A Journey through the 12 Steps

When a newcomer walks into a meeting there are a set of guidelines we collectively give them that will aid them in their success.  This is my rendition of that advice......

Meetings are the most important element of a twelve step support program.  Salvation Army put out years ago the 90 meetings in 90 days concept for which they have now rescinded.  The idea was the more meetings you attend the easier it is for you to integrate into the fellowship and build a strong support group.  The downfall to the 90/90 rule was that it fed an addicts all or nothing mentality.  When the addict failed at attending that many meetings they allowed that to be a reservation to their entire recovery and they gave up, thinking if they couldn't even do the first suggestion then they would never stay clean.

Building a support group then for me is the first suggestion I give the newcomer.  Move outside your comfort zone and begin building friendships with people in the rooms.  Get a sponsor as soon as possible because this person will help introduce you to people within the fellowship.  A sponsor clears a path for you .  Reaching out to people is a scary thing, I don't advise waiting until your destitute to do it.  Reach out when you are feeling good and confident.  Build relationships when your mind is clear.  Then when you feel shitty and want to use you already have a support group that has gotten to know you and can see that your starting a cycle of defeat and can help you out of it before it consumes you.

When I look around at my friends that are healthy I see that they all have strong family relationships or spiritual fellowships or a close network of friends that know them inside and out.  This is imperative to a healthy mind, having people see things we cannot.  Having friends that love us enough to tell us when we are walking into a trap and when we are being bitches.  I used to side step this by sharing only small parts of myself with each set of friends I had.  My coworkers seen one side of me, my family a different side and my girlfriends yet another side of me.  No one person actually got the full view of me, until I came into NA.  Now I see the importance of self honesty and full honesty with those people that I love and trust.

Having several fellowships is that same concept of only showing parts of yourself.  To move entirely from one fellowship  to the next after one outgrows a fellowship is okay.  As long as that person leaves in a comfortable fashion for all involved and takes the time to tie up loose ends and leaves on a happy note.  I am all for growth and moving along on ones path as I will do one day as well.  However to attend three separate churches but not fully integrate into any of them is still living in the half truths of yourself, your still hiding pieces of yourself.  Secrets keep us sick.  That is probably the largest lesson I have learned coming through the 12 steps and connecting deeply with a fellowship. Becoming Vulnerable.

After establishing a support group.  The steps begin.  Meetings promise the obsession to use will be lifted if you attend regularly.  In my words it means that if you attend meetings and integrate into the fellowship you will stay clean.  You wont recover however until you begin the work of the steps.  The steps are like  taking the doctors orders and following them.  Most of us ignore the doctor.  Most of us are comfortable in our sickness.

I am not.

Step One:  We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.

This step is the hardest and  most rewarding.  It is the step that teaches us to let go.  When something doesn't work out for a healthy person they let go and try something new, change directions.  To an obsessive/compulsive mind we keep on pushing and kicking the door until we break it down and barge in.  Most time life greets us on the other side of that door negatively.  Our lives have become unmanageable.  To admit we are bulls in china shops is the hardest thing for us know-it-alls to do.

Step Two:  We came to believe a power greater then  ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I have two takes on this step.  The first one was taught to me in a Re-hab.  We Came.    Just keep coming back, is something we tell newcomers.  Keep coming back.  We Came.  Then We Come To.  Slowly we begin to wake up.  90/90 meetings helped this awakening process.  When we use we numb out not only our feelings, but our minds fall asleep to the truths of who we are and what we are capable of achieving in this lifetime.  Coming to, is to awaken to life's beauty.  For some people this takes years of coming to meetings, for others mere days.   After awakening then we begin to  believe.  In what you believe is irrelevant.  My Ex husband during a guided meditation I was testing out on him seen his higher power as Silent Bob, a movie actor. I didn't care I was just excited that he seen someone to guide him through it.

Working the steps will help awaken our beliefs.  Its not normally until the tenth step that we begin to truly believe in something.  I feel sad for the people that stop halfway through thinking that its not working for them.

Step Three:  We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understand him.

This step also has two meanings for me.  The first one being the simple act of making a decision.   In my active addiction I was either avoiding or running, those were the only decisions I was making.  To make a decision now in my life takes on a whole new process that I never practiced before.  Weighing out the pro's and cons, looking ahead at the consequences of the decisions are new for this impulsive addict.  Step three teaches us how to play the tape entirely to the end.

It also teaches me to pray before I make any decisions.  To seek my inner knowing and to open to my own intuition in situations.  To not always listen to what others are saying or follow what others are doing.  It took me many trials and errors to finally hear my intuition and still I make mistakes, but that is the process of step 1,2,3.  I will always be cycling through those steps with every dark turn I take in life, and I am not ignorant enough to think I wont take a few more wrong turns in my life.  The first three steps are my life long tools to get me back on track

Step Four:  We made a searching a  Fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

As a society we are so focused on other people that we are unable and unwilling to look deep into our own eyes.  We are unable to love ourselves for the incredible beauty that we are.  We will hide behind Internet addictions, food addiction, drug and sex addictions, alcohol and sugar addictions, work addictions.... you name it there is a distraction from ourselves.  Step four begins to slowly peel away those outward focus's and begins to redirect your gaze at yourself.  For some people this is so painful that they relapse or get nothing out of the fourth step.  I had to work this step three times before I got entirely through it and got something out of it.  Now its my most favorite step to work.  I can see now that I am not the devil incarnate as I once really believed.  Okay maybe not the devil himself, but surely his sexy ass wife!!

Step Five:   We admitted to God, to Ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

I think this is the most miss read step of all of them and being the unstable energy of a five I can see why.  The key word there is 'Nature'.  We are not setting ourselves up to air every piece of dirty laundry to our sponsors, we are looking at the common threads of our misdoings and revealing the nature of those wrongs.  When we voice anything out loud it either gives power or removes power.  In step five we remove the power of our own self deflating thoughts by putting them on the table for another to look at.  Once we understand the nature of why we did those things we can forgive ourselves.  Forgive ourselves is the whole key to step five... To have a sponsor that digs for the nature is to have a really good sponsor.

Step Six:  We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character

This step starts to  peel away all the shitty behaviours we have cultivated in ourselves from years of unguidance.  I am grateful I had someone walk through this step with me that countered my shitty defects of character with the positive character traits I already embodied.  To look deeply at how these behaviours hurt or helped ourselves and others is the first step in changing who we were then into who we are now.  This step for me was truly the hardest of them all.  When your defects becoming glaringly obvious its hard not to want to crawl out of your own skin.

Step Seven:  We humbly asked God to Remove our shortcomings.

Moving into this step quickly after six was the only thing that saved my ass because I learned how to cultivate patience with myself and to seek out hope from something greater then me.  This is where my faith in a power greater then myself began to grow.  It wasn't three of five, it was now.  At the end of the day when I was left alone with me and didnt like who I was... that pain of staying the same became greater then the pain of change.... I was surely willing to change.  I began to pray.  Really Pray.

Step Eight:  We made a list of all the people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to all of them.

Ah relief.  This is where my must do personality trait could finally begin to work on fixing all the shitty things that the steps dug up for me.  This is where I could begin to take an active part in cleaning up my side of the street.  By this step I was so eager to rush out into the world and explain to everyone why I did what I did back then.  Making this list began that process of doing it right.  I felt tremendous relief and a release of the pain that had been building from step four till now.

Step Nine:  We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others

Slow down little pony, was the message my sponsor had to repeat to me numerously.  I began to learn that making amends to certain people would actually make the situation they were in worse for them as they were in a place of beating themselves up already.  To say sorry for something you did to them, was in their mind to rub salt in their wounds.  This is where my prayers began to manifest.  As I began to project the amends I wanted to make old friends would call me out of the blue, family would approach me with an amends of their own out of nowhere.  And I am talking amends from people like my father for childhood hurts.... out of no where.  It was actually eerie to me.. even to me who believes in the power of that.

