Step One - The greatest moment of my life

I had the thought yesterday that maybe I should talk more specifically about the Steps on my blog. It is hard for me to do this because they are so inter woven into my life and in my personality that I don't even notice.

I got a late night call from a woman who got my name off a phone list of  a meeting she attended. She wasn't really dealing with alcoholism but at verbally abusive child in her school class. She had a shout out with the nine year old and sent her out of the room. She was feeling like a failure and in the wrong profession.

I told her about my recent meltdown and how it isn't always about us. Our mind makes it about us just like the person we are dealing with. Their mind makes it about them. We are the way we are because that is what we learned from our childhood. If we are lucky we see that it doesn't work in the adult world but most people don't get that opportunity.

This gets me back to the steps. They were the first tool I used to look at my own behavior and how I was hurting myself. It didn't happen over night because I was still caught up in blaming my husband and being the overall victim of my life to really look at my own behavior. Step One was where this process began.

Step One - Admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives have become un-manageable.

We in Al-Anon are proud folks and don't let anything stop us. By the time we get to the rooms of Al-Anon we are beat. We have met our match with addiction. We are about taking on the impossible and making the best of any situation. To admit that we have come across something that we can't manage it almost un-thinkable.

Of-course we don't go gently into the night we have already tried everything. If we haven't we wouldn't have come to that first meeting. Just like the alcoholic something really bad has to happen before we are ready for help. We have lost something or we are about to loose something. For me it was my mind and my husband.

He left and left me and my mind a mess. My life was so wrapped up in him that I couldn't function without him. He kept me busy and filled my life with disasters to contend with. I didn't have any friends or any interest of my own I made him my full time job. In hindsight he was constant entertainment for my ADD mind. Where is he? What is he doing? When is he coming home?

This is what I got out of it he needed me and I wanted so desperately to be needed. I wanted the emptiness I felt inside to be filled. I wanted to think that there was someone that couldn't live without me. But it turns out he could and I was left unable to function unable to get out of bed.

This was what led me to Step One.  I surrendered for the first time in my life.  I couldn' find an answer. I had met my match. It was the greatest moment of my life because I was teachable.

My experience with the Steps

A friend was sharing with me yesterday about a conflict she was having with someone that worked with her. I suggested a different approach and she made the statement that she was just a direct person. I thought, how is that working for you? (thanks Dr. Phil) I use to be that person. I would tell it to you straight like it or not even if you didn't ask.

It brought me back to how we have the false belief that we can't change who we are and I know that that isn't true. The Steps changed me completely. After that conversation I watched a sermon on TV that was about labels. He is a very positive speaker so I am open to the message. In my mind God's messages to me are not limited to a specific source and if I pay attention even a billboard can have message for me. So take what you like and leave the rest.

I agreed with the thought that we are limited by the labels and don't even know if the labels are accurate. Labels given to us by other people. We can live up to or down to the labels or we can decide to label ourselves.

It takes work to break out of this mold or even just question if what we were taught is true. I think the 12 steps began this process for me. If I had known it would be such work or the journey would be life long I might not have taken that first step.

The Steps are sneaky. They catch you when you are desperate, Step One. Then right away they make you feel better by giving you hope and comfort, Step Two. By that time, for the moment, you are willing to give up control, Step Three.

This is when you start to wake up and realize you have been your own worst enemy. Bummer. Then the Steps teach you that you have the ultimate power to change yourself and the way you think. To question whether your own thoughts have had your best interest at heart.

It starts off slow and you meet with resistance mostly from yourself and then boom you feel a little freedom. So you move on and then another mental road block, the Step Four. Hate it, yuck can't go around it, looks like a mountain just when you were breezing along but it is too late you have felt the freedom the steps have to offer. So you sit there looking at it for a long time and it is staring back at you. Then someone convinces you it isn't such a big deal so you jump in and they were right it didn't kill you.

You tell someone all the terrible things you have admitted to yourself about yourself and they look at you and they say so what, Step Five. Your not so special nothing on the list that hasn't been on a million other peoples list. The case you have built against yourself has fallen apart and now you can start to let it go.

How do you do this? I am not really sure how it happens but it does. With Step Six you just sit with what you have discovered and decide if you can part with the baggage. Is it possible that everything you thought was fact might have been distorted by your own thinking? It is too much to take it all in at once. Is it possible some of what has happened to you is your own doing? If you can accept this painful truth and want to make a clean sweep you are off to Step Seven.

You decide you really want a new start and you let go. It is humbling to ask for help to admit you don't have the answers. When you do this doors start to open because you are open to a will other than your own. Step Eight is about gathering your thoughts and figuring out if facing those that you have unknowingly or knowingly trampled along the way and would benefit from an apology. More humbling on the way.

