The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
It's hard when you get an email like this and stay in the real world. Need to see actions not words......and keep telling yourself that CATHY!
Let go let God.......
Yes, you have to take responsibility recover yourself, but is virtually impossible to do it alone. To each their own - we need to ask seek help and ask proactive questions and work hard to find our own path to recovery. Helping keep this place clean and doing extra jobs around here makes me feel good, even though everyone believes you need to be selfish - Step 1 of twelve traditions. I like the second half, where it says recovery depends on unity. By making myself feel good by doing things for others and trying to talk the many people that leave here out the door angry, out of doing it helps me. Service back to others helps me. Less depression and less anxiety through setting goals and expectations for myself and achieving them, physical and mental exercise, and learning more about addiction, coping skills and triggers all play roles in MY method to stay sober. A doctor can possibly scare someone so much they quit their addiction, but ultimately no one can tell you how do to it exactly. No religion or AA or anything structured can. I am a believer, that's it! I know enough to know that I have only an infinitesimal amount of knowledge in the grand scheme of life. Humbly I am asking help to fill in the blanks - analogous to step 10 and continue to take a moral inventory of myself, my knowledge, and be flexible enough to change my ways. Same for everything else I enjoy.
A drug is a drug is a drug. An addict is an addict is an addict! It does not matter what it is...
So yea, it is more of a life changing approach, not a structured approach here. I like that.
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Lord, put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth
Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.
Before my husbands active role in recovery, I repeated over and over to myself ...this is a lie, I am being conned. I kept it simple, that way there was no second guessing.
I have found it critical that thoughts, words, and deeds must be in alignment for me to accept it as truth. I'm glad the if the words and thoughts are there- you'll know soon enough if his actions are supportive and sustainable. Sending prayers for you and your son.
Before my husbands active role in recovery, I repeated over and over to myself ...this is a lie, I am being conned. I kept it simple, that way there was no second guessing.
OMG.....i look back on all the empty promises of both A's.....finally i just quit believing......now?? with folks who are either A's or just dysfunctional, credibility shot, i say the same thing as Paula, here...."its a lie, I am being conned" and I, too keep it simple.....blow it off.....let them SHOW me......I am a SHOW me person.........if actions repeatedly do not match their words, their credibility goes down the drain to me.......i don't entertain the patterns.............KEEP IT SIMPLE as Paula says and NO 2nd GUESSING.......spot on!!
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Live and let live and do it with peace and goodwill to all!!!!
Cathy - no offense but it sounds like garbled rantings of a newly sober person that thinks they know some crap but really it is over complicated garbage. His brain is still unclouding. Sobriety is simple and structured and AA is recovery for alcoholics. He doesn't know squat but that's ok as long as he keeps trying.
And in one of my groups at the rehab I work at I told them staight up they will fail without serious active AA or NA participation. Both those programs can and do teach folks to stay sober That part of his writing is deluded. Rehab is just to get your wits together enough to begin working a rigourous AA or NA program.
..and when my hubbie stopped doing recovery HIS way I knew he was taking steps in the right direction. I hear in your son's letter he believes he can do it his way...hopefully he will surrender, let go and let God. In al anon, we cannot do it our way, either, or the insanity continues. I thought I could do recovery without a sponsor and I could not.
You are absolutely right Cathy, they are just words....thats it, don't let them effect you one way or another, just words, do not obsess about any part of that email....
What are you planning for this weekend, I hope its something for you. in support og
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Don't Worry About Growing Old, It Is A Privilege For Some Of Us.....
I have to be honest here but I'm not liking this thread. It hurts to hear the truth about your son that you think is a very good man and no matter what he does. I have to have the hope he is getting help. You know you can say anything about your A's but when somebody else says something you can become defensive inside. Yes Mark your posts are the facts but I did get offensive....but as they say.... Get mad then get happy. I know where your coming from my friend because you've been there done that.
I'm sitting here with some tears in my eyes thinking how badly I want my son to be happy and live a good life free from alcoholism but the truth is he has a long hard road ahead of him and there is nothing in this world I can do about it. I feel so bad because I love him so much. Will he recover or will he die alone and defeated....this I do not know.
