The Fearful Part

There is an exercise in the book “No Bad Parts” by Richard Schwartz that asks the reader to close their eyes and imagine walking down a welcoming path, no matter where that path might be. The caveat is to try to leave all your hurt “Exile” parts at the trailhead, reassuring them that you will be back soon and that they are safe to hang out.

The author spends some time explaining that your inner hurt ‘exiles’ may not be ready to be left alone and that it is okay for you (your ‘self’ /real adult) to stay with that hurt child/children to either to get to know them better and/or to reassure them that you, the adult self, are there to protect and care for them. That you, your adult self, is capable of handling whatever situation might arise.

There is an exercise in the book, “No Bad Parts” by Richard Schwartz, that asks the reader to close their eyes and imagine walking down a welcoming path, no matter where that path might be. A path of your choice. The caveat is to try to leave all the parts of you that are hurt “Exile” parts at the trailhead, reassuring them that you will be back soon and that they are safe to hang out.

All that to say that my response to this exercise was surprising to me. Maybe it is because I have done so many years of Alanon-type work in allowing myself to care for all the hurt parts of me and to ‘detach’ from the person or people that are causing me pain in the present. It is the biggest feat in finding serenity, no matter what the addict or other(s) are doing or causing. To know you ‘got this’, and will be all right regardless of the outcome of the behavior of other(s).

My response was to skip down that path feeling freed from all the pain and restraints of those hurt parts. It’s like the part(s) had evolved enough to allow me to go forward without them, at least for a time. It was freeing to feel light and carefree and stable. I felt truly able to care for myself on that path, even though it was a (real) path I have hiked, one with many bumpy areas, drops and crevices. That path is at the seashore and leads to a wonderful wild beach where few visit.

I felt excited to bound along it. I felt that my hurt parts were finally able to let me enjoy my life and explore without having to cling to me. They felt like my cheerleaders instead of my burdens. They were actually happy for me.

It was marvelous.

This is not to say that I do not have a hurt part of me still rear her little head at times. I was conveying an incident from my young childhood..maybe three or four–in which I decided to try to help my mom and bring in the milk bottle from the porch (back in the days when the milkman delivered). I felt so grown up and helpful. Well, in my excitement, I failed to notice the screen door did not clear the milk bottle. You guessed it, the bottle broke.

My mother was so angry at what she saw as my carelessness, that she sent me to my room and made me get coins out of my piggy bank to pay her for the spilt milk. Who knows how bad of a day she was having, but this crushed me. It implanted in me the tendency, to this day, take on responsibility for errors, or even perceived possible errors, as my fault. It brings up that mortified little girl. My goodness, I just want to hug her.

Because of the opportunity of this exposure to ‘parts’, I have been able to see that little mortified helper child and realize that she still lives within me. I can truly tame her fear and guilt when I recognize her.

I used an example of present day. I run an air bnb out of our home. Occasionally a guest will either rate us lower than top ‘5 stars’ or will complain about something like the room temperature or not enough of the kind of tea bags they prefer available. My first impulse is to feel fear and to feel wrong/ careless. I feel that I should have known to realize whatever their complaint is about before they had to voice it. That I am that little girl who, even with the best of intentions, was seen by her mother as naughty and thoughtless.

Oh my goodness, what a revelation. What a gift to be enabled to pause and hold that little girl part in high esteem as valuable and good, so that I can move forward in my grown up self to deal with the issue at hand with vastly reduced fear/guilt reaction. I can now allow present reality to sink in, freeing me to behave in a more realistic evaluation of the situation and put it into perspective. I am a well meaning, valuable person who would never intentionally harm another. I am enough.

Unpredictable Circumstances

If this time of quarantine has taught me anything, it is the truth of step one of the twelve steps.

Powerlessness.

We are all powerless over the reality of Covid 19. It is here. It permeates our society. It is invisible and virulent.

It also reminds us that we have the ability to choose to do our best to protect ourselves from infection. We have the power of choice. And when we follow the prescribed methods of keeping ourselves safe, we can choose to relax in the knowledge that we have done everything we can.

So yes, we are powerless over what comes into our lives, but we are not powerless as to our response.

In the case of betrayal, this would include taking good care of ourselves, setting boundaries to allow ourselves to be safe and then relax in the knowledge that ‘this too shall pass.’

What?? I hear you thinking. “I will NEVER forget the pain of this betrayal.”

