Her Will for Me and the Power to Carry that out

I am gaining weight again.  I have told myself in the past that when I begin to over eat there is something I am not dealing with.  I always move to immediate emotions being the culprit.   I am seeing now that it is sometimes a little larger but yet simpler then that.  It's a situation I am unwilling to confront.

My Oracle Cards of late have been speaking of avoiding confrontation.  As my mind moved to my little witch that could and her posse of little eager learners, I was side tracked by the real conflict.  An issue that I have been dancing with lightly until now.

Reading over my own posts and reviewing my own history has flashed some insight on the ways in which I handle closure.... or letting go.

 Oh shit..... here we go again!  She is letting the broken boy back in again!  

.... lol.....  No that's not what's happening, but I can see now that if I don't close the door on that option entirely it will be an issue again for me one day soon.  I will continue to cycle the same issues until I move on to something entirely new.  The confrontation that I need to have was brought about by other flashes of insight.

When I lost those two close friends from my change in lifestyle (from yesturdays post) I was very hurt and lacked understanding.  I didn't realize that I could not have my old life and my new life at the same time.  Like a puzzle the pieces just did not fit together.  It was terribly painful for me to let go of two women that kept me sane and happy for many years, I felt like I was betraying them.  Looking back now I see that my life was moving in a direction they 'chose' not to go.  I wish they had chose to follow, sometimes I miss them dearly.  This was flash insight number one.

Taking down the Focus cutout on my vision board was insight number two.  If you missed that post a few back I made mention to a vision board I have in my kitchen.  I put all the things I want to achieve on there as well as motivating sayings and such.  I had a cutout of the Ford Caption 'Focus is here for you because you are here for Focus'.  I originally put it up when I could not pull myself away from Dope.  Every time I looked at it, it reminded me to keep my focus on staying clean.  It worked!   Its been over a year now and I am clean.  However recently when I looked at it, before taking it down, it reminded me of that terrible struggle.  I was always flashing back to the horrors of addiction and my vision board was inducing feelings of shame.

When clients came to me to lose weight the first thing I advised them is to not put the fat picture on the fridge as a reminder of what they don't want.... but to put the skinny picture of what they do want.  It's more motivating that way.  My focus picture was motivating in the beginning but had turned sour in the end, it had become my fat picture.  My new level of living standards had raised, I had achieved it.  The awareness of other things that needed to move out of my life began dawning on me then.

I was unwilling to make that choice though to move on.  Deal with your shit..... lest your shit deals with you.  Man that's my favorite saying these days.

There is a third insight I have had but I think I will share it after sharing what I need to confront.   There has been a white elephant floating on these pages lately.  I have been trying to ignore it and replace my focus in hopes that, that was enough to move forward.  It's not though.  Damn.  I have always tried the cowards way first hoping that less people would be effected and that I would have to deal with less confrontation.

I understand now what it means to stand for something or fall for anything.  I have been dabbling my toes in standing yet have been unwilling to fully stand when it means there may be confrontation from people that oppose my decision.  Not even confrontation but even just causing people to make comment on what I have chosen to do.  I am still that really impressionable girl that falls for anything.  Learning to stand is.... yuck,  .......it's just really hard.

I have decided to Leave Narcotics Anonymous.

There I said it.  My all or nothing attitude it struggling so hard right now.  I was trying to gracefully slip out the back door keeping one foot in.  Just in case I needed it or it needed me.  My beautiful mentor last night said something though that clicked in a large way for me.  How can you walk into your future when you have a foot in the door behind you?

My counter question is then this, why do I even need to close the door, why can't I find my future and keep tethered to the rooms of NA.  This is what I have been processing for a few months now as my energy slips dangerously low.  The Focus slogan flashes in my minds eye.  What once gave me strength is now draining me.  I do not know why that it is.... it just is.  If I still felt good going to meetings this would not be an issue at all for me.  But I don't.

Even with the ill feeling I get after leaving a meeting, I could hear many many people share how much they didn't want to come to a meeting that night but did.  So I keep going.  Over and over I hear the same things drummed into my mind and soon I was feeling like a drone.  I would go tired and I would leave tired.  So I made a decision to begin to gracefully back away and move back into my spiritual circles where my energy was being renewed and I felt good.