I'm here for me and not my son so I continue my recovery one day at a time and let HP take care of him.
((( hugs )))
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Lord, put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth
Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.
Dang. I'm sorry Cathy. What matters is you here. No him . Regardless...I spoke that way to in early sobriety. All philophical like I had answers to why I was so broke when the answer was live sober, go to AA, take suggestions...but look at the AA site here at MIP and some of my posts from 2008. Not too different. People from AA told me to slow my roll and just keep coming back. I gave feedback like I was talking to him and not you. That was wrong. Sorry :(
My job also has me conditioned to shoo down alcoholics in rehab that talk like they know everything. I gotta watch that. Bah. Mad at self now. I am glad he is latching on to service and has hope
No worries....sometimes I need to be knocked down a few rungs to stay grounded. If not I can become all fuzzy and warm inside not realizing I'm going backwards. It is what it is and I have to remember that.
I just pray someday that peace and happiness will come to him just like what you have now......it's great isn't it? Life is good......
(( hugs )))
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Lord, put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth
Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.
Cathy, your son is a good man and there is nothing wrong in having hope. I am sorry for the tone in my posts. Sometimes I just get too programmy and loose sight of the human heart in the posts. I am a mom of 4 kiddos and I get where you are coming from. I once had a therapist that told me my daughter was manipulative...I got my pantalooms in a bunch, but she was right. She is manipulative, less now that she is older, but when I accepted it was a behavior and not her true self, it was easier to hold boundaries and take care of me AND love her wildly anyway. (((hugs)))
It's his journey and recovery, sometimes it zig zgs, let him have it. He is young, they feel differently every day without the added problem of addiction. Don't take it to heart.
I would just ignore it , with no response. Or just tell him, I'm wishing you Peace and love, something short.
Stay in your own lane and in your own recovery.
Hugs, Bettina
(((Cathy))) We all have a long, hard road ahead of us. Life is meant to be simple but it is also meant to be challenging. Part of his challenge is to learn to live with this disease in a manner that helps him be of help to others with it. Even his e-mail to you is part of that process. Part of your challenge is to learn to live with your disease in a manner that helps you be of help to others with it. So far, you have helped a great number of us and you've only been in recovery for what a year and a half? I can remember you reaching out to me in the earlier part of this year in ways that comforted and helped me keep on and I've been in this program since 1979. Whose to say your son isn't helping others right now? And maybe, in helping somebody else he felt some self-satisfaction/happiness?
My son and Derek Jeter were neighborhood friends for about 4 years. Derek was in and out of our townhouse a lot between the ages of 8 and 12. When my son was in his 20s, a few years after the brain damage, he was in trouble for something that I don't remember. It had to do with drinking. I felt so bad for him because Derek and the Yankees were playing in the World Series. I was imagining that my son felt ashamed because Derek's life was so different than my son's life. I watched the game with my son but chose not to say much about Derek in an effort to shield my son from who knows what? While watching the game, he said, "I helped him." I said, "Who?" "I helped Derek get to where he is. I played ball with him for hours. He always wanted to go pro. He was talented. So all that practice with him helped him get to where he wanted to go."
My son wasn't feeling bad about himself at all. He was proud of the part he had played in Derek's life and he was happy that Derek was where he wanted to be - playing pro ball.
We just don't know all there is to know about our kids, their purposes in life, or ways they've helped others or what they know about themselves that we don't know. Have hope, Cathy, just not in what you want to see happen in your son's life. It may not be at all what we think should happen. It might be something grander.
Your son is talking the talk, applying the tools (keeping busy, helping others). He is taking what he likes and leaving the rest, each day will find him getting different things from recovery something he doesn't like today he may like tomorrowwhatever it takes
Mark - I typed out that exact same response almost word for word - and then I deleted it. Because I'm a mother. And mothers need hope for their children no matter how old - that child will always have those same precious baby eyes to Mama. There is nothing more powerful in life than the love of a child - and if someone were to tell me that Layla will possibly die by her own hand because of complications from this tragedy of being molested - I know I just could not take it. I need hope.