Step Ten:  We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

By far my favorite step for recovery.  I think as soon as you start step one your sponsor should teach you step ten.  Every night before falling asleep think of ten things your grateful for.  Then run through your day to see what else transpired.  This will keep the cycle of obsession from ever getting to relapse point and your mind in a place of humility.

Step Eleven:  We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood her, praying only for her will for us and the power to carry that out.

This step is one I have been working for well over ten years and will still be learning and growing from for the rest of my life.  The layers here are truly deep and can be peeled back for a lifetime.  It was at this step that I was so amazed at my higher powers workings in my life that I was eager for a deeper connection.  Even all my meditation from years before had never connected me on the level these steps have.  To me our higher power is our inner power.  If we are unwilling to do a fourth step and look into ourselves and then a six step to peel away the darkness that covers our inner power, we will never connect to that higher power.  This is where all other spiritual programs in my life have lacked true authenticity.  The steps guided me through falling in love with myself..... the exact image of the Goddess.  The God in all her glory and dark nature.

Step Twelve:  Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts and to practice these principals in all our affairs.

Today I see a much broader picture of this step then the one limited to the rooms.  If an addict has already found her way to the rooms she is walking in the right direction.  I am more interested in the addicts in the world that are still lost and trying to find their way.  My work place has connected me with three separate addicts two whom I have had the privilege of being the light for.  That is what carrying the message means to me and practicing this in all of our affairs.  Once your light is turned on, you will want to share that with the world.  There are many many paths to igniting your inner light, the twelve steps is but one way as is religion but another way and there are a thousand more ways out there.  We all have the choice to embrace our lights.... we ALL have inner light.

Working the Steps, attending meetings regularly and setting up a strong honest support group are the three things that I did without fail this time around.  I know without a doubt that I am still clean and clean the longest I have ever been only because of the marriage of these three aspects of the program.  The twelve steps have given me what I have been seeking for well over ten years.  I am beyond gratitude.

Step 1, 2,3,11... Repeat!

Bide the Law ye must

In perfect Love and Perfect Trust

Eight words this Rede fulfill

'An ye harm none, do as ye will'

Ever mind the rule of three

What ye send out comes back to thee

Follow this with mind and heart

And merry meet and merry part.

I have known  of this rede for many years.  I have claimed to live by it for most of those years.  Just recently however I became aware I lacked true understanding of the meaning behind the words.

My lesson to learn recently has been about the impact of my decisions on the people and thus the world around me.  Coming from that place of my selfish inner six year old, I was unable to see beyond my nose.  I acted in a way always that suited my needs of the moment and didn't even consider that there may be people outside my realm that would be effected by meeting my needs, wants... needs.

Dont get me wrong I am not a fool, my momma taught me to be concerned for others.  It's not like I didnt know I could hurt others... duh, I understood that.  What I couldnt see is how a selfish choice that seemingly only effected me and another person actually started a domino effect in my little realm.

Always weighing the consequence of my decisions I tend to make sure the people directly involved with my choices are brought into the realm of my understanding.  What I am learning today is that my realm is very small.  In the selfish nature of my addict I tend to want what I want right now and will tunnel vision to get it. 

The part of the above Rede that I claim to live by that has me sitting in some of my shit is...'An ye harm none, do as ye will'.   In the past this fed my selfish nature as I was unable to see how I hurt people with my actions.  Today it is becoming blaringly clear how my actions have far reaching ripple effects and that harm none has a wider span now.   This is where humility enters.  To know that each action I take will directly and indirectly create a ripple in the pond of my reality and those realities of the people in the pond with me.

Where I once seen only those directly infront of me, I can now see those to each side, and behind me.  I never seen her coming at me but now I can feel every movement behind me because of that missed awareness before.  I am highly attuned to all actions of those around me now and this brings me out of my tunnel vision back into the realm of community.  Obsession creates the tunnel, choices made in obsession bring harm.

'What ye send out comes back to thee'  claims the law of three.  I do not have the option any more to  send out negative energy.  It is like a boom-a-rang, super fast and fucking painful when it smacks me in the face.  So why would I even want to go to these harmful negative places in the first place?  That is the question that mildly haunts me.  I say mildly because I am begining to understand that I won't always receive all the answers to my life questions.  Cunning, baffling and powerful is  the disease of obsession and compulsion. 

I am  back in the light today and walking with the Goddess energy of Quan Yin and feel tremendous gratitude for my life and my higher powers.  I can see clearly now where I went off course recently and all the warnings begining with whispers escalating to screams from my gaurdian spirits.  The next time my intuition will be recognized quicker and I will hopefully steer clear of the impending danger.

All this criptic talk and spiritual energy comes from the place of inner sactuary that I am sitting in right now.  Letting go of  this past hurt has been a peeling of the layers, physical... followed by mental and today in the spiritual.   I think for me I always stop or get stuck in the mental and stay repeating the cycles.  As I sit in deep meditation as the 11 step teaches us I am gifted with deeper understandings to let go entirely my hurts and hang ups of the now passing process in my life.

Merry meet and merry part, all beings and situations that bring me to higher levels of awareness and consiousness.  This is what the program of the twelve steps has gifted me... simple steps to walk up to become a better person.  A less selfish and more community minded person. 

An odd ramble for today....  I blame it on a 60 hour work week and way way too much sugar in my system.

Love to you all, until next week stay clean.

The Moon is Ripe for YOU.

Full Moon in Aquarius today, Moon of reasoning for the medicine people.   The ascension or spiritual awakening process for me includes my hearts passions, and that is for everything metaphysical.  So days like today are very important to me and my little ritualistic, cosmically connected soul.  Aqaurius says its time to step into your creative personality and let  go of the fear of being weird.  Moon of Breaking Masks which we just came out of on the medicine wheel speaks of shattering the illusions of the mask you hide behind.  Combined both are yelling at us to step into our true passions of who we really are.

So who am I?

My story goes way deeper then addiction, much further back.  As does all peoples that struggle with an addiction of any kind, drugs, smoking ciggerettes, sugar, sex, internet...... the list is as large as the population that is inflicted by addiction.  To me addiction is the way we create illusion or masks to hide behind.  To say I am an addict is to hide the true individualistic me, its to morph into a group of support and safety and be able to cocoon away from the world.   Truly a wonderful expereince to an infantile being that needs nurturing to be able to grow into the soul potential its destined for. 

This is the gratitude I share for the rooms of NA and the twelve step program.  As I released all my addictions one by one, food first then smoking shedded away I was only left with sex and drug addiction.  For food and smoking I had a weightloss team supporting me, Only seems fitting now that I also need a team supporting me for the sex and drugs.  This teaches me how interconnected we all are and how we cannot do any growth process alone.  It takes a village to raise one child, and we are all children of this galaxy. 

The reason why I point this out first when trying to discover who I am is because I tend to get trapped in the phases of my growth.  Identifying myself as an addict limits who I am and sticks me in a place  that I could potentially sit forever.  I never stood up and said I was a fat girl as I was losing wieght.  I was actually taught to not see myself as fat at all, only to imagine who I was inspiring to be.   In drug and sex addiction it seems only fitting to do the same thing.  I have been seeing myself as a lowlife drug addict instead of seeing myself as the flowering human spirit that I am.

So what does that flowering human spirit look like?

Before the weight loss and the shedding of my addictions I began to embark on a spiritual journey that ignited a passion within me that I never knew exsisted.  I fell in love with the Goddess.  I began  to study astrology.  I played with the energies of spirits to create charms and talismens.  I studied religions and began to see a much larger picture of life then just the one created in my own closed mind.  I dived deeper into my study of tarot cards and increased my ability to read accurately.  I became a reiki practitioner.  I embraced mediation as a part of my daily life and created a solid relationship with my higher powers.

