The Power of Choice

I stopped self sabotaging myself yesterday.
Recently one of my friends talked about how sobriety
gave him the power of choice back.
Yesterday I took a good look
at what direction my choices were taking me.
Where I was headed if I kept on feeding my feelings,
looking for distraction, avoiding doing the hard work.
Did I really want to return to that place?
Where self loathing and shame
were my closest companions?
No.
By the grace of God I reached for help
out of the miry clay.
Which put me squarely back in the now.
Today finds me doing the next right thing.
Where I'm grateful for the power of choice.
I wrote in my journal this morning
for the umpteenth time
"I can do this."

All Shall Be Well

It's been draining weekend. I think this is the last night of a week straight of overnight lows mostly in the -30's and 40's. Then there was the day when it was -55C when they factored in the windchill. Tomorrow they are forecasting reaching a high of -19C and that's more than welcome. bobbie said to me last week, "Tell me again why you live there?"

Dearest one and I went to town yesterday to buy groceries. We were sadly overdue to restock our cupboards. It was a blessing to be able to do it so freely. It's been three and a half years since we were on welfare and using the foodbank and I still marvel at the privilege of going and buying groceries without having to pick between toilet paper and milk. I hope I never take it for granted.

At our little church in the boonies we arrived today to find the furnace has been going out on and off all week. Most likely the propane has been gelling in the cold. Did you know propane gelled when it got too cold? Everyone took it in stride when I did the first and second readings with scarf and mitts still on. I took my mitts off during communion and then put them right back on. There are frozen pipes in the basement and a pressure pump that will need replacing. Such is life in the frozen north.

Just a few days until Lent begins. I've decided to forego blogging except on Sundays during Lent. I'm actually going to be giving up all internet use except on Sundays for the duration. That is probably the hardest thing for me to fast from. I spend several hours a day on the computer. Lent is a time for deepening conversion with attention to prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Our priest is from India and he shared today several of the traditions he grew up with. One was how during Lent, before the daily rice was put in the pot, the youngest member of the family would take a handful of rice and set it aside. For the full 40 days this would be done and then on Good Friday every family brought their rice to the church and had the priest bless it. Then the poor of the community would receive this rice. He also shared that every family had a clay pot with a slit in it for money to be put in but no hole on the bottom for it to come out. Throughout Lent they would sacrificially put money in the pot and then after Easter Vigil all the pots would be collected and broken open. He said the parish had 5 to 6 thousand families in it and the money would be counted and then sent to a charity that distributed help to the poor. He emphasised that it wasn't the amount of money or rice but the intent of the heart.

I had a difficult conversation with my older sister yesterday. We are both going to only daughter's final project and she offered that I could catch a ride home with her and my dad for a visit. We live 8 hours north of only daughter and they live 5 hours east. I told her I didn't know if now would be a good time in light of homework I recently completed for my counseling surrounding the sexual abuse I experienced as a child. My parents still live in my childhood home and this would be the first time I'd go home without my brick walls of numbed feelings in place. I'm learning to speak my truth and in doing so I'm pushing up against ingrained patterns which is difficult for my sister. At one point she said to me, "why can't you come home and pretend like we've always done - that our family is normal? I told her I was past that. This was after she suggested that I get my counselor to give me homework to do while I was at home. I told her I wouldn't do that, couldn't chance it when I would be without my support group around me. It was a painful conversation. The worst was when she suggested I phone my older brother and suggest he meet us there as well. That it would be an opportunity for him to support only daughter, too. I couldn't tell her that only daughter's final project was a play based on the warped messages I gave her about sexuality while she was growing up. A play where only daughter works through those messages and finds some peace while the mother relives the memory of a rape. My sister distances herself when I talk about my pain of being molested. By the brother she thinks would be a great addition to the family reunion. I couldn't comprehend being in the same room as him while watching this play. I couldn't tell my sister why I couldn't phone him about it because I didn't want to take the chance of her minimizing my story. I hung up the phone and cried. I told dearest one that I was fighting the lie that I was a bad person for taking the lid off of family secrets, off the stuff we were never supposed to talk about. I fought against feeling like I was a bitch for speaking my truth. For not smoothing things over so she would feel more comfortable.