You have made it this far and you thought there was nothing more scary than Step Four until you reach Step Nine. OMG! You can't avoid it it is the road to freedom. The response to your amends is not your responsibility. It is getting to the place of being willing to admit what was done that frees you. I think of things that have been done to me and how far even an acknowledgement would go let alone an amends. It is never too late for a sincere apology.

So you have put all out there for everyone to see and your ok with that now. You feel so free without the out dated thoughts of the past, the judgements you made about yourself and others. How do you keep from going back? Step Ten covers that by keeping things current, staying humble every day. Doing the best you can and knowing that everyone else is too. Even though they aren't doing it the way we think they should.

This is where we are going to need help and lots of it. Step 11 is the most important to me because my ego has been in charge up until now and isn't too happy with relinquishing control and will fight to the death to get it back. Literally. I need back up in this area and finding time to really question my thoughts keeps me from slipping back. Lost in the negative banter in my head.

The whole process results in the first of many awakenings Step 12. Some small some life changing. I do my best to pass on the gift of freedom and hope to others. I can't really give it to them but I can show them that it is possible. They have to find their own way. Just as I have found mine.

The Steps have changed me and for that I will forever be grateful. I am constantly running up and down these steps and they have become part of who I am and some days I have start with Step One and begin again.

Disclaimer - My version - Take what you like and leave the rest.

Paths to Recovery-Why Al-Anon Works

I was walking in the woods yesterday and came upon a large turtle on the trail I went back to my car to get my camera and even though it wasn’t very far by the time I got back he was gone. I looked everywhere and wondered how it could move so quickly. It reminded me of how even though it seems like sometimes I am not making progress if I can just trust my higher power and keep plugging along I can look up one day and find myself some place else.

What lead me to recovery and what keeps me in recovery is two different things. The pain of what I thought someone else did to me brought me here and my true desire to find a path that leads me to a lasting peace keeps me here.

Finding relief in the beginning can feel like something permanent and I have found that a lot of people leave the program shortly after that and return later or not at all. The head convinces the heart that a miracle has occurred and that we can do it on our own and don’t need any help. Everything becomes more important than meetings and our time is more valuable and should be used for other things. This is how we got here in the first place thinking that we can do this alone and we have the answers.

I have taken some time off from attending meetings and gotten involved in some other spiritual outlets, but it is not the same. The time away has been good for me to get perspective and to appreciate the simplicity of how the program works. My mind is my best friend and worst enemy and I need the ease and familiarity of the steps to sort out my thoughts and get to a place of clarity.

Like the turtle I am moving forward not at the speed I would like but one that works for me. I sometime have to pull my head in my shell to emerge a wiser person. This is why the program works for us as well as the alcoholic it is simple and puts the chaos in our heads in order. I need that now and will always need that to find peace.

Al-Anon-Spiritual Evolution

Yesterday I met with someone and found myself trying to explain how the Al-Anon program worked for me in the beginning and how it works now. This was harder than I thought is would be but it really made me think about where I was in the beginning and where I am now.

I didn’t recognize the alcoholism in my life until the relationship was over and by the time I reached Al-Anon I had lost the one person I thought I could not live without. At the time I thought it was my husband but now I know it was me. I was just a shell without him and I thought my life was over and I would never feel good again. I didn’t want to live and the grief of losing the only person in my life was beyond devastation. That is what the disease does and not over night. I was messed up before I got into this relationship, don’t get me wrong, but I could accomplish anything I set my mind to but once I found my soul mate I slowly turned my will and my life over to the disease. Cunning, baffling and powerful is what they say I don’t know how such a determined self-reliant person ended up a vacant shell with no support. The alcoholic had his drinkers a lot of them too to support him and a new woman, I expect a lot like me, that could see his potential and was willing to do whatever was needed to support her man ok at the time my man. So that was the beginning I was broken and empty and the 12 steps brought me back to life. I didn’t really work the steps I was too tired for that I just showed up. For my relationship it was too late I was up against something that I could not control, no one can.

I got better quickly in the program. I am willful and I know now that if I hadn’t been so empty and stripped away of all hope I wouldn’t have ever accepted the program. I would have thought I could handle it and never found the peace and even joy that I have now.

Now I can share that experience with others and use the steps to stay on the right track. I look at things differently today and spend my time discovering the person I truly am and not the person that life forced me to be. I still can be a care-taker but the difference is I know when I am doing it and can back off when I am spread too thin. Before it was like breathing I never wanted to disappoint any one and would end up feeling depleted and resentful. If I take care of my own needs I can be there for others in a more authentic way. I can share the gift of the program and the hope that it is possible to change oneself and be happy.