For 6 years my life went along bumpless and blissful in this state of passionate discovery.   During those years I worked at creating internally the life I wanted externally.  Soon my manifestations would come to pass and I would land in detox broken and completely shocked.  How did I get there??

Looking back now and through watching people go through the  same expereinces as me I can see what happens when we ascend.   As you move into greater consciousness or become more awake, things of lower energy must be stripped away from your life.  Addiction of any kind is of a lower energy, its what keeps you asleep or numb the the realities of who you are... or more positively put, the passions of your heart.  Soon I was losing  weight because food was keeping me sick.  Starches keep me in a slumber of depression.   Once they were removed my life got even more passionate.  It was easy to throw away the pack of smokes after that.  I was fit and feeling fabulous smokes brought me down.

It was at this part of my life that the question of, how good can it get was presented to me.  I was on top  of the world.  The body I had always dreamed for, the job beyond my wildest expectaions and the perfect nuclear family. Life was soo good..  I kept up my meditation and all my spiritual practices until things started to feel off.   The energy shifted and I began a sideways slide.

Soon I found myself drinking one to many glasses of wine each night.  Which quickly lead to a joint here and there, which progressed scary rapidly into cheating on my husband.  Before I even knew what happened I was wired to crystal meth and my family and job nowhere to be seen.  Sitting in detox new years eve I had plenty of time to reflect on my life and how I had gotten there.  One of my gifts is that I am able to see the larger picture of a situation in the moment and accept the lesson presented.   This situation was no different.

I got to big for my ego and lost my humility.  Complacency is another word for it. That was part of it.  This phase of my life the lessons were layered.  I lost my job because of ego.  The drug addiction showed up at that time to be shed away as it had been hiding from my teen years.  This is where the larger picture and examining ones past to understand the present and change the future resided for me.   My family break up was a tougher pill to swallow but the truth of that matter is my husband and I had just grown apart and were no longer energetically compatible.  17 years is hard to peel away from so explosions tend to hurt.  My whole life was stripped away in one clean swoop over a period of three months.

The one beautiful thing about losing everything all at once is that you can start from scratch to recreate yourself into whomever you choose.

Today looking at where I have been gives me clues to who I am now and who I am aspiring to be.  Moon in aquaruis is all about embracing those secrets goals and bringing them into the light.  Medicine moon of reasoning is about figuring out the hows and why's.  So with this cosmic energy readily available to me.  I beg to question.... who am I?

I am not an addict.  It was a  phase of my life that brought me to my knee's.  I am not stupid enough to think that it wont again if I dont actively work a program of recovery.  Recovery for me is a spiritual program of connection to my higher power.  Which I now know i have been working daily for well over ten years.  So through the weight loss phase of addiction removal and now through the drug addiction phase of removal I will continue a spiritual program always.

So if I am not an addict then where do I go from here?   I keep getting tugged back to my passions for the metaphysical.  I am a Witch.   I love working with energy, I like creating magic, I love the study of the stars.  I connect easily with my spirit guides and ancestors.    I am an Earth Mother.  I love being  outside with nature.  I can communicate with the animals and understand their wisdom.  I am grounded and can see the paths through the forest. I guide and teach the children.  I am a Lover.  I love people, all people, even the ones that hurt me.  I want to experience all there is to with each person I meet.  I want to fall in love with every man and woman I know.  I put most of my attention into relationships as this is the only thing we take to the other side with us. 

Tonight I will fall back into the behavior of moon rituals to invoke the power of my being.  To embrace the beauty of who I am at the core and will send that energy out to everyone I know.  Encouraging each of you to dig inside yourself and find out who you truly aspire to be, who you already are and all the beauty you have been in your past.  The moon is ripe for your expression to shine and hold!! 

A Tale of Living Dirty

I need a new computer, this one just is not great for blogging.  It overheats and then crashes losing me all my hard earned sentences.  I have been on a spending spree these past few weeks maybe I should be planning my expenditures and getting myself a new computer instead of the Egyptian cotton sheets and sun stone ring.  Treating myself is not something I am used to and maybe am getting a bit carried away with it.  Food for thought I guess.

Rambling even before I begin, good sign or not?   I have been off on a grande adventure these past few weeks.  I have been slinking in the shadows instead of standing in my Power and Light.  Processing my lesson and licking my wounds in private before stepping into this page to share them with you.  It's time to share the full story and move on.

Here is my side of the current tale....

Long ago I had a wonderful sponsor, a new budding friendship and a beautiful ending to an obsessive romance.  Long ago in my story is about three months back.   Three months later I have a new sponsor, a destroyed friendship and a new obsessive romance came and gone.  How quickly time travels in the shadowy depths of the land of fire.

Let me begin with the budding friendship as this  is where the bulk of my pain resides.   She is a beautiful woman who I thought struggled with the same affliction I do.... a weakness for the bad boy (Assuming makes an ass out of me and u... just saying). I invite my new friend for coffee to gain insight and direction over letting go of the current manifestation of my obsession, bad boy number one, previously mentioned several times at the beginning of this blog.  I sought out this friends advice and support.  I was desperate for change and freedom from how my disease was playing out in my life.  I felt she held the answers for me, she too was getting over a bad boy.

After an amazing deep conversation where I got a multitude of inspiration and empowerment I felt the need to gift her in return of all she had given me.  As a reiki practitioner I offered her a treatment which she eagerly accepted.  I was happy.  I offered her my advice and gave back what she had given to me... empowerment.   It ended all so wonderfully on my end.

 I was about to learn that it did not end the same way for her.

Having taken a new job the week after our life changing coffee date I was working 12 hour days and falling into bed shortly after  getting home only to get up and head back to work the next day.  I barely had time to eat and shower let alone keep up  on my friendships.  I felided a few texts from this new friend about my motivation for the coffee date.  Confused I just left them alone, not really knowing how to answer them.  Had I known how magical this friend was and the prophesy hidden in the texts I may have acted much  differently in the next paragraph.

After a couple months of this crazy work schedule, I began to feel the effects of a non existent recovery program.  As a bad boy began to creep into my subconscious, I started to skate on some thin ice.  Backing into my old behaviors. Soon the bad boy of my current fantasy was trying to contact me and I found myself being snarred in a net of excitement and attraction.   Still holding on to a program I contacted my sponsor as I was taught to do when my thinking turned stinking.

This was the turning point of holding on to a program and throwing one entirely out the window.  This is where my story dives into the pits of Hades.

My sponsor came across very clear and matter of fact with her advice after I explained my thoughts about responding to this cute guys request for my attention.   'Contact him and you will kill him,  He will go out and use again.  I know of this guy from .......(budding friendship in the first paragraph of tale).  Stay away from him'.  Said my wonderful sponsor.  Pretty clear really, stay away or you will kill him, got it...... ?  Nope, All I heard however was, 'He is a bad boy and no one wants you near him, perfect.'  When I hung up the phone from sponsor I texted Bad boy number two for me.

The bad boy that just broke the heart of my new found friend.

Where in that moment did logic and reason escape me all together?  When did my addict rise up and completely take over and  say Fuck you all, I will do what I want and not care who the fuck gets hurt.  Where did all my hard worked compassion and considering others go?  How did I slip so quickly back into the dark?

The friends with benifits turned briefly romance ending in just friends, bad boy and I were off and running in a direction far from recovery.  Romancing using, bashing the program and shirking our responsabilities.  Or on my end that was what I was doing.  I just wanted to have fun and my program was saying I couldn't so I pushed far from it.   I can see that only today as I step out of the darkness of where I was and back into the light of where I am now.  However in that moment of darkness I was having fun and I was enjoying his company.  I don't regret that part of my story.  Live and learn... I gained excitment and pain, lessons learned.  Lessons to share for another time.

