Mother's Day during the journey...My Mom is a memory today.  She passed away years ago and was part of my recovery journey...She was one of 6 daughters of an alcoholic abusive life and carried the affects with her.  One sister became alcoholic, one left the family to become a Nun, 3 others (including my mother) has emotional/mental problems and one, still alive is still married to her original alcoholic/addict at the age of 93 tho it seems he has stopped drinking and using. The disease manifested itself in a myriad number of ways in that family that is is astounding they are still married much less alive.  I lived with them for a while after military service and mental, emotional, physical and sexual abuse was the norm rather than the rarity.

I got into the family groups after my second alcoholic/addict marriage and I also got into living with my mother again and alcoholic step-father.  I can still hear ferris wheel and merry-go-round music from that relationship and best still I can remember my mother's courage at working with me thru my 4th step process.  She was alive and available, as God directed it, to tell me about the past and about how and why some of the things happened in our family and I came to understand.  I learned from my brothers that it bothered her...being inventoried because I am sure it might have sounded or felt like guilting during the hour or so we spent talking.  I had to know how and where I came from in order to understand what I had done from it and she didn't like the memories and still we went thru it and I came to understand and grew in the program.  I was grateful without blame or dishonest justification.   One of the things I grew up in the constant parental fighting that continued for years in that second marriage and would continue until she was in the near death part of her life.  HP and I did a "give back" one night when she was laying in bed with a broken hip and my Step-Dad was in the kitchen trying to escape her wrath and both yelling and screaming at each other.  I decided to exit stage left and as I grabbed the door knob I found myself saying what has become a usual prayer for me to my HP..."If there is anything here you see that I can do, let me know now...or I'm out of here."   Touche'  HP responded, "Well you are a counselor aren't you?" and yes I was at that time a broad Behavioral Health Therapist...HP was right and my parents were no longer Mom and Dad but clients (detachment) Helen and Jim and I gave them an hour with condition that they listen only and not respond to what they were hearing...they could do that later if they wanted and then I left.  Then next night as I was leaving her hospital room my Step Father called me back into the room and told me that they were deeply grateful because they had never heard from anyone what they had heard from this therapist and it was all true and they would not forget it.  "You are a therapist aren't you?"  HP directs and leaves the "do" decisions up to us.  Isn't that how it works? we still get the choices?  The next time my present wife and I were visiting my mother in the care facility she was now being cared for in.  Her parkinsons had progressed along with that emotion that has a deep taproot in alcoholism...fear.  We spent time with her and when ready to leave she went into panic and agitation.  She could not talk because of the parkinsons; not verbally and her body language said it all...Please don't leave!!  My wife looked at me and asked "What can we do?" and we went into the hallway to talk.  I told my wife that my Mom had something to give us and we had something to give her and we should participate in the giving.  Mom had lessons about dieing that we had to witness and learn and we had lessons in peace of mind and serenity that she could use.  We went back into the room and held her hands and spoke softly in slogans to her..."it's okay to let go and let God".  "Turn it over"  "Fear is natural and the opposite of it is Faith."  We had a meeting and she shared with us what it was like to go thru the dieing process with fear and then with faith...she calmed down and let us go.  I remembered the promise my sponsor told me in early recovery, "You will never know if this program works unless you give it away."   He was right and I keep coming back. 

I spent years trying to successfully escape the reach of my mother.  I spent time and money trying to appease and patronize and console her because she grieved the lost of my father, her first husband.  I use to automatically say "I love you" Mom and give her cards and trinkets to appease her and then I learned I had never loved her...Love cannot exist where fear is.  I only came to love her when the fear was gone.  I don't think that my mother ever had a "Happy" Mother's Day because she lived within her losses; first a husband and then her "angel" my sister at 20 yoa.  I do know that she had two "better" days both of them because of Al-Anon.

I love to see Mothers laugh and be Happy, soooo you gals go ahead and do that.  Just decide for it because "Happiness is an inside job."   (((((love you all)))))