Spirit had different plans.  The oracle cards warned of a confrontation.  I am flashed back to gracefully falling out of grace with my two best friends.  It wasn't so graceful the cowards way.  I just started avoiding them.  I didn't understand.  Ignorance is bliss.  They were still angry and threw that energy at me, maybe even angrier.  I am no longer ignorant, nor can I take the cowards route.  Not because I don't want to.... I do, but because Spirit isn't going to let me.

Another member of my home group basically put it on the line for me.  If I was not going to attend every meeting then I must back down completely from my service position.  At first I thought that was pretty harsh.  Being a treasurer of a meeting that had very small sevenths, I wasn't really concerned about it.  However maybe that was wrong on my part and this was the time for me to step out.  See how my first thought was step out not up.   I cannot commit to a meeting every week even if I wanted to.  My work is where I draw my strength from right now and when the snow flies I must too.  It has fallen every weekend for the past four with the exception of the most recent, yet I still had to work to clean up the recent Friday snow fall.

Between work, my self care, my daughters and my new adventures I just do not have time or energy for NA.  I feel bad about this because it is that path that lead me out of my darkness.  It was those meetings that fed me the light when I was still too sick to fill myself.  I am reminded that what I put before my recovery I will lose.  Again my interpretation of this has changed... I now understand my recovery is my self care, my mothering and my job.  My recovery is listening to Gods will for my life and having the courage to follow it.

I have nothing but amazing things to say about NA.  Just as I have nothing bad to say about my two best friends that chose a different path then me.

We all have our paths.   For awhile I believed that my role was to stay in NA forever and give back what I had been given.  In my narrow focus I was only able to see sponsorship within the rooms as a way of giving back.  However now I can see all the ways in which I have brought the twelve steps too people outside the rooms that need them yet don't have any addictions.  I see how great my giving back has been and that's what feels good to me and that's where I want to go with this.  Sometimes I even wonder if My Spirit brought me through the doors of NA for the twelve steps alone.

The third insight I had is from a dear dear broken boy, that I did truly love.  I did fall in love with a man from the rooms.  The insight came in understanding the cycle of recovery and the getting caught in that cycle.  I have always believed that we cycle through things, issues, situations and all matters of such.  When we complete a cycle we are given an opportunity to break out of that cycle and step into something new.  This is often scary and many people choose to stay in the comfortable norm of the old cycle.  This is what this man had experienced for way to many cycles to count.  This is where I am at now.

I have an opportunity to move on to something new.  In order to move into that something new I need to take both, let me say that again... both feet out of the door.  I need both my feet to launch off the ground.  There is no way to keep one foot in your old life and still move into your new one.  Knowing what your life path is and knowing who you are helps in understanding where you are suppose to go.  I really did believe my life would be forever NA, but the more I get to know myself the more I realize that is not the truth of Me.

I will sign over my treasurers books today and let go of the crutches that have held me up these past couple of years.  I will close the door once and for all on the darkness of my past and move into the light of my future.  I have been sitting in this limbo since Samhain when I blogged about ending this chapter in my life.  Again with the trauma of letting go I struggled.  Yet.....Where there was once tremendous fear, now i am filled with a sense of relief and excitement.   Like the college kid leaving home... I am ready to re-start my life.

Moving On.. Walking the Unknown

'Focus is here for you because you are here for Focus'.   That is a cut out I have on my vision board that's been there for well over a year now.  I liked the car's ad because at the time I was having a hard time focusing on getting clean.  So I cut it out and pasted it to my vision board to help me stay focused on eradicating drugs from my life.

At some point along the way the positive energy of that slogan has lost it's power.  As my reality removes itself from my life of drugs I find the slogan has a sour reminder of the darkest days of my current existence.  My focus is changing, yet looking at that cut out day after day my focus is brought back to the desolation of my past.  Positive power now turning negative.  My focus has changed.

As I move away from that phase of my life, I find it difficult to transition.  My all or nothing attitude wants to cut everything and everyone out of my life that was either connected to my using days or part of my recovery from my using phase.  My desire to put that whole part of my life behind me is strong.  Letting go of the past in order to open the door to the future has always been an all or nothing thing for me.  I ask myself....' How has that worked for ya?'