... My new budding friendship in that moment of fuck you decision was destroyed.  My relationship with my sponsor in that same moment was severed forever after.  Those are the regrets I have, those are the true amends needing to be made.  I hurt both parties and for that I am working a step four and nine to clear the guilt and shame of always opting for the guy at the scarifice of the platonic relationship.  My pattern to clear.

Now before all was lost I did try to contact my sponsor, who for whatever reason was unavailable to me.  I turned to my support group instead.  Through the bad boy romance, I did stay tethered to my support group and therefor the program even if I was not actively working it the way I had in the past.  It is this support that I am entirely grateful for today as I am still clean while all other parties have already relapsed or are in process of now.  My heart breaks at my part in those relapses.  My sponsors prophesy was right.  I am humbled beyond anything I have ever felt before.

While I was trying to reach out to my sponsor my now destroyed friendship was also reaching out to her and connecting.  I could see the frienship building between them and I felt abondoned and a bit ganged up upon.  I guessed it is the consequences of my actions and I accepted that as such.  That is until the facebook confrontations turned into verbal attacks in front of my 12 year old daughter turned into physical attacks at the meeting of my 9 month tag.  This coming from a woman with 9 years in recovery, a slip at the 5 year mark and clean since.   No longer was my compassion with my consequences.  This went to far.

Where was my sponsor through these attacks?  Standing to destroyed friendships side and via social media firing me as her sponsee.  My heart was utterly broken.  My addict whispered how I deserved it.  She told me how I brought this on myself.  I would have slipped very quickly into shame had I not had an amazing support group walking along side me the entire journey.

It was through the eye's of my friends that I could see how I never once reacted poorly to destroyed friendships attacks, only trying to make amends in the emails and then severing all contact when I realized she was not ready to recieve any amends, even the physical attack provoked nothing of the like return in me.  It was through my friends that I could see how the bad boy was playing a very dirty game of turning two friends into deep enemies, inflicting his pain for the gain of power.  But it was my own ears and eyes that seen my sponsor come out in my destroyed friend.  It was hearing my sponsors words verbally attack me that really brought awareness home.

I was humiliated in front of two newcomers and for that today I am totally humbled.  My fuck you all action had some very serious consequences.  My desire to hurt and be hurt has been exausted.  I have been shown in my humilation that I am no longer that person with shadowy morals.  I can no longer act from that place of dirty and live clean.  Sometimes my higher power has to show me the hard way because thats the path I choose to learn the lesson.  I realize now that I always have a choice.

I have severed all ties to bad boy.  I have stepped away from destroyed friendship.  I have set boundaries for myself with my old sponsor to include what is nessesary for home group interaction.  I am hurt and this will overshadow the two female relationships until I can work through my feelings in this area.  My higher power will work that out for me.  I am back nose deep in step four working the relationship section and am back to regular meeting attendence.  My program has again become the most important thing in my life.  Why?  Because I AM the most important thing in my life.

Avoiding to Self Protection

Its been awhile, since I have been here.  There are a couple of reasons....

...... the last time I posted my computer crashed at the very end of what I thought was a fabulous post.  I lost everything! Which normally doesn't happen because this program saves as I go.  But for whatever reason all was lost and I just didn't have it in me to rewrite it all.   That is reason number one.

Reason number two is Avoidance.  As I was just opening the blogger window I was contemplating what to write about today, my first thought was tolerance as it is something I am learning on a daily basis lately.  However the real reason I have not been here is because I have been avoiding.

What I should process through here is if I am indeed avoiding and if I am, what exactly it is that I am avoiding.   So lets start there......

I have always known that I am a runner.  When things get tough  I hit the pavement at mach10, never looking back.  I have walked away from great jobs because I couldn't handle the situation.  I have lost friendships because of unresolved conflict.   Many Many broken hearts have ensued from my lack of facing issues within romantic relationships.  Ultimate avoidance at any cost has always been my coping strategy.

So why do I do this?  What am I so afraid of?    Am I just a big fat coward??

I live under the assumption that I am a lover not a fighter and choose peace over chaos.  Which to  some  extent I do stand by.  I will not  engage in a physical battle with anyone, it's not in my nature.  I will not let someone push me around or  talk down to me, I have a growing  respect for myself.  Do I always run from upholding that respect?  No, just recently I had a  sit down with my bosses for this exact reason.   So maybe I am learning to not run away all the time.

I can see now  from that last paragraph that I am in the process of learning not to avoid. That was a scary situation to sit down with my bosses and not just quit my job and run away like normal.  So growth is occurring.    Maybe what I am processing through right now then is learning what needs to settle on its own and what I need to take care of for myself, for myself.   Avoidance or stepping back till the air clears and calmer minds prevail?  Avoidance or silence and inner connection to understand my part in the situation?

I am learning that I cannot clean up other peoples shit.  I cannot hold the hand of another through their shit, I cannot lead another out of their shit either.   Assuming responsibility for other people has been my problem in the past and contributed to my need to bolt and avoid when things don't work out the way I want them too.

I can only be responsible for my part in things.  To avoid is  to ignore that.  I make amends when I have hurt someone or did something that goes against my own morals.  In this particular current situation in my life of a love triangulation strangulation, I made amends to the person I hurt.  Its not  my responsibility to force them to accept the amends.  And sadly in this case the amends were not accepted and the emotional energy on their part has escalated to physical attacks directed towards  me.  Where does avoiding end and self protection begin?

Cleaning up  ones side of the street is sometimes painful business.  Making amends for me goes deeper then  just words, its in my actions and continued path.  I have matched my actions to my words which has pushed me into a place of heart break and loss.  Not a bad thing as I brought it on myself from the beginning but to ignore the heartbreak is to ignore my real feelings and that is the bottling avoidance I have lived under my whole life.  So really am I avoiding the situation if I am taking action by not contacting and staying involved?  Outwardly it looks like no action is happening but inwardly I am fighting an incredible battle between my will and morals.

So if I am doing my part in this situation to correct my inner demons, how do I deal with the little physical demons that yank my hair out from the back of my head when I am not looking?  Jesus says to turn  the other cheek and let her slap both of them... you can say I did that.   However now I find myself not wanting to face that conflict again so choosing to stay insulated in the safety of my home and circle of friends.  It reminds  me of isolating and I  wonder if the fear will cause my world to shrink again until  I am back at the using game.   Rounding the finish line of my one year cake, I am too close to a major milestone to allow that to happen.   So a new level of unavoidance must be conquered I think.  I will attend my own beloved home group, feeling the fear of confrontation and doing it any ways.  I will continue on my own path of recovery and know that between me and my higher power I am walking in the light and doing the right thing.

Coming up against people that actively live and love their character defects is something I am going to have to learn to accept and tolerate along my journey... learning to have love and compassion for these people is the ultimate lesson I will learn...... once I get through avoidance.

Nine Months Clean!!

Nine Months Clean.   Wow.  Honestly I never believed I would get here.  I took my first clean 6 month tag this time around and I remember how great it felt to be clean for six months.  How do I feel now?

Surreal.

The excitement is not there like it was 3 months ago, it has been replaced with a more subtle sense of rounding the finish line.  I feel more serious and focussed on my recovery now.  I truly did not ever believe I would make it to a year clean.  With all my relapses and my need to learn things the long, hard, painful way, I just didn't see a medallion in my future.

Today I am allowing my self to explore the possibility that I may see a birthday cake at my home group after all.  I get a momentary jolt of excitement at the thought before I am made very aware of the work that still needs to go into my recovery before getting there.

I am still allowing my past to haunt my present and threaten my future.  Working through a second set of steps more focussed this time on the codependency side of my addiction, I am made painfully aware of how I still cycle the pattern of abuse in my world.  We are but Victims once and then become willing volunteers.... that is where I am at now.