As luck would have it there is a great seat sale on right now so that it's affordable for me to travel back with them by car and then fly home later. I'm glad I don't have to make the decision today.

I woke up this morning spoonless. Not surprising, but still disappointing. Doing good self care feels like it requires the energy needed for mountain climbing. I've heard it said many times at meetings: What I'm doing isn't working so something needs to change. For me that means molding my day around doing basic self care. Dressed and showered. Eat 3 healthy meals. Drink enough water. Journal. Exercise. Prayer and meditation. I've gotten sloppy with all of it. Anything I accomplish above and beyond self care will be a bonus.

Lent will be a welcome opportunity to reflect, to pay attention to the littlest of disciplines that help my days be more peace filled. Often I get derailed as I walk past the computer on my way to eat breakfast. One brief "oh, I'll just check my email" ends up with me realizing hours later that it's midmorning or lunch time and I'm still in my pjs. Two new disciplines I'd hoped to begin this year were yoga and centering prayer. The resources to learn them came in the mail on Friday so they will be part of my Lenten routine. Both disciplines have been calling to me for a while and I'm willing to take the time to soak them both in and hopefully incorporate them into my self care routine.

I thought this weekend about my next counseling session. I envisioned walking in and asking my counselor if she wanted the good stuff or the bad first. Then I realized however challenging, however painful this past while has been, in reality, it's all good stuff. All necessary for deepening conversion. Every time I receive the Eucharist I ask Christ to transform me. Fr. Charlie keeps encouraging me that when we speak our truth the ripple effect of it is that our families experience transformation, too.

Dearest one questioned the healthiness of putting myself in harm's way. For speaking my truth and dealing with the consequences when I could've just kept my mouth shut and avoided the pain. I told him I was convinced that speaking my truth will only get easier as I practice doing it. That one day I will be able to have the same conversation with my sister and not end up in tears over it. That wounds can be healed. That transformation can happen. That, in the end, as Julian of Norwich says:

"...All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Even the weather.

Back To The Present

My procrastinating ways are going to catch up with me today. Tomorrow I'm off to a women's weekend. Today will be laundry, lists and packing. I'll be one of a dozen speakers over the course of the weekend. I look forward to that. This weekend is one of great love and fellowship. In many ways it's life giving for me. In others it's a challenge to my recovery.

One of the biggest hurdles for me this weekend will be no bingeing. I've binged my way through this weekend before. There is food. Lots of it. Everytime one turns around it's either meal time or coffee break. There's candy on every table throughout the whole day. And when the bowl gets empty they refill it! Social situations are one of my biggest triggers for bingeing. I'm not a social butterfly, I prefer one on one conversations. In social situations food can seem a safer companion than the person next to me.

On Monday, by God's grace, I'll have 5 months of no binge eating. I don't miss the insanity of it. The inability to stop shoving food into my mouth while my head is screaming at me to stop right this minute. My inability to listen to the voice of reason. My refusal to surrender to a power greater than myself until after the binge is over. I don't miss the shame, the guilt, the self loathing. I do miss the instant gratification.

There are certain foods I avoid today because to taste one bite of them will take me down a road I don't want to go. I can have the greatest intentions while plotting ways to get around my own boundaries. Because one has to eat my food addiction seems harder to navigate than alcohol. Yet in action it works the same way. Deciding to have just one drink when you know the whole bottle's going to call your name until it's empty is the same kind of relationship I have with junk food, candy and pop. Give me a little bit and I want it all and I don't want to share it either.

Today. That's all I have to live. I'm getting ahead of myself yet know I need a plan in place, too. In treatment we came up with a relapse prevention plan. I need to take a copy with me tomorrow and read it every day. I can't do any of this on my own strength. God help me. I can feel the anxiety between my words.