Those who have lost loved ones to the virus will also never forget. Their hearts and lives are forever altered by something over which they had no control or choice. They too need to care for themselves, be gentle and kind and patient, as their deep wound begins to heal. The scar will always remain. Yet with self care, the work of processing through their new reality and eventually reaching acceptance, they can become a more compassionate stronger version of the person they were before this catastrophe tore a path of destruction through their lives.

Recovery from intimate betrayal takes time. So much time. Even in the best of circumstances–it takes time. Most of us do not have the ‘best of circumstances’. Many of us have a perpetrating partner that is still sick–still learning to heal the wounds that contributed to their devastating choice to betray. Few of them are in the position to provide the compassion and empathy we, the betrayed, so dearly need.

So, not unlike the ravages of a virus, or a terrible accident, storm, financial collapse—we are left to gather and nurture our resources of health and healing. We are left to reach out for help whether that be the strength of a dear friend, a support group, the rich educational resources of the internet and library–we CAN choose to heal.

And be so compassionately, tenderly patient.

We have suffered perhaps the most egregious emotional wound a person can suffer. Perhaps this wound has been inflicted over years and years of betrayal. Perhaps it was the result of a one night stand. Never the less, it has shattered our trust, our reality, the world we counted on to support and love us. The world where we thought our partner had or backs, protected and cherished us. The world we relied upon as having a healthy intact and reliable primary relationship. We have suffered the most devastating attachment wound from the one person we relied upon to be there for us and act in our best interest.

Be gentle, dear betrayed.

Be the most gentle with yourself.

You are the person you can count on to be there for you. You are the only person who has the ultimate control over your response to what life dishes out. My life gets better when I take responsibility for just me. Today I will mind my own business and keep my focus where it belongs–over the only person with whom I DO have control— me.

Let time take its time. Let go and Let my higher power/my higher self…. heal. Sweet healing.

“Helping” Without Being Asked

What the moderator was leading us to realize is that those Alanons that have codependent tendencies as many do; we who have suffered the effects of a loved one’s alcoholism or drugging or acting out, have learned to try to control the uncontrollable. In our care and love and fear, many of us have tried to ‘help’ without being asked.

For some it is so compulsive and perseverative, it becomes as big a problem as the addicts. When we try to cover up for or volunteer to do things for the addict that he or she can do for him or herself, we rob them of the learning, the self respect and earned self esteem of doing for themselves. Not only that but we can unintentionally send the message that we don’t think they are capable of doing for themselves.

“Tough Love” was popular back in the day as a form of last resort to discipline unruly or rebellious teens. Its tenants are just as valuable for an addict. They are just as valuable in many situations and for many persons in our lives.

tough love/ˌtəf ˈləv/noun

promotion of a person’s welfare, especially that of an addict, child, or criminal, by enforcing certain constraints on them, or requiring them to take responsibility for their actions.

All of us have the tendency to save or ‘help’ when we see someone we care about floundering. At least at one time or another. It demonstrates a big compassionate heart and love.

Except when it doesn’t.

When it is taken too far. When the ‘helper’ deprives the beloved or friend of the opportunity of growth inherent in figuring out their own solutions, it becomes presumptuous and disrespectful, even harmful to the addict’s personhood.

I look at myself and think of the times I have stepped in and done something without being asked because I judged it would be helpful or welcome. And when it wasn’t, sometimes my feelings were hurt, but more importantly I had the opportunity to learn a lesson. I can choose to NOT make it about me and my feelings. Rather I can look to the other–the one I am trying to ‘help’ and attempt to see it from their perspective. If they didn’t or don’t want the help, I’ve crossed their boundary of comfort. If they could have benefitted in the short term from my help, but lost the opportunity to learn their own lesson and grow in experience–I have robbed them. I have done them a disservice, no matter how well intended.

And I need to step back and think before I act.

Perhaps this is hardest when your own child is at risk of suffering a natural consequence of their actions, or of life. I know–it is HARD. None of us want to see someone we care about hurt or suffer.

Sometimes you have to allow them to stumble, even fall. They will get back up and in so doing gain in self respect, knowledge and experience they would not have if you’d stepped in.

This is a weak area in my life. Totally non intentional to deprive or harm another, yet my first impulse is to help.

Stop and think, Christine.

Sometimes it is tough to love.

Home from Deployment

My daughter came home from her nine month deployment in Afghanistan yesterday. Her hubby posted some photos of the whole regiment arriving, then a couple of them embracing and two of my daughter arriving home and seeing her eighteen month old daughter for the first time.