To make it to my one year I need to stop volunteering my self for others peoples growth or sickness.  Momma was wrong when she taught us little girls to be there for everyone else and put yourself last.  In order for me to fully recover I truly have to put myself first and take care of me.  It is only through being strong in myself that I can help others.  The help I can offer is by leading the way, thats it.  I can no longer jump into the snake pit and pull the suffering friend out.  I cannot afford another bite.

There comes a point in ones life when that pain just becomes to great and the option of a simple quiet existence becomes more enticing.  To get to my one year I need to release the drama and chaos my addict so loves to be in the dead middle of.  My addict is dying and truly thats a good thing if I want a new life.

Letting go of my addict has been the true process here. Lady Vixen, the one I have lived under for the better part of my life.  The persona that has kept me safe from the light, kept me guarded and shielded from any hurts, the lovely vixen that got everything she wanted and more.  It has been a hard battle in my little brain to let that energy go, to let that ego go.  However I fully understand now that she must be put to the grave if I want to see and maintain long term sobriety.

Nine months clean has definitely brought a whole new feeling of understanding and acceptance that I was not anticipating.  My work is cut out for me, the next three months I will go within and leave the outside drama's to those still living in their chaos.  Trudging the Happy, but sometimes Lonely path to Recovery.....

Coming to Believe

Be Still and know that I am God.   That has been my new mantra when my mind starts to go into overdrive. I have to say its working very well.  It helps me bring myself back to my inner light and reminds me that I have control over only one thing... and thats my mind.   When I say 'Be still' now my mind stops the ridiculous thought process it was in  and settles for a moment, sometimes longer if I am lucky.

But that is not what I want to talk about here.  I spent some time in contemplation at work today about all the ways I try to get out of my feelings.  I thought about how hard it is for me to even identify my feelings when they are occurring because I am so proficient in getting out of them before they escalate into anything.  I also thought about how my mind works in over drive when intense feelings come up.

When i am having a feeling my mind is all over that feeling convincing me of something that its not.  Is like my brain hates my heart.

 Today my day started out wonderfully, but as the day progressed and it got hotter I got more tired.  Not cranky or anything just tired.  Slowly my thinking turned stinking, like a cancer spreading through my happiness.   I found I was blaming my misery on people in my life.  No one was texting me and that was the focus of my mind  for a solid hour or so before I had to become still again and know that God would text me if he had an Iphone.   How ridiculous is that?    How quickly my mind moves my attention outside myself and the immediate feeling of being tired.

I had an epiphany a few months ago when I was just beginning to get comfortable with being single.  When a man is in my life he takes me out of my feelings.  Just knowing  I will see him later or talk to him later was enough to help me over whatever crap feeling I was experiencing.  I learned this when I was going through some tough stuff at work and having to actually deal with it because I couldn't get out of the feelings until I did. When I have a hearty distraction in my life I don't have to deal with the feelings that come up and are wanting my attention, because my attention is already in single focus elsewhere.

Todays feeling was mild tired, but can you imagine what my mind does with extreme overwhelm?  I talk myself into a disappearing act and split.  The constant runner that I am will have me turning tail and heading for the hills if I dont have a distraction to keep me grounded where I am.

..... Re reading that last paragraph seems to have a contradiction in it.  A distraction to keep me ground and a distraction to take me out of my feelings?  Which is it?  Is there a time and place for a distraction in ones life?  Are we meant to feel every feeling or can we get some relief from minor distractions?  Are there healthy distractions?

My distractions in the past have all been pretty unhealthy.... drugs, sex, romantic relationships, food....  So what do I turn to now?  I still eat a tub of ice cream when I am feeling yucky, and still do find the cute boys irresistible.... is that detrimental to my recovery?  Maybe.

I think that whatt I need to be looking for here is focus nd not distraction.  I need to find a happy focus that is healthy for me and stick to that focus through any negative feelingss that come up.  Finding that focus maybe is where I should be putting my attention. Work has settled now, although I  am looking at he journeyman program so could this be a deeper focus for me?  Have I not taken my focus far enough?

Realizing I am tired and is nobody's fault was pretty cool for me.  Planning a relaxing might in to recoup has settled this poor  old brain of mine.  She really does work out hard, but as I go deeper into my meditative practices I find she is getting some peace and I am experiencing some serenity as a result.

I am in love with my life again.  I am falling inlove with myself again.  It is a constant ebb and flow process of coming to believe..... in ME.

Gentle Drugs

I wonder if there is a point in every ones recovery when they are faced with the medication fork in the road?

I am at said fork.  It has been suggested to me lately by two separate people that maybe some mind calming prescriptions will help me find the balance that I am so eagerly seeking in my life today.  It was only upon the second suggestion that I began to listen.  Do I need to medicate my mind to find Peace?

I struggle with this on a few levels.  To the addict side of things is prescriptions not just another  form of drug use, legalized?  Looking back on all my years I see how my weed consumption in the beginning was self medication for the monkey mind that was devastating my life.  Prior to weed consumption I kept a fairly safe numbed state  of well over 200 lbs.  Now that I am not using anything to slow this mind down and ease the anxiety that is building within me do I really need a doctors approved pharmaceutical money grabbing drug?

Maybe.  Is my quality of life worth it?  Will it increase my quality or will I become zombified?

On a deeper  level, I believe that everything we need to heal our bodies is in nature.   I don't even take headache medication on the belief that if I have one my body is trying to tell me something and I should find the cause before seeking the cure.  It is a bit more complicated with anxiety and racing thoughts.  They tend to get in the way of reason and cloud my process.

I am having a hard time writing this post out.  My mind in a million different places.  I guess thats just testimony to where I am at in life as well.  Let me try to keep focussed and clearly state my course of action as I have already decided not to seek professional help yet.

I am  blessed to have a healer as a dear mentor in my life.  She is schooled in the way of herbs and has recommended an  elixir that has already begun to bring me  peace and some serenity.  For that I am entirely grateful. She also pointed out my rapid weight loss of 21lbs in two months may be off setting my hormones.  I have also become aware that I am beginning to over indulge in the sugars again and that is never good for my mind.  I used to believe it was because it caused me weigh gain but now I realize the sugars fuck with my chemicals in my body.

What was  originally thought a couple weeks ago as the disease of addiction manifesting itself in my life,  I now realize is my body tellin me it is out of balance.  AS Within So Without.  If we are not well in our health, body mind and spirit our outer world will reflect that.  I always seem to go right into the disease before looking at anything else in my life.  Every ill thought, ill feeling or off quilter imbalance in my world is the by product of my disease and guess what?  It's not.  My whole genetic make up is not about addiction, it is not who I AM. It is a part of me that needs healing but it is not the whole of me.  This is a new understanding hat is just beginning to dawn. The light it has shone on my world has filled me with Hope that one day I will bee free of the lifestyle that devastated my little world.

So taking care of my body has been the focus I have been missing these past two months.  Bringing myself back to intense meditation has helped me see this.  The elixir my mentor gifted me is now beginning to balance my mind and I feel myself returning to the land of the high functioning.

I still do not believe that medication is the way out for everyone.  Yet I have made a promise to my friends, even my healer that I will seek out medical advice if this plan does  not bring me relief within the next three months. I am open minded  these days.......

Emotional Maturity is Overrated!

As I come back into my light I am faced with the reality of my personality.  Sometimes living in  my addictive personality is much easier, wearing the rose coloured glasses affords me my little fantasies.  However when I come out of that persona I am always disgusted by the truth the light shines on my creation.

Emotional maturity.    What is that and once I figure that out, how do I achieve it??

I have heard it said in the rooms that when you start using you stunt your emotional growth.  I can clearly see that in many people, but I didn't start really using until my adult years and I have been made very aware lately that I have the emotional maturity of a newt.  lol  To exaggerate my point.... I don't even know what a newt is, I just like saying the word.