This little excerpt from Be-good-to-yourself-Therapy speaks to me right now:

"19. When you feel anxious, let yourself know that in your head you've moved into the future to something scary and your body has gotten up the energy for it. Come back to the present."

Come back to the present.
It's all you have.

Surrendering to Reality

Good self care is my goal today. My body is weary and a nap is calling. I am grateful for the ability to surrender to reality today. Tomorrow I start meetings for a women's weekend that I am often involved with. We meet weekly for 3 weekends and then take a break before the actual women's weekend. I'll be giving a talk about putting one's faith into action. Writing and giving talks is life giving for me. This time around I'm bringing a bar stool (how appropriate) to sit on while I give my talk instead of standing for 35 minutes. I'm getting smarter. Spoons don't define my days like they used to, and for that I'm grateful, yet I still have limitations. Today I'm trying to honour that.

Hollowing Out A Space

"...our greatest strength was forged in our worst pain and suffering. It was precisely those "worst times" that hollowed out a space in us that wouldn't have existed otherwise. And this space becomes the haven where others find the compassion, understanding and strength we so badly needed ourselves at one time." ~Earnie Larson in Destination Joy

Dearest one woke me up this morning by placing a snowball in my hand. There were snowy footprints on the deck this morning although we were spared the several inches of white stuff that other areas got overnight. As I look out the window it's nearly all melted now. Soon I will go for a walk and savour the crispness of the air and breathe in the smell of decomposing leaves. I love their earthy smell. They remind me that this journey is temporary.

Thank you for praying. I'm slowly regaining my equilibrium. There is an undercurrent of serenity beneath the pain. Yesterday as I went for my walk I started to name out loud all the reasons I was grateful. After a few moments I burst in tears because the gratitude was genuine and that I could have gratitude in the midst of emotional pain overwhelmed me. I never knew it was possible. Typing that sentence has me in tears all over again. God is doing for me what I could not do for myself. And I'm so very aware and grateful.

My home group in AA is called Gratitude 24/7. When I first went I thought that people who were grateful in the midst of pain were lying. I easily wrote off anyone who smacked of Pollyanna. "Ha. At least I'm realistic," I told myself. And while I still have a hard time liking people who are fake and smiley when everything else about them cries pain, I know my ability to sneer in the face of the genuine gratitude of others is just another version of camouflaged pain. In my all or nothing way of thinking one could either be in emotional pain or be grateful but never the two shall meet. I know now that gratitude is cultivated. It is a perspective one chooses. It doesn't deny reality, it exists in the midst of reality.

As I was walking one day this week I was begging God for the grace to show compassion towards myself. When I'm in the worst places emotionally it hasn't been my pattern to have self compassion. In the midst of my pain and the shame that threatened to overwhelm me I knew that the biggest gift I could give myself was compassion. The old patterns, the inner voices that wanted to accuse and condemn me were competing with the new pattern of loving and forgiving myself for being human. And as I prayed the word mantle popped into my head. It was such a random, strange word that I let it sit in my mouth for a while. As I did the line from a song we used to sing came to me. "His mantle over me is love." How true.

Yesterday I went for a long drive to meet with Fr. Charlie. I've chosen to continue seeing him for counseling/spiritual direction even though he has moved to another parish. As I reflect on today's quote it is Fr. Charlie's own hollowed out place, born out of working through his worst of times, that makes him a safe place of compassion, strength and understanding. It was good to be able to just spill my guts to him, no explanation needed.

On my drive home I returned a call to the sexual abuse counselling centre. As I told the woman my experience of having the rape triggered this past weekend and the battle it's been since to simply get through my days she told me she would bump me up the waiting list. It's now about 2 weeks before I get in to see someone.

It felt good to say I need help and then to reach out for that help. None of us can journey alone. It just isn't meant to be.

Yesterday Fr. Charlie asked me if I was still blogging. I told I was but that it was often such narcissistic crap I didn't know what the point was anymore. Today I know I need a place to say, this is my story. And I know those of you who read here regularly can see patterns, threads and growth that I am blind to. For today I embrace that reality.