Not very well.  I am just not all that graceful with change and transitions.  I am uncomfortable with the fact that my attention from the past two years is now shifting.  I am challenged with how to move away from that gracefully and with dignity.  I am faced with the fear of slipping back into dope once I give up my crutches.  These concerns have been my new focus for the past few months and quiet honestly they are sucking my energy out.

Learning to make decisions and not sit on the fence has always been a struggle for me. After reading a close friends story yesterday I know I am not alone in that.  I have been sitting on the fence. Hold on to my past year and what has worked, yet jump over the fence and move into new.   New and exciting ways of creating a different reality for myself.  I can't sit on this fence anymore, my ass is getting sore.  I took down the focus sign yesterday as I was deep cleaning my living room and kitchen.  As I rearranged the furniture to better suit the season upon us, I too began to change my inner world to reflect the changes within me.

So here it is......

I will no longer focus on addiction here in this blog.  I no longer want to beat a dead horse.... speaking of dead horse I had a pretty powerful dream about horses the other night that actually awakened me to this realization that I post about now.  Let me share the dream it is relevant......

..... I was going to meet my son at a restaurant.  I had a choice of taking my Shetland pony or my stallion.  I chose automatically the Shetland pony as I always did.   I was comfortable with the pony although it moved way slower.  I was in a rush however and knew that the stallion would be a way better choice... I was afraid of the stallion.    I didn't know him all that well.  After what seemed forever I decided  I would face my fear and take my stallion.  But when I went out to the stable to get him, he was gone.  I was upset.  When I got to the restaurant explained to my son why I was so late.  He informed me that some guy came and got the horse.  My horse was repo'd because I forgot to make the recent payment on him.  I was so upset that I finally got the courage to ride him and cause it took me so long to make that decision he was gone......

Horse means power.  The dream was telling me that I keep choosing this lower power because its comfortable and familiar to me.  My lack of making a decision to move forward and embrace the real power available to me is going to cause me to lose it entirely.  Self sabotage and lack of self care is going to be the culprit that does the dirty deed for me.  I woke up from this dream a few days ago knowing what I need to do.

It's time to move my focus off drugs and move it on to my life  moving forward.  I have an amazing support group around me that do not use drugs or overeat, woman that have learned how to handle and express their feelings and women that know how to live in the real world.  I have two beautiful daughters that keep my focus strong on my role as a mother and therefor my need for intense self care so that I may lead them into brilliant lives.  I also have a job where I am comfortable sharing my feelings and setting boundaries.  Divinity put me in the perfect place to learn and grow.. safely.

Now don't get me wrong, Social acceptability does not equal recovery.  I am not in the mind set that I have arrived and all is good now.  Actually quiet the opposite, I am shitting the bed over my decision to pull back from addiction focus.  I have been taught that anything I put before my recovery I lose.  And for me that meant if I am not going to at least two meetings a week and reading daily literature then I am sure to backslide.  I have come to realize that's not my recovery.  That was my treatment.

My illness is in remission and to keep it there I must not live in constant fear that it will return by keeping constant focus on it.  To keep it in remission I must have the courage to get on the stallion and move forward in my life.  I must practice self care at all times, I must keep learning and growing and I must give back what I have been given.  I used to also believe that giving back was only to other addicts, but my Higher Self has shown me otherwise.  I give back to my girls everyday that I practice taking care of myself and therefor teaching them how to care for themselves.  I give back through this blog.  I give back by helping other women who have experienced trauma in their lives practice the twelve steps... regardless of their addictive hangup.

Learning to walk in my own light and not be seduced by other people in their lights has been a challenge for me.  It's a scary decision to make a Stand for something.... to make a stand for yourself.  I don't handle peoples opposing opinions all that well.  I am still pretty impressionable and easily swayed to popular belief.  My lesson to learn in this I am sure will be just that.... learning to be the oak tree and just bend in the wind and not break.

So for my next post I want to share my daily meditation routine with you.  The benefits and spiritual awakenings I have had as a direct result of the practice is too great not to share.  I might even write a second blog today I am so excited to get on with my life!!   ........ Moving on.

Who starts Fires to feel Joy?