Looking at my own life I find myself wondering what extreme trauma does to ones emotional well being.  When a child must go to other places emotionally on a regular basis does that do permanent damage reflected in the adult years?  I have never been able to handle my feelings.  As A teen I drugged them, as an adult I ate and smoked them away.  Recently I was back to drugging them.  It has only been this  past year that I actually began to work through them.

And let me tell ya.... they are Ugly.... with a capital U.    And I don't handle them well.

I find I over react all the time to my feelings, making those mountains out of mole hills.  Sitting in the black or white of them, never able to just be in the  gray with them.  I am all drama or completely removed.  I am a lover or an enemy, never just a friend.  I have to place everything in its little compartment neatly and if it doesn't fit anywhere nicely I discard it completely.  Things must follow a pattern I have laid out or I get very out of sorts.

I am emotionally immature.  Yup there I said it.... the emotional intelligence of a Newt.  I can be smart as fuck in the way of reading people.  I can grasp concepts quickly, my mind is sharp... but this ol heart of mine is fubarred.

I have a heart that was broken before it even had time to grow.... now its all deformed and ill functioning.   Can an old dog learn new tricks?  Its not that I am trying to be negative here, I am just feeling the crunch of my age and the bitterness that it has taken me this long to come to understand just how much life has been wasted repeating the same sick patterns of broken heartedness.

I always referred to the term of broken heart to mean from romantic relationships, but now I see a much larger picture of the heart of Love.   A child who's definition of Love was distorted and made ugly before she even knew what healthy love was.  Thats the definition of a broken heart.  Love is not about the opposite sex as my intellectual brain has been telling me  for years,  Love is about having a heart filled with the capacity to give and receive love of others.  The heart is about being able to feel and express ones feelings in a healthy manner, to accept ones feelings..... to be open to feelings.

The heart is Feelings.  Its more then Love I see now.  The heart is where all my feelings are processed.  My dysfunctional heart, my broken heart has contributed to my emotional immaturity.  Aha, moments dawning!

So how do I grow up emotionally?

 I heal my broken heart?

Holy fuck how do I do that??

That seems scarier then just dealing with an infantile emotional out burst every now and then.  I have been doing well with band-aids and duck tape around the cracks in my ticker.  I am so not going to the doctor just so they can open me up and tinker with my feeling center.   Oh wait, wait wait....... thats what those freaking steps have been doing isn't it.  Sneaky buggers!!!!!

Light bulbs are flashing like the paparazzi chasing a Kardashian......I love writing my shit out.

Damn.  With that I better get back to Step four.  And go figure folks I am just starting the section on feelings.    I guess this is why they say the programs works of you work it.  I feel like I am gonna puke most days again, so something is moving again.  Can't say I miss this feeling but I do know the results of last time were mind blowing for me.  So here is too the roller coaster ride we love to hate.

Running to Change

'When the pain  of staying the same becomes greater then the pain of change, surely  you will change or.... die'.   That is a saying that has stuck like a popcorn seed in my teeth for years.  It was the reading last night in my  meeting.  I shared  passionately about it.

Have I not always loved change?  Have I not always been the one that will spew about how life is boring and mundane without the shake up of change?  Have I not worked in careers that promote and practice change? Have I not went through some pretty intense transformations?   So why then is the kernel of that saying  stuck in my damn teeth??

Do I really accept real change in my life or am I just containing my chaos to a little box thats comfortable for me?  Do I allow only the kind of change that I am comfortable and used to into my world, masked as courageous steps?  I move geographically often, is that not change?  I start new jobs on a clockwork pattern of  every six months to a year, is that not embracing change?  I make new circles of friends at the same rate of job changes and city moves?  Are these not all changes?

Or Am I just running??

 Is that kind of change what I am used to and have actually built my life upon?   It is not change for me, it has been my normal life existence.  I have been living under the illusion of change when in reality I have been running fast and furious away from every thing good for me.

Security. Stability. Growth. Inner healing. Friendships. Career. Life.

Thats the popcorn seed right there.  I am a runner not an embracer of change.  And now the pain of that running is getting harder to cope with as I work deeper into a program of recovery.  My recent complacency and emotional slip has left me a bit bruised and it hurts like a mother fucker.  Self induced pain like a hangover is no longer welcomed or tolerated in my world any more.  I cannot function from that place any longer because I no longer vibrate from that frequency any more.

I am making some huge changes in my thinking these days and I am taking some steps I have never taken before.  Where I used to hide I am no longer going there.  Although I did recently, but I am desperately holding dear to my Goddess for strength and support as I peel away a layer that no longer serves me.  Its pretty painful but I know when the scab is removed I will begin to start a new journey in my life that will be walking into unknown.

Like the black panther I am embarking on a journey away from my own shadowy past into the brilliant light of my future and for the first time in my life, I will not run from it.  The pain of running is too great, so today I continue to change and ignore the fear that lurks all around me.

Beautifully Broken Fantasy

Fantasy.

Do I live in a fantasy world??  I was presented with this idea at dinner with a few women the other night.  As one women shared her experience of creating these fantasy scenarios in her mind about what her love relationships should be, yet never acknowledging the reality of them in actuality, I found myself questioning my own fantastical mind.  Do I create a reality that does not exist??

My whole spiritual plight for the past ten years has been about manifesting my own reality.  I am fully aware and am an expert at creating my desires in my reality. Or am I?  Is this the illusion I live under in my fantasy world?   The program teaches me to live on lifes terms, yet I still believe I can manipulate the universe to get what I want.  And for the most part  thats a pretty accepted concept.  I think my deeper question is, whats my reality and whats my higher powers reality??

Is my reality Fantasy?  Do I keep getting into romantic situations thinking they will become something that they never can be?  Or do I say one thing and actually mean another?  Do I see my partner as something that he isn't yet but has the potential in becoming?  Owe.... that one hurt.  Yes I do  see them changing because of me.  Not that I want to change anyone, but I do feel like I will make a difference in their lives.  I want to feel important to the other person.  Is that where my fantasy begins?  I see the potential and live from that place instead of the reality of where they truly are?

What about other area's of my life?  Do I live in an alternate fantasy there too?  Have I ever been down to earth and just accepted life the way it is?  I am beginning to think not. My ex husband kept the household grounded, I was always off on some quest.   Maybe my childhood scarred me so much that I went into a safe place of make believe and have been stuck there ever since.  That  thought kinda makes me sad for me.  However it also makes a truck load of sense as well.

I have been saying for days how broken I am.  Even though its a negative term, I really do feel like some  pretty deeply damaged goods.  Not that I cannot be fixed, but its never an easy realization to see how fucked up you still are.  Remove the numbing out drugs and the distracting boys that tell you your great and your left with the broken little girl that needs some serious TLC.  And not from another cute boy.

Humpty was put back together again, I know I can be too.  But the only way to restore myself to sanity is to tap into that higher power and begin to live from that reality instead of the one I continually create for myself.  Its scary to begin to step out of the cushion of make believe into the reality of brilliant light, it blinds my eyes. My dreams and nightmares in the dark have kept me company for over thirty years.  I am comfortable there.

I meet all these single older women that tell me they enjoy and prefer to be single.  I don't want to be one of those women.  I want to have a man in my life one day... a healthy man and a healthy romance.  Once my fantasy pops will all my dreams and hopes go out the window too?  Will I just be living day to day, in the normalcy of  life with no more excitement my fantasies afford me?

Its not like these women are unhappy.  They are so serene and beautiful.  They reassure me its well worth the work.  Yet I cry just a little bit about giving up my illusion that one day my knight in shining armour will swoop in on his white horse and whisk me off into a fairy land of constant love and lust.  I don't want to grow up.  I don't want to give up the fairytale my life has been.

