The University of Pennsylvania School of Positive Psychology-- A rigorous, research based program.  I'll attach the link below.

You'll be asked to sign in at the start because they are tracking who takes the test: students, business folks, parents etc.

The VIA Strengths Survey was recommended to me by by Caroline Adams Miller who wrote the book, "Creating Your Best Life" and who is a Coach working in the new field of positive psychology--she is a graduate of the master's program at Penn.

Try this and see what you think. You'll get a quick response and an outline of your strengths. Think of this as another way to take a mini recovery inventory. You might have a friend or partner take this too and then compare notes.

Here's the link:

http://www.viame.org/survey/Account/Register