Step 1 - Day 10

Mood: Pleased. I just received an email response, to an email I sent my son a week ago. I wanted him to know I loved him, and that I was thinking about him. He responded, " I know, thank you". (with a smiley face after it) That just made my day. He's alive and he knows I love him. Thank you Higher Power! I am grateful.

Music: "Statesboro Blues" The Allman Brothers. A really good blues song about dysfunctional families, probably including alcohol in the mix there, along with everything else.

Garden: The veggie garden is starting to poke some shoots up, most likely burdock, from under the mulch I laid last Fall. Time to start testing, amending and planning what to plant this year.

Step 1:

"We admitted we were powerless against ____(alcohol) - that our lives had become unmanageable"

I feel I need to say a little bit more about the Al-Anon group I went to last night, which was a speaker's meeting. That means the moderator asks one of the group members, in advance, to tell their story for the first half of the meeting. The woman who spoke, whom I mentioned in my last post, told a harrowing story of addiction, abuse, mental illness, dysfunction, legal and financial troubles, all with her first two partners as well as her son. All while trying to hold down her own job and parent her daughter. At one point she was living in a tent because her partner had falsely accused her of threatening his life. Until they could go to court to sort it out, she had to move out of their house. She had no where to go but the river. Amazing!

I wanted to mention her again, because her troubles are still not over, her relationship with her son is still not good. From the first night I came to the meeting though, she was very welcoming and warm. She smiles, she laughs and she seems to have genuine compassion for others. I guess with the experiences she has had, you either sink or swim. She not only swam. She back stroked! She told her story with so much calm, compassion for her loved ones and forgiveness. Exceptional. Her serenity was amazing. Her goodwill was demonstrable. She was sweet and kind too. She was tested in the fire and game out gleaming gold. Very impressive.

What do I have to learn from this? She does not try to constantly fix her son, even now, with him at 30 years old and still living in the area. He is still using. He is still a drunk. He still struggles to live and get by. And he still blames her for everything. To come to a place where you have to accept that that may be the way it is, wipe your tears and move on with your life, seems daunting right now. I still do not know what is reasonable to expect of my son, in-terms our relationship. Mental illness can be so tricky. I don't know, at this point, when or if I should try to help and how. I am being relieved of this dilemma at the moment, because my son is choosing to not be in contact. I feel as though I need to figure this out soon though, in-case.

It is so painful to let go of my son, who is now an adult, who is mentally ill. I want to nurture and protect. I feel guilt that I can be with friends, have a nice meal and come home to a warm house and bed. I don't know if he has a roof over his head right now. I received the email today, but that could have been sent from a library computer. I know he has food, thanks to his caseworker, but other than that, I don't. I know I must keep going around and around with this same fear, pain and worry. I guess it is a mother thing. We want our "babies" to be safe, warm and fed. Beyond that it is negotiable. The stress of not know that is a constant pain.

My reading today from the "Courage To Change" book, an Al-Anon daily reader, is about steps 1-3. It says, "In these early steps, we admit the areas over which we are powerless-such as alcoholism and other people-and learn that a Power greater than our selves has no such limitations. We decide to place our will and our life in the hands of this Higher Power. We let go of burdens that were never ours to carry. And we begin to treat ourselves more kindly and more realistically." I am attracted to may things in this passage. Many ideas that I am trying to wrap my mind around. I do not want to go too rapidly through this first, or the next two steps, either. They seem crucial to everything that follows.

First is the idea of powerlessness. I remembered when I was growing up, seeing my mother work so hard, every day, to take care of my brother and I, the house, and because she was a "liberated" woman, go to her full-time job too. My father believed in her need and desire to have a career, after seeing his stay-at-home mom depressed most of his childhood. But he didn't seem to also believe in staying employed himself or helping my mother much around the house. When I was older, my mother confided in me, that she often felt as though she had a third child with my father, rather than a partner. She would often work so hard that she would end up sick from exhaustion. I never wanted to be like that.

So how could you find yourself in a situation like that, or like the previous speakers, and not loose your serenity? Should you stay in marriage like that? Should you ignore the other person but stay with them? What is reasonable to expect from someone who is an addict or mentally ill? How can you be in a relationship with someone like that when they are not "showing up" to the relationship in the first place? If you are powerless over the addiction and other people, then what should you, if anything, do for them or yourself, in that situation? How can a Higher Power help you in such circumstances? If it has no limitations, then what can it do to help? Does it just give you peace of mind? Does it "show" you ways to handle things that seem unmanageable? How do you place your will and your life in the hands of this Higher Power? What are the benefits to doing so?

I have been feeling a little odd about the term Higher Power today. I hear it bantered around so casually in Al-Anon, and the words, "Higher", and "Power", seem so tame for such an apparently profound idea. Where do people get their confidence and their surety that there is a Higher Power, and it really can do all that it is billed as doing? I am not an atheist. In-fact, I have studied Esotericism and Buddhism, but I came to a dead end when I realized that I was practicing it from a purely mental place. I had never really felt, believed in,or knew without any doubt any divine power or force. I did not really believe in a soul and my mind seemed to be untameable. I was tired of the concepts, the special languages and the lingo involved in all these practices and paths. I was lost.

Now, in my pain and suffering, in my feeling let down by life, I am seeking an answer to how I can be relieved of my burdens. What attracts me to the idea of Higher Power, is that all this control I thought I had may actually be not mine. But how? I have a sense now, that the world is one large, alive being that I am a part of. I do not know what this being's mind, heart and purpose is, but I do know that it all is a lot bigger than I am. I question whether I can ever know more than that and what I should do with that knowledge. How do you live your life when "you" are not in-charge? What is the purpose of this one little life in the face of the vastness or the ONE LIFE? Can surrendering one's will cause there to be a greater peace? Did I ever have a separate will to begin with? Questions and more questions. How to answer them?

The idea of kindness towards myself and others, and a realistic sense of life, seems the most attractive part of the whole quote. My life has been a series of furious and desperate attempts to make my life, "right". Do what was right, good and correct, but always with a sense of failure behind it all. I felt the weight of that whole dilemma on my shoulders, and mine alone. If I could not contact my Higher Power, my soul, and know it's inscrutable design for my life, then I was screwed. I felt constant tension, constant worry, constant fear. How can you just "Let go, and let God" as they say in one of the Al-Anon slogans? How does this all work? I intend to keep asking these questions....

More later.

Thanks for listening:)

keep coming back!

Looking forward to: My NAMI class tonight.

Challenges: Trying to understand more about Higher Power.