My meeting tonight was a step meeting (my personal favorite). Tonight was Step 1, which is such an important reminder for me. Anyway, my big thought went something like this...
After my most recent therapy appointment, I started wondering what I'm going to do with all the crap I'm starting to talk about in therapy. I know there is no way I can change the past, or change certain things about my parents (in this case, my dad). So then what? It's like another version of Step 1--admitting my relationship with my dad can be rather ambiguous and hurtful. Doesn't change it, though. Same goes for alcoholism. Admitting it doesn't change it, make it better, or make it go away. In both cases, there has to be more or I'll just wallow in self pity and depression.
Was thinking that the best way to make the pain I'm feeling about my dad better (or replace the emptiness I feel) is to be the best parent I can be. To fill that need from the other side of the equation. Or, to help someone else who is feeling the same emptiness to understand it and let go of it. Sounds vaguely familiar to Step 12, huh? By bringing other people into the program and admititng my problem to other people, I will be better able to help someone else who is in need.
So glad Step 12 was just last week... Can see the whole cycle and how it has to keep going to continute to work for us. The 12 Steps really are a program for everything in life. Good, good, good stuff!
Thank you for sharing that, runnergirl. I used to have so much and so many resentments towards my Mom. I was about three years into sobriety, and had driven several hours to visit my folks. I don't remember the situation that triggered my feelings, but I remember the feelings themselves, as though it were just yesterday. (and I find myself consciously repeating those feelings to this day). I was standing in the kitchen and it suddenly struck me---she's just a human, just like me. There may have been alot of damage done by her words and actions over the years, but I realized she was who she was, she wasnt June Cleaver, and she (also an alcoholic but without a program) was part and parcel of helping to form who I am today. I was suddenly released of a weight I'd carried for years, without even realizing it. By accepting her as she is, as I imagine my children have had to do with me, I freed us both. Our relationship grew from there, atleast on my part, and in freeing us, I allowed myself alot of room to accept others, including myself... Chris
Thanks for the insight, Laurie! I'm glad the Steps & therapy are working for you!
Step 1 for me...that admission was/is the most important action. The action that identifies the problem. The action that indicates I am now seeing myself as I am in bare truth rather than an altered version of the truth. As a Step, it is the first foot-in-front-of-the-other.
I am an alcoholic and my life has become unmanageable.
Yeah? What now?
Parents? Mine are dead. Mom never knew me as a sober adult. I was an alkie at 14 and she died two years ago. Dad died when I was 7.
Lots of ballast there...if i choose to keep it. As I let go my will and allow myself to have a neutral spiritual bouyancy, placing importance on my past is arrogant and arrogance drags me down. If my self is to be neutrally bouyant and move forward into honest love and truthful deeds I must be humble. Why?
Because I am an alcoholic, and my life has become unmanageable.
I do think admitting one's alcoholism does make things better. That is why it is part of step 1 (the first half). It also does change things because most of us were unwilling to admit this for a LONG LONG time. Not saying that your insight is not valid though. I think what you meant was that we have to take action after something comes into our awareness (our alcholism or the character defects underlying it). Admit it, then do something about it.
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