**Repost, so amazing to me that I wrote a similar post last week having completely forgotten I had already been here once.... man I must have the largest fucking onion in the world too peel!**


Funny the things we use to motivate us.  I am struggling a bit to write today, for my weekly Sunday post.  The post that I look forward to the most, part of my Sunday routine and I am a stickler for my routines.  Why am I struggling to write you ask??  Cause I am weened off coffee.  It took an entire week to do soo but it is finally out of my system and i feel fabulous.  Except it was part of this enjoyable blogging routine I had on Sundays.  More then  part of it though was that I feel I need something to spark my heart in order to write.  Before coffee it was weed.  When I quit smoking dope I stopped writing for a long time, until I learned that polishing off a pot of coffee had a similar effect on me.

Beyond just needing coffee to blog, I have come to realize this week during my body cleanse and fast that I need many foods to lift my spirits.  With no exciting foods going into my system this past week I have found my emotions to be completely even.  Calm and peaceful at the beginning of the week.  Towards the end however that same calm and peaceful became flat and boring.  I began to understand how I eat not only to stuff feelings but to actually have them as well.

The girls made me watch the movie Pitch Perfect this week and there is a part in there where the creepy little Asian girl tells someone that she starts fires to feel joy.  As soon as the sentence reached my understanding I thought about all the things I do to feel joy.... food, sex, drugs, boys....  Those of course are the unhealthy ways.  I am learning new and improved ways to feel these same feelings but I was kinda shocked how mellow I am underneath all the outside influences.  How at my center I am pretty solid.

This week has been one challenge after another and I have been able to walk through them pretty unshaken.  Coming out with good realizations, one of which I want to share here today.

As my week progressed I was systematically stripped of all my connection devices.  Connections to the outside world, but not before I was presented with several minor irritations that added up to some pretty massive negative thought provoking situations for me.  In my self centered little world where everything revolves around me, I got caught in stinking thinking about how terrible I am at my job.  By the end of the week I was ready to quit.

I was too busy this week to reach out to my support group, between working my standard ten hour days and having to run errands after work for self care purposes... ei. groceries, school supplies and so on.., I didn't have the time to call anyone about the garbage in my head.  Then as texting became my only option, my cell phone battery decided it was the perfect time to crater and I was left without any time.  For my job, which is imperative nor for connection with my friends.

I stewed hard for two days about this.  Funny that the stewing really was attached to no feelings and that made me feel even more frustrated.  I never wanted to eat or break my fast, it just brought an awareness that was uncomfortable to me.  I am the one that creates the emotional waves in my life, no one else, no outside force does, just me.  Cleansing my insides kept me calm through all this even though my thoughts were ape shit.

Then it dawned on me.   I needed to calm my own mind. I needed to be my own sounding board and talk myself down from the negative thought process I was going through.  I then missed my ex husband.

This is the first time in four years I have allowed myself to miss something of him or our relationship.  I missed the way he used to be able to walk me through the tough times in my life.  Whenever I wanted to give up on something he would be there coaching me through it.  I miss that.  I see now that's what a sponsor does and reaching out to others does, they give us that coaching and boost.

The deeper lesson I learned however was that people are not always going to be available to coach you through something.  I had to talk myself through my negative thoughts Friday.  I had to be the one soothing my negative side with loving words and I had to show myself kindness.  It was extremely uncomfortable.  I felt sadness, a feeling for the first time in the week.  Sadness that I have been the last person out of all my friends and family to show myself love and compassion.

Learning to be single, truly and to take care of myself and all of my own needs means being able to be my own best friend.  To be able to coach myself through tough patches in my life and to gain strength that no matter where I am in life and who is with me that I will be okay.  I am a co-dependent girl who needs something to lean on at all times, people, food, places... whatever.   I need something outside myself to fill me up with a sense of self worth.  This past week brought a deep comfortable awareness that I am learning to find what I need within myself.

I think after four years of running from the original reason why I left my ex I am finally finding what I was seeking then.  Independence.  Mentally, emotionally and physically.  I have been so focused on the physical that I have missed the emotional, mental sides of that separation.  Funny how I need to separate from some

others in order to connect with myself.  Life is about connection.  I guess not all connections are healthy ones.  Maybe that will be my new lesson to walk through.