My daughter’s face was shiny slick with tears as she smiled cheek to cheek with a grinning hubby and her face red , eyes gleaming with more tears as she lifted her daughter who knew it was mommy because of the daily FaceTiming they’d been doing. I can imagine my daughter was wondering if her baby would remember her as she’s been gone half her short life. Thank God for technology.

I cried as I looked at these photos. So many emotions were all jumbled around my aching heart. I feel like I am missing out on so much of their lives yet I am so happy for their reunion. I also remember being apart from my husband early in our marriage when he was still on active duty. How hard it was to spend so long apart. And then a sharp pain in my heart remembering how many of those times my husband was gone on recruiting trips, first in the military and then in civilian life–cheating on me and his family. How could he? How could so much precious beauty be devalued? I will never understand the incomprehensible.

Then I missed them, because they are on the other side of the country. I can’t just hop in the car and go hug my daughter. Even if I could, she has grown more and more distant from me, especially since the revelation of her father’s infidelity. She judges me as harshly as him, more so. She loves her Santa Dad. Respects her responsible mom, but doesn’t seem to want to be close. It hurts my heart. Her dad has filled her head with stuff about me—negative judgements, yet she has built her own. And I don’t understand that either. My heart aches for her–that she has to live knowing her parent’s marriage was not what she thought. Me too.

Sometimes it feels like I have all but lost my family. Either to death or distance or betrayal. My family is small so there are not many people anyways. My heart aches for what I wish I had. Yet I know that a lot of people have distant families, both geographically and/or emotionally. I certainly am not unique in that. To build expectations for it to be different is a set up for resentment and unhappiness. So I try to be as thankful as I can for what I do have. They are heathy. They are reunited. My UH is much less angry than he used to be. He is continuing to go to 12 step groups and therapy. He puts himself in the path of recovery. I can wish all I want that he would become a man of integrity and reliability—use the tools he is exposed to at all those meetings, but once again—expectations build resentment and unhappiness.

It is so hard not to want. I don’t know how to stop wanting and wishing

As the Alanon slogan says:

Let Go And Let God.

So difficult, so sad, so painful.

I will see my daughter in mid March. I am grateful for what short visits I can.

I am grateful.

Healing Emotional Vertigo

Or “Who is this crazy woman in my body?”

My punishing thoughts. A brain on fire.

I am someone who deserves to be understood and cherished, rather than criticized and improved.

Have you had these thoughts, feelings, needs?

It is time to arrest the process of depletion the trauma I have suffered has caused. It’s time to stop ignoring my body’s signals and instead allow them authority to teach me about myself. Time to keep my life as simple and quiet as possible, allow myself comforts of the senses and small pleasures.

Home cooking of familiar foods reminiscent of my childhood. Enjoying a steaming cup of my favorite tea. The sound of moving water; taking in the look of it, the soft caress it provides in a hot shower. Walk along it, whether a lake or the sea as I marvel at its many moods.

Laughter is as much a part of my healing as weeping. Revisiting favorite films from my past or watching a new series on Netflix help to mend that sore ache in my heart that has been my constant companion.

Sometimes life offers a respite, something, or in my case, someone new. My first grandchild was born two years past d-day and although she lives on the other side of the country, my precious few visits have allowed me to revisit the long hours of my own young motherhood spent watching the magical process of infant hood unfolding. What a treasure to look into the innocent eyes of the future and see in them the simplicity of life as it used to be.

It is time to reset my internal clock to the rhythms of nature. Watch the sunrise and set. Gaze up at the constellations. Observe the cycle and changing shape of the moon. Connect to a simpler slower time. Even in a time of great suffering there can be connection to our depth of character and memory.

Memories of a season of life when I was under the protective loving care of my parents. Living under their roof, eating my mom’s simple filling meals, lying next to my basset hound ‘sister’ while synchronizing my breathing with her soft snore. Even if life were no less dangerous and dark then, it was hidden from my awareness by being cushioned within the walls of my family home and the unconditional love there.

In this time of recovery, I look for a way to transform all this misery into wisdom and compassion. Just as the most revered men and woman of history have done. Just as the everyday strong souled people of a lie kept from them have found reincarnation as a more resilient empathetic self.

Although I allow myself to speak of my sorrow and loss, I will not let it define me. I’ve found a wonderful group through Alanon. The meeting I go to is composed mostly of senior women who have been molded through their own grief. They remind me that I have choices and it is okay to say no.

