Well it's 11:40 p.m. I guess it's still officially August 3, so I can share on what the C2C reading on Aug. 3th meant to me. I must start with the beginning sentence, "There was a time in my life when I furiously insisted that alcoholism did not exist in my family." I remember being at a Thanksgiving Dinner where one of my cousin's husband's made the statement that he had never been around a family that didn't have alcohol at their gatherings. I was so proud of my family at that time.

Problem was we had "closet drinkers" and the first that I realized this was when my great aunt talked about her father coming home from a Saturday of getting supplies on his "buckboard" and returning late at night and all the kids had to be extremely quiet because "dad" had a migrane and had gone to bed. She described the scene as one akin to "walking on eggshells" (now where have I heard that euphemism used before?) Now I don't know if he was alcoholic or not, but it sounded slightly suspicious to me.

Now we're down to the third generation of kin. We are all close, my cousins and I. There are many drinkers, some are probably problem drinkers. We have had one cousin die of alcohol poisoning already, he was in his 40's. I can no longer say that "We were normal; everything was fine!" At least for me I have come out of my denial that my family is/was perfect. There are no perfect people in this world. But I was very self-righteous about it at one point in my life and made no bones about it to my alcoholic husband. "See my family doesn't see the need to drink to have fun!" LOL

It was the farthest thing from the truth. The third generation started to let the secret slip out. Open bars at weddings, free flowing alcohol at get together's, nothing like my "sheltered" childhood. I had to wonder where it all came from. It couldn't have come from a "void" there had to be the family disease of alcoholism somewhere for it to be so rampent in this third generation.

I found that "Unlocking the secrets of the past can offer many gifts, but the purpose of this search is to recover from the effects of alcoholism and get on with our lives here and now." So now I had the answer for why I had married so many alcoholics. It had been in my past after all, I just hadn't realized it.

Now that I had "Looked back" and understood a little better from where all this came from, I couldn't remain "staring" at it. Today I have the love and support of my al-anon family and am able to face the reality of my past without placing blame or sitting on my pity pot because of it.

I needed to accept it for what it was and love my family despite the mistakes I felt like they had made. I am not judge or jury for them and neither am I God, so I Let Go and Let God handle the situation and try to be responsible for my side of the street. I can learn much from my past family history, but I must not let past hurts, resentments or disappointments stand in the way of a happier day for myself and my family.

"Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you." Aldous Huxley

Overcome