Hi guys,

I went to a meeting last night where the topic was conscious contact with a power greater than ourselves. Specifically, how do we do it, and how do we know we are being heard?  I hadn't really ever verbalized this before, so it was good for me to think about.

What immediately came to mind, as usual, is the story of taking my dog to obedience school when we first got her. She wouldn't walk next to me, no matter how enticing the treat I had. She was always out ahead of me, searching, dragging me down the street. The teacher told me this was because my dog didn't trust I was in charge and didn't think I could take care of her. If I showed her I would take care of her and she learned to trust me, then we could walk together. Well, that's the best description of me before I learned to acknowledge my HP and trust him. I was out there all the time, looking ahead, worrying, trying to figure things out before they happened. It's encouraging to me even now that my dog did learn to trust me. There's hope for me, too.

I didn't like it when people told me to act "as if" I had an HP, even if I didn't have one I could call on for myself yet. "Talk to him anyway,"they said. I thought this acting "as if" thing was its own specially sanctioned form of denial - we were supposed to learn how not to live in denial, but acknowledging something that wasn't around yet was okay?  I didn't get it but I follow directions well if nothing else, so I did this, too. When I would catch myself obsessing I would stop and talk to my HP, real or imagined. And keep doing it until the obsession subsided. I made a practice of talking to my HP on my walks with the dog in the morning whether I was obsessing or not. But it wasn't until a month ago when I landed in the emergency room with kidney trouble that I caught myself praying to my HP, unprompted, for the first time. I slipped into it without even thinking.  Two and a half years it took me to get to that point. I was amazed.

Then, last week, my mom called me and all of a sudden wanted to have the discussion I have been wanting to have for 15 years. The one where she acknowledged that my dad was an alcoholic and that my upbringing was less than that which could be classified as a little house on the prairie episode. I didn't really care about the specifics of this conversation when I envisioned it in my head (and which I had stopped envisioning about a year ago). I just hoped one day it would happen, and that it wouldn't involve the two of us screaming at each other, as we usually did when this topic was inadvertantly broached. Well, we didn't fight. She talked for about 30 minutes.  Then she wanted to know what it was like for me growing up in that house. I didn't particularly feel like talking about it with her but she pushed and I gave her an example, which she promptly told me could not have been as I remembered it. And in that instant instead of feeling complete rage, I instead felt very calm and I felt something reminding me that just because my mom had opened the door a crack didn't mean I had to shove myself in through it. All in due time. So I stopped talking about that, and changed the subject. And that was that. No fight. I realized I can talk about this with people who will understand me, and it doesn't have to be my mother. And I have that little reminder, which I believe was my HP, to thank.

I think this is why we always say "Keep Coming Back." Who knows when all the good stuff is going to happen. I certainly didn't expect any of this, but it's a real gift to me.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for being here!!
Kristen