After taking good care of my body and soul for as long as it takes, it will begin to once again take care of me. Slowly, I allow myself to enjoy the return of more positive emotions. Contentment and calmness sneak back in with the balm of intentional calmness. A new spark of curiosity, a bit more energy punctuate what have been the darkest days of my life.

I can again feel the great tenderness I have held for the important people in my life, living and dead. Little by little, I no longer feel quite so broken, so alone. It is akin to surviving a near death experience, filling me with gratitude for the tulip bulbs that are pushing their way through the warming earth and listening to every Michael Buble song that comes on the radio.

It seems I can never plan a day as good as the one that unfurls if I just leave lots of white space in my schedule. Slow down and let the day unfold. Maybe, just maybe, a day I thought would be dismal may become a bright memory.

We all have a seasons of suffering, if we are fortunate to live long enough. In this season, if I allow myself to explore myself and my relationship to the world, my heart and body and mind will strengthen, grow, heal. Step out of the shadow-life great grief brings. I believe most of us are equipped to heal from trauma. We can choose to dig deep into the entrenched strengths of our identity.

The cure is growth.

Post traumatic growth syndrome. We expand our point of view and our life, so too, will follow.

My Life As a Lantern

At tonight’s 12 step workshop our mentor teacher, Herb, likened the role of a sponsor too that of a lantern lighting the path for another struggling human being. We mentor/“sponsors” are not the light within the lantern. Rather, we are the vessels. We have lived through our own brand of hell, our own pain..and survived, even thrived. We have gathered knowledge of the path forward from numerous resources. We have followed in the light illuminating the path shed by other lantern soul’s, often passionate, suggestions.

Herb also reminded us that 80 percent of those shown the light, the methods, the tools to obtain success, fail. They reject the path, the need for investing in the deep work, the actions that change lives. Whether it is because they find using the tools too difficult or they would rather take the ‘easy’ way out through their addiction of food, sex, alcohol, gambling drugs, etc….they in the long run, fail.

There is no short, easy way. Those so called solutions are only temporary, very brief. To have a real spiritual awakening, as the 12 step program refers to the awakening to coping with reality in a mature way, the seeker, the wounded, the sick, must follow the path and use the tools.

If I can liken myself to a lantern, I have had the privilege of illuminating the path for many. Children—my own and those whom I served as teacher, those who have read my books and perhaps even some who read this blog. I have received little recognition as the lantern, but that is ok. My payment is and always has been in seeing others learn to walk their path in health and fulfillment.

As far as my UH is concerned—often my passion in describing the light, the tools so many have used with success, is viewed by him as either hogwash, or judged as controlling. He often simply does not want to invest in using the tools I mirror from so many resources. So he most times passively avoids me and them. He remains silent. He refuses to engage. Passive aggressively he rejects the light, and the lantern.

Sometimes his rejection of the light is aggressive. He angers at the lantern and/or the light. He blames the lantern for forcing action when in truth no one can force action. As the old saying goes, he ‘cuts off his nose to spite his face.’ Get rid of that annoying lantern and I can ignore the path. I can remain in my warm comfortable darkness that is so unhealthy, so destructive, but so familiar.

And there is not a thing I can do about his choices. I am powerless. Only the light has power.

Herb warns to not over invest in being a lantern to any one individual because they have to come to the light of their own volition and in their own time. Easier said than done, he admits. I second that, especially when the success and willingness of the seeker to follow the path is intimately entwined with the lantern’s own life and well being. It is so damn hard to let go, to extend interminable grace and patience. It is darn near impossible.

As Alanon would counsel, “Let Go And Let God”.

Thy Will Be Done.

Day Of Questions

So I thought that rather than sitting for seven or eight hours in a car ride from Southern California to the Sierra Nevada foothills in the North, I Googled questions to use on dates or as conversation starters– to use on the drive.

Some were from Gottman Institute, some from other sources. Some examples:

1. What is your best and worst memory of your childhood?

2. List your three biggest needs, and how can I fulfill them?

3. Of your friends and family, who do you think has the best relationship and why?

4. What is the best part about being together?

5. What kinds of things do I do that annoy you, and what kinds of behaviors do you think I should stop or modify?

6. Does anything keep you awake at night that you haven’t shared with me?

7. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing but haven’t yet? What’s prevented you from doing this?

8. Why do you love me? And when did you feel most loved by me?

9. What would you consider unforgivable and why?

What’s my best physical feature?

If you could change one thing about your looks, what would it be?

What is your favorite memory of us dating?