I went onto the survivors page here on MIP - and reading about all the people's shares just crippled with problems was TOO MUCH! I am her mother and I need hope because to think your child could suffer and possibly die suffering is an unimaginable pain that no amount of program could fix. Turning my face to God's and looking for comfort and hope that my God is loving - and her God is loving - and getting my hopes UP that things will be okay is really honestly the only way I survive myself.
Cathy - I can NOT imagine what you're going through because my kids are still little - and they are happy and healthy right now. Even my daughter does not yet grasp the bad thing that has happened to her. I feel sometimes feel like I'm just waiting for the ball to drop - but then I remember that my all loving God would not want me to waste precious time and life that could be spent loving my child happily... on worry and angst. I have nothing to offer anyone - if I give myself and my mind away to her abuser.
You - have nothing to offer - if you waste away in anguish either. Cathy - there IS hope that your son will go on and live a healthy life - and possibly rather quickly. You being in recovery and working to understand his disease will help SO much!!! My mother has been in Alanon, and I can talk to her for hours because we both "get it" - recovery.
It's the most wonderful precious thing about our relationship.
I believe and hope that one day Layla and I will have this intense connection as a result of her abuse - and I am actually so hopeful! I'm looking forward to how this may force her to seek a spiritual solution and recovery some day : ) I believe that my children will be better bonded with me as a result of coming into contact with this disease - because I am able to teach them concepts that are not common knowledge in the 'real world'. There are MANY things to be grateful for in life - and we all know there is plenty of 'SH*t to focus on if we want to as well. I focus on the ones who are making it - who have made it - the family's who DID this and turned out miracles all over the place. I focus on HOPE. JerryF on this board - and many more. I keep my eyes on them - I stick with the winners as they say.
The serenity prayer holds the answer for you because you DO have the power to change your focus and your mind - and in doing so - you WILL have the serenity promised in this program. In the midst of pure chaos like none other - watching your child sick or hurting or potentially hurting -WE- still ALWAYS have a choice to make the most of our NOW - and this NOW is a gift from God. There is a purpose for you on this Earth, and if you are still and quiet your mind to find it - you may find that rising above, and being capable of love through the pain will be not only be inspiring to others, but for your son - and most of all - for you. Have you inspired yourself lately?
All I can say I'm so sorry about Layla going through this. Please Please get her any and all help she might need and not in the short term. She needs to know she was hurt and yell it out, get mad....learn to deal with it with parents and doctors help. Don't shove it under the rug. My son still has a problem even though with all the therapy and doctors telling me back then he was going to be just fine. Even now if he says anything he just start crying and walks away. He also won't seek help for it. I can only pray if now he is seeking help with his alcoholism his hurt about the molestation will come out.
It's hard to explain but I didn't do enough I know this. My young man was abuse in the worst way and I was not there.
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Lord, put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth
Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.
Cathy - thank you for sharing that with me. I (we) are doing everything we can. We are not only doing all that you mentioned above - but we are also moving her (us) far away from HIM! Good bye my beautiful forever farm... I will miss you... but my daughter is so worth it.
We just don't know all there is to know about our kids, their purposes in life, or ways they've helped others or what they know about themselves that we don't know. Have hope, Cathy, just not in what you want to see happen in your son's life. It may not be at all what we think should happen. It might be something grander.
Wow. This is so true! We don't know what is going through their minds. Do they mean it, don't they? It's crazy to try to figure it out. That's what I keep doing...I get my hopes up, then they crash. I'm doing a little better with my youngest...I get glimpses of HIS. And. MINE. Not US. I love him, but when I try to figure it out and attach expectations FEAR becomes my GPS. and that gets me in a stinky place.
Of course you want to hope for your son. You are a loving and caring mom. Hope is great! I am working to hope but take one step back. When he does something positive I purposefully take one step back from it and say "whether this OR some other way, I have HOPE my son will recover!" It helps keep me from the drastic ups and downs.
I love what grateful said.....we don't know..... Thank you for posting Cathy. Thank you all. Great stuff and very timely.
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More of LET GO & LET GOD, Less of GRAB ON & LET ME!