I Am So Much More

This afternoon while I was waiting for my assessment with the Occupational Therapist, I dug out my favourite waiting room book. There are 31 chapters to this book and I numbered them off so that whatever day of the month it is, I read the equivalent chapter. Here is part of the 17Th chapter:

"The first quality that strikes when one looks into the eyes of a child is its innocence: its lovely inability to lie or wear a mask or pretend to be anything other than what it is. In this the child is exactly like the rest of Nature. A dog is a dog; a rose, a rose; a star, a star; everything is quite simply what it is. Only the adult human being is able to be one thing and pretend to be another. When grown-ups punish a child for telling the truth, for revealing what it thinks and feels, the child learns to dissemble and so innocence is destroyed. Soon it will join the ranks of the numberless people who say helplessly, "I do not know who I am, " for, having hidden the truth about themselves for so long from others, they end up by hiding it from themselves. How much of the innocence of childhood do you still retain, is there anyone today in whose presence you can be simply and totally yourself. as nakedly open and innocent as a child?

There is another more subtle way in which the innocence of childhood is lost: when the child is infected by the desire to become somebody. Contemplate the crowds of people who are striving might and main to become, not what Nature intended them to be - musicians, cooks, mechanics, carpenters, inventors - but somebody: to become successful, famous, powerful; to become something that will bring, not quiet self fulfillment, but self-glorification, self-expansion. You are looking at people who have lost their innocence because they have chosen not to be themselves but to promote themselves, to show off, even if it be only in their own eyes. Look at you daily life. Is there a single thought, word or action untainted by the desire to become somebody, even if all you seek to become is a spiritual success or a saint unknown to anyone except yourself?"

The highlighted sentences I have underlined in my book because they continue to be food for thought as I journey.

The journey has been rocky lately, hence my silence. It takes time to process, pray and believe that beauty can unfold from the pain. While learning how to stop being one thing and pretending to be another I'm stepping on the toes of those most precious to me. Sadness has been the dominant emotion within. When people around me don't see the process as something beautiful it's easy to believe that any forward movement is simply a figment of my own imagination. Not only have I doubted I was making progress, there've been times when I've convinced myself that I'm only a bitch in hiding.

Sometimes it sucks that there is no going back. Sucks that the journey forward is uncomfortable not only for me, but also for those with whom my life is intertwined. It takes everything within me not to go around saying, "sorry, sorry" for simply learning to be me. Father Charlie has often reminded me that I'm in the process of being transformed and so too, those around me will feel the ripple effects and face their own transformation process.

To embrace my own journey I became willing this week to let go of all resentments, all the baggage I've carried with me since childhood in order to move forward. I also became willing to do that imperfectly. You know how it is sometimes? You decide a thing then wake up the next morning with the same issues plaguing you and it's easy to think you either didn't mean it or that the Spirit was busy with someone else, and that nothing really happened within you or else you'd be free from your humanity? That kind of thinking has only added to my shame level, it's never brought me any closer to real freedom. So for today I let go to the best of my ability, asking for God's grace to continue to be open to letting go.

I've spent a lifetime being quick to think of myself as bad. Someone's not happy with me, that means I must be bad. I make a less than stellar choice, I must be bad. I say the wrong thing, think the wrong thought, I must be bad. It takes so very little to label myself that way. No one is putting that on me, it's my own self talk feeding itself. During this rocky stretch of life I learned that the label no longer fits. There's a difference between being bad and being human. Something has settled within me, in that deep place, where I now know that any judgement I could make of myself will never be the full picture of who I am. I am so much more than my flaws. I have a hope that I can learn to live with myself, humanity intact, faith intact, look in the mirror and rejoice.

Today is the nine week mark of abstinence from sexual addiction for me. For all the turmoil of the past few days, I give thanks that my thoughts never even turned in that direction for relief. That was a gift of grace. I think that maybe I was actually living in the moment instead of trying to run away from it.
That, I know, is a most childlike quality.
There is hope.
God bless you as you embrace the journey.

Words Of Comfort

"There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling rain & remember it is enough to be taken care of by myself."

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