_______________

Most pretty innocuous. I think this is the kind of stuff healthier couples might talk about in the natural flow of staying connected and interested in their partner.

For the most part it went well. Calm, rational discussion. The few times I stated my truth calmly in reference to some of the challenges and difficulties I face day in and out without a close intimate relationship to enrich my life, he became silent.

It amazes me that he still goes silent rather than engage in the healing process.

I mentioned how sad it is that isolation is something so many addicts/ unfaithful choose for so long and is such a vital feature of getting to the place of abandoning one’s values. How much it diminishes and hurts their lives. First and foremost the tragedy is the loss of self in the mire of minimizations, justifications, objectifications and loss of intimacy that infidelity requires. It is forfeiting an authentic love life for the false, seemingly sparkly object in front of them. How sad the deficit of emotional coping skills is in how it manifests in the inability to delay gratification to obtain a goal–a true, deep intimate goal.

Perhaps for some, this realization would be the impetus to risk the new territory of getting real, processing the what and why’s of their past actions to understand the self damage. What a sad small life to live grabbing at the fast, fun and easy while forfeiting the genuine, precious and deep.

How does one gain these skills, but to practice them. First must come awareness that they are in deficit. To recognize the full depth and breadth of their unhealthy choices and to learn to initiate healthier coping mechanisms for the inevitable challenges of an adult life.

How difficult it is to see this so clearly, yet be powerless to ignite the motivation and desire for another to undertake the work to learn these skills. Knowing full well that this is the path toward a full, rich life.

As Alanon literature so empathetically states: ““Watching other human beings slowly kill themselves with alcohol is painful. …”

Indeed.

If not literally physically kill themselves with a substance, to kill their precious days with delusional thinking and actions. It is difficult to watch. Difficult to absorb that we did not cause this mindset and emotional sobriety deficits any more than we can ‘cure’ them.

It is difficult and painful indeed.

So I take what I can and try to learn to be thankful for any small step forward toward communication. And I look for and find all the good that remains in my life, in my world.

Intimate Deception

I’ve been listening to the audio book, Intimate Deception by Dr Sheri Keffer, most of the day. I find it compelling, validating, compassionate and steeped in truth.

When a woman has been intimately betrayed it is so very easy to lose herself.

I too have been in grave danger of becoming lost, at times. Down the rabbit hole I went when the pain overtook me like the mountainous wave of a tsunami. The pain of the realization that one’s world has been a construct, a manipulation of another, is simply more than can be absorbed.

I don’t know exactly when I regained my footing. Perhaps it was hearing the insane accusations and justifications come out of my UH’s mouth. Maybe it is the dark and evil slant to his gaze, unable or unwilling to meet mine, as he chooses to remain in angry shame.

Whatever and whenever it was, there is no turning back. Just like the reality of his many, many betrayals, I can not unfeel the profound brokenness of him. I truly do not know if he will ever recover –at least not in this lifetime.

His efforts are weak and steeped in escape hatches. He chooses to use meeting attendance as the lion’s share of his alleged recovery. Since when did meetings become the recovery program?

Working the program through deep authentic action has always and will always be the antidote to the evil of addictive choices.

Addiction is not evil. It is a sickness. Choosing to remain addicted is. The work to dig oneself out of addiction seems overwhelmingly painful when in truth remaining in addiction is the sentence to hell.

“It is painful to watch someone kill themselves with alcohol (*insert any addiction here).” -Al anon

It is likewise equally painful to watch the person you thought you would grow old with–the person in whose arms you thought you could safely breathe you last breath–choose what they think is the less painful path of remaining in denial of the absolute vitalness of immersion in recovery work. And thus remain your biggest safety threat.

“Let go and let God.” -Al anon

Sooooo much easier said than done.

Walking Into 12 Step Rooms

My first day walking into an Al-anon meeting should have been easier. After all I had attended numerous AA open meetings with my unfaithful husband. As a ‘normie’ I was not expected, nor allowed to share, but it was eye opening and heart breaking to hear the stories of these people whose lives had been severely impacted by drinking and/or drugging.

I knew addictive activities were not the root of the problem. Rather, the acting out behaviors are a symptom of a much deeper deficit in the mind, heart and soul of the afflicted. It made sense that as children many of the addicted had learned to retreat into their isolation to judge others harshly as being against them, to see themselves as terminally flawed.

Tragic.

None of us is born feeling flawed. We are immersed into unhealthy, inescapable situations that mold us into deeply wounded individuals.