Even with the chaos of realization when my illusions are shattered seem more bearable then a life without the illusion in the first place.  I guess change is always scary and stepping out of ones insanity is an intense process.  I have already rocked the boulder at the top of the hill.... nothing to do now but  let it roll.

Oh this is gonna hurt I just know it.  Good-bye fantasy world,  hello........ REALITY?

How is the Disease of Addiction Manifesting itself in my Life Today??

How has the disease of addiction been manifesting itself in my life today??  This is one of the first questions in Step One.   The first time working the Step I was put off by this question.  How else would it be working, I couldn't quit dope... duh.  What a stupid question I thought.  Now upon the third time answering it I see how brilliantly layered the Steps are.  No matter how many times you work them you get something new out of them each time.

I vowed loudly in my excitement upon finishing the entire set of steps the first time that I would never do them again!  Once was enough.  .... And more will be revealed....., was apparently lost on me then.

So how is my addiction manifesting itself in my life today??  First defining what addiction is for me is key to understanding if I am in its grips or not.  Addiction is when my thoughts become obsessive and my actions compulsive to those obsessive thoughts.

My brain is such a tricky place to manoeuvre.  The past couple months have put some serious pressure on my program. At first I allowed myself the grace of a new job and big changes in my life, but that grace quickly turned to complacency.  With that came my Lower Self the lovely Lady Vixen,  as my beautiful Higher Power got pushed to the side forced to watch my decent back into a suffering mind.

Upon working the first three steps yesterday I have learned a great deal about the way my mind works and how this disease effects me personally.  I had been working the steps previously but got caught up in step four as seems to be the pattern for  me each time I work the steps.  I had started them originally, specifically for a guy I was struggling to let go of. I restarted them yesterday and broadened them to all romantic relationships, because it turns  out I cannot be without one for long in my life.

Now its not  the romantic relationship that's the problem for me, or the guy involved in it, these are new understandings.  Its the obsessive thoughts about that person that are the problem.  My disease cannot just go with the flow in this area and allow something to just progress naturally in whatever direction it is meant to go.  No my addict needs to control and manipulate it to fit into a safe little box that I have full control over at every little moment.  The obsession is all invasive in my mind, reaching out like deadly climbing vines towards the object, penetrating every area of their  lives.  The insatiable need to know exactly what, where and with whom they are sucks the life force out of my own life

This is where the compulsion steers me off track of my life.   I begin  to make decisions based on this obsession.  I slowly begin to cut out things that will interfere with my thoughts, the time away from my thoughts  as well as opposing opinions to my thoughts.  I begin to slowly move away from my goals redirecting myself towards the object of my obsession.  I start to lose the sense of myself and assume a sense of them.  Its a horribly scary process that  I have endured one too many times in my life.

Why did I open the door in the first place if I new this was a pattern??  Complacency told me that I could just play and not let it go beyond that.  Complacency told me that I could just be friends... something I desperately want to learn to be with the opposite sex.  Lady Vixen told me it would all work out well, she painted a beautiful fantasy that was just to enticing to ignore.

I caught myself before I lost complete dignity and entirely stepped out of my integrity.

I made a decision last night to turn it back over to my higher self and to cut off my lower selves obsession.  I have to take that first step and then my Higher Power will take the next one for me.  So I stepped up and asked the object of obsession to step away from me. I did it quickly before I changed  my mind.   Luckily I picked a better obsession today and it was an easy graceful situation with no confrontation.  For that I am entirely grateful.

Working the first three steps shed some brilliant light on my patterns which I was already aware of but thought I had already overcome.... turns out I have not.  I redefined my higher power and  recommitted myself to standing in my truth and integrity again.  I do not have enough time or energy right now for anything remotely romantic, sexual or even friendly with a male.  My focus needs to be upon my career and raising my beautiful daughter.  That is all I have energy for in my life after recovery.

My reservation is that I will dry up and become an old bitter lady.  I was shown in meditation last night that I will find love again one day.  After my career and my daughter are fully stable and have a strong foundation.... that takes time and work.  So for the first time in .... ever, I truly feel the obsession to be with a guy lifting and my heart coming alive again to all the possibilities my life has in store for me.  I tend to forget hooking up with a guy is the definition of insanity for me..... been there done that..... but living single and exploring new things on my own.... now thats trying something so different!!

How Quickly I Forget

How soon one forgets the hard times.   How quickly we tend to forget where we came from when the going gets good.   Is it arrogance or is it busyness?  Is it that classic out of sight out of mind mentality?   How dangerous is that for the addict that still has the disease of addiction pumping through their veins just waiting for the opportunity to kill them.

Thats where I am today.   Complaining about my lack of time and balance in life.  Stressing about my loss of time in meditation and prayer, lack of meetings and No step work.  To busy working stupid long hours in a physically demanding job, rushing home to cook for my daughter and spend a few moments catching up with her before crashing into my bed.   Is this really life?

..............I do remember a day when my only concern for the entire day was getting loaded.  No job to worry about.  No kids to rush home too.  No prayer other then whining to God that I am outta dope.  Life was so full of suffering and yet I forget so soon those days.  I forget the shear pain of waking up each day to the full misery of what my life had become.   The intense loneliness of isolation.   The pure animalistic nature my personality had assumed.  I forget these things as my life settles back into normal.

My gratitude has been lacking lately.  I have been focussing on the long hours of my job and missing the fact that less then three months ago I was stressing about not having a job at all.  I have been nitpicking my job apart lately where I used to hand it over to my higher power and accept things that rolled in my direction, which always seemed to work out brilliantly.  I have been fighting with my daughter more and my house is far from being taken care of properly.  What is going on with me?

I am taking back my will.  I am losing contact with my higher power.  I am stepping into my Ego.  I am making things go MY way.  How quickly I jump into the driver seat of my life.  When will I learn that I never have a good map to follow and end  up lost in the back woods?   How many times must I cycle through this pattern before I can just stay forever grounded in my higher power?  Is that not a possibility?

I find it hard to work around coworkers that live in their wills for their lives.  At first its so clear to me how much easier their lives would be if they just surrendered and turned it over, but then after time that energy of getting what I want the moment I want it wears off on me and I am back in the drivers seat of my life.  It seems to take me a few weeks before I realize that things are starting to feel shitty in my world and to begin to question why.

Thats where I am right now.  Questioning why I have fallen back into judgement and am not accepting of the way things are.  When I accept life on lifes terms then my life becomes simple and joyful, how come I trade that in for my misery so quickly?   I guess I am truly experiencing how hard it is to break old patterns and ways of thought.  Self sabotage such a huge issue.  I just cannot seem to sit comfortably in happy for two long.  I want to distract myself from it or I want to exaggerate it just to make it ugly.

I am sure this boils down to a worthiness issue.  I question what I am worth alot these days.  I am defining that in the area of romance and the opposite sex and what I am worth to them, but I never thought to step up my worth on the job front or even on the personal level of self care and my higher power.  I touched my own divinity a few months back and really embraced it.  For a short period at least before it got to bright for me and I began to slip back into comfortable.

Can I grab it again and hold it this time?

It looks like I am rained out of work again today.  I think I am going  to use this day to deep clean my house and soul.  Its time I get back to my true power and stop this misery train that I have unknowingly hopped on.  I am sure glad I have this avenue of writing to help me see my life clearly.  Thank you for being part of it.

Bursting the Fluffy Bubble

Spiritual teachers have personality defects too.

I am always shocked and offended when someone I look up too for guidance and advice shows a negative character trait.  When the person I put on a pedestal of super human knowing actually displays a humanistic character trait I get pretty frustrated.

Why is that?

I am not completely naive to the fact we are not all perfect, so why is it when my mentor of the moment supports that idea I am irritated?  Do I strive for perfection so deeply that it blasts all hope out of the water? I guess I still do live with the Rose colored glasses on.