Yes, I understood this in my mind. The trouble is, there is a very long distance between the head and the heart. I was able to intellectually absorb the brokenness of my alcoholic addict. The decimation his actions had caused in my heart? Not so much.

I’ve heard it said that the longest 18 inches is between the head and the heart. That has been my experience.

I was crushed by the choices my unfaithful addict had made. I was at a total loss to wrap my head around how the man who vowed to love and protect me could have committed nearly every atrocity against that promise imaginable. I knew 12 step meetings for those effected by someone else’s drinking, drugging, sexing, overspending were not to fix the addict. My research into them, pre-first meeting, told me that. No–I was at my first Alanon meeting to help myself.

How could I reassemble the shattered pieces of my heart into anything reminiscent of ‘me’? How could I hope to approach healing without discussing the man who had brought so much chaos into my life and heart? A mystery.

What? I am like a car accident victim who now needs to do physical and emotional therapy without any hope of help from the drunk driver that put me here? Outrageous! So unfair. Yet this metaphor helped me come to terms with the need for me to change my attitude and my choice to focus on me and my healing rather than the broken man that so injured me. This was life and death stuff. The life and death of my heart.

And little by little, listening to other’s experience, strength and hope, I thawed. The hot tears lessened. The unrealistic magical thinking that something I could say or do would actually speed up my addict’s healing, softened. And I began to choose to intentionally look for the good, the beautiful, in the here and now.

You see, no matter how horrible the addict’s choices may have been or continue to be, no matter how long it takes him to ‘get it’, or not– I have me. I am the same wonderfully giving, wonderfully flawed, wonderfully grateful-for-this-life person I was the day before he told me he’d been cheating on my for 27 years or that he was an alcoholic, marijuana addict, or that he screamed at me for being upset. He does not define me, no matter how much time and love and care I invested in him.

He defines himself. He has his own Higher Power with which to contend. And I have mine.

Just because my gifts were not honored, in no way diminishes the love behind them.

I am a strong, capable, woman with a broken heart. I will heal and take good care of me so I can take good care of others. I am a worthy, grateful survivor.

Forcing a Solution

Photo by Ivandrei Pretorius on Pexels.com

I’ve been living in limbo for three and a half years. Not knowing if my UH would or will do the work to understand himself, share that understanding with me so that I can feel safer that he will make better decisions in the future AND prove that he understands the depth of the consequences of his choices on me and the family. (Boy, that was a mouthful and an even bigger emotional mountain to climb)

He has moved at snails pace in becoming less defensive, at least outwardly. He no longer throws things, breaks dishes, red face yells. I set a boundary that I could not live under the same roof if he did not become someone with whom I could communicate safely.

That said, and in full acknowledgment that it is a good thing—he still has not chosen to share his progress (or lack thereof) with me. He does not express understanding of himself or of the effect his choices have had on me. He does not demonstrate remorse or empathy. He has not made amends nor does it seem to bother him as it does me. He knows how I feel, yet he still does not approach me.

Consequently, I am still in a state of unsafe limbo.

I have been told over and over and over how important it is to any hope of reconciliation for the above to occur. Not once, but over a protracted period of time. It does and will take a loooonnnggg time of truth and consistency on his part for me to feel safe enough to even consider allowing him to become an important relationship in my life. It truly would be a new relationship.

I was, once again, feeling overwhelmed with sadness and anxiety with waiting. I was circling the drain, being triggered and feeling hopeless.

Then I went to my weekly Al-anon meeting this morning and got a verbal inoculation–a booster shot through the sharing of fellow members–that reminded me of the importance of allowing God to do his work. Each of us has a life to live, a path to walk and a higher power to help us along that path. My UH has his—I have mine. I can not and should not force a solution.

UH will grow in his own time. I can not force him any more than I can force a flower to bloom one second before it is ready. Nor should I try to play God. Tug the tulip–it won’t grow any faster.

That said, there may come a time when the pain and anxiety of waiting for him to ‘get it’, to grow up and have a change of heart to become a man of integrity and responsibility will become too much. Waiting for him to be the man capable of being married–the one I thought I married, but did not—a reliable, mature spouse.

It is not respectful to force a solution. It is poking my nose into someone else’s life, even if their life is directly effecting mine. My only responsibility is to myself, my reactions, my emotions, my boundaries. I can and will protect myself. I will not force anyone else to grow before they grow.

Damn this is a hard lesson. One to be reminded of over and over and over.

Thank you Al-anon.