Or is it that I am unwilling to face my own defects and therefor get easily offended by other peoples?

I am sure it  is much more this concept then any others.  I refuse to acknowledge that there is anything negative in my world.  I did this for many many years, until one day my perfect little bubble pooped like a water blister and I was completely submersed in the world of complete negatives.  It was a traumatic period of my life, one that I did not fair well through.

Who is perfectly pure then with no negative traits in their persona's?  I think even Jesus, Gandhi, Mary..... all our written about spiritual leaders had some dirty dark personality conflicts of their own.  Do we focus to much on the positive qualities and ignore the negatives that equally balance the good?

I have so many question about this topic of the negative aspect of my personality and not many answers.  I am sure it just is what it is, but today I cannot yet accept that.  We all need to balance ourselves out, I am just too sensitive to be around a person when they need to express their negative natures.  I cannot stand myself when a negative trait rears its ugly head to be acknowledged.

How do I learn to function in the world of real when I cannot accept the shadows for what they are?  Service to the light?  And truly how can I even dance with the illusion that the shadows do not exist?  Too ignore them is to be sucked deep into their pits where no light exists.  How can I forget so soon the painful water blister?

Learning to embrace our defects and treat them with the same love and care our positive traits receive is the trick I guess to mastering ones entire personality.  As uncomfortable as it is for me to accept those negative traits in my mentors I must learn to have more compassion and less judgement for those that were in the exact same spot as me once... and for those I will be in their exact spot shortly.

Here is to a beautiful day folks... Hoping mine gets called off at work so that I may enjoy a day cleaning my house and catching up with life.

What are Your Motives?

What are my motives??  I ask myself this often these days.

I am coming to realize that in the past my motives for everything I did were never about me.  I lived my life for other people.  I was good as a child because if I wasn't my dad would kick my ass.  I did what my friends were doing as a teenager.  When romantic affairs entered my world it was always about him.  Then my kids came along and I became the faceless mom.  Always my motives have been for other people.

I am a people pleaser.

To have someone not like me is such an incredibly uncomfortable feeling.  One that gets little tolerance from me.  I will go out of my way to be liked by all people, even the peeps I dislike.  I cannot sleep at night knowing someone harbours ill will towards me.

That of course was until I worked through an entire set of steps.  Now I am cured.  lol

I still find myself people pleasing but stop myself and ask what my motives are.  Am I doing this for them or me?   Most of the time its still about them, I find I am struggling to peel away from this pattern of putting others before myself.  Such an unhealthy thing to place others well being before your own.  Lack of respect actually for thyself.

I am learning to respect myself.  I still make mistakes.... plenty.

When I decipher if the motives are truly mine then I must begin the process of identifying myself or Little lady Vixen in the motive mix.  Vixens motives are always dark and dangerous.  Getting loaded would be her motive.  I got asked to go to a rodeo with a friend and motives where in question.....

Half of me see's the 'saving the horse and riding a cowboy' potential there as well as the possibility of slipping a little shot or too past these lips.  The other half of me is looking forward to hanging out with a close friend and learning to have fun without the sexing and drugging.  People do you know, have good clean fun.

I have been cocooned in recovery cowering in the sand wanting so desperately to get back out there and live yet I am so afraid of any challenges that should come my way that I would rather turn tail and run.  But what are my motives??  I just want to live and laugh and socialize with people.  Does that mean I have to get loaded?  

I work a program.  I have a life today that I love so much.  My life is better today then it ever was before active addiction.  I would not want to lose what I have worked so hard to build.  I would lose everything if I let that sweet poison pass my lips.  Its not worth it.  I can have fun without ruining my life.

My motives today in life are to be happy, live life to the fullest, take healthy risks and laugh till I pee my pants.... Which my daughter made me do tonight btw!

What are your motives?  Ask yourself.

Heart Racing Serenity

Balance.

I have been on the search for balance my whole life.  Whether its in the form of moderation for whatever form my addiction is taking at that moment in my life or whether it is trying  to maintain serenity within a chaotic situation.  I am always aware of my balance or lack there of.

I was sharing with a few friends lately this concept and my thoughts and theories about it.  I figured I would bring it here where I gain the most understanding of a topic I am processing through.  I have lost my balance again and strangely enough am enjoying it this time.

While I was cocooned in the rooms of my twelve step fellowship I found a solid balance.  I found my centre.  I was deep and comfortable in serenity and truly believed that I would never be removed from it again.  I prayed, meditated, and connected constantly to my higher self.  Actually all my posts in the beginning of this blog is me at my root center.   Today I feel like I am far from that place of calm and serenity.

I am not in that place of addict craziness where my world is crumbling around me and I just wanna run for the hills and bury my head in the sand.  No those days are behind me.  Not saying they couldn't find me again if I looked over my shoulder and decided to head back there.  No this knock off balance is of a different kind.  Its excitement, busyness and building.

I really thought work would slow down after spring cleanups (landscaping), but it hasn't.  I am still putting in 12 to 13 hour days and working my ass off, which is toning up mighty nicely I must say.  These long hours and focussed thought on my career as a journeyman landscaper has me busting my girl balls but taking away time for my mediation and hence my serenity.

Spending all that time at work leaves few hours for my beautiful daughter, which I spend with when I can.  I make quality out of our time now, instead of the quantity she had before I started work.  Which has been an exciting challenge for me and one that I enjoyed.. although again balance was knocked out in left field for what we had become used too.  She had me all hours of the day, now she gets me only a few a week.  Those few however are spent doing something fun together.

Between my daughter, my house keeping(cleaning and bill paying, grocery shopping) and work, where do I find time for me and my recovery?  Where do I find time for my friends and more?   This is where I am still hard at work trying to find balance.

Self care is a huge area where I find serenity and peace, making time for it has been the toughest challenge, yet the most important one as its the one that will take me back out if neglected to long.  I have been keeping up with my personal care routine which has kept me tethered, but getting time alone for myself to be one in nature has presented the most solid wall of no go.   Having no vehicle has definitely added to this challenge.  I struggle with my original reasons for not having one(cost, environmental concerns, weight gain), thinking maybe my time is more important then those reasons now.

A friend and I went out to a lake for a bit last night and I was amazed at how quickly all my stress seeped into the cool sand beneath my feet as we walked along the beach.  Walking in the lake up to my knee's in water helped me connected and balance.  I found serenity doing something for me in nature.  It was then that I realized getting knocked off balance is part of the journey of life.

We are not meant to find serenity and hold it at all moments.  We are to find our centre and then venture out from there knowing that we can always come back to centre whenever we need to.  I found my center last night in a place I wasn't looking.  I find my peace now in quality moments not quantity ones.  I don't need to stay cocooned in recovery 24/7 to be trudging the happy road of destiny.

Working, playing, mothering, loving, stressing, crying, laughing, romancing are all parts of achieving that overall serenity.  I never realized I even had a center until I was far removed from it.  I couldn't practice gratitude on a daily basis until I found myself out of serenity again.  I find myself tear filled with gratitude when serenity finds me on a road trip where I was not looking for it.

Life is meant to be lived, experienced, enjoyed.  Risks are meant to be taken, your heart wants to beat fast with excitement.  Serenity is not in those moments and I am learning to enjoy those healthy moments of excitement, of pushing myself out of my comfort zone... of growing and thriving.  No longer is my adrenaline induced by dope, its brought on by following my passions and excitements.  Sometimes that means going against the judgement of others.  Testing waters that are familiar but creating a new ripple.   Breaking the patterns, converting fear to love, living life!!

I am off balance and I am loving every minute of it.  I am going with the flow and the river is a wild one  these days.  I do know that at some point I will run into a calm pond and there I will find my center and balance again.  Until then.... whitewater rapids!