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  • 5 Messes I’ve Had to Clean Up in Recovery

    5 Messes I’ve Had to Clean Up in Recovery

    When I’m on top of my 10th step game, it goes something like this: Sorry, my bad. How can I fix it? The apologies come easily, and I promptly follow up with offers to make up for all harms done. But I’m not always on top of my game.

    What Does Recovery Feel Like to Me Right Now?

    Good question.

    It feels like making less mess, less often and…
    It feels like cleaning up the messes I still manage to make.

    When I’m really on top of my 10th step game, it goes something like this: Sorry, my bad. How can I fix it? The apologies come easily throughout my day, and I promptly follow up with offers to make up for all harms done. Then at night, under the covers, I make sure to scribble in my journal for those few minutes before Mr. Sandman knocks me out cold. Surprisingly, I learn a lot about myself in those last illegible minutes of consciousness. I see the patterns within the actions, where someone (sometimes me) gets hurt.

    But I’m not always on top of my game.

    Here are five messes for the first five months of 2019 and how I’ve managed to mop them all up.

    1. My Kid’s Library Fines

    In January I tore open another notice from the collection agency looking for me to make good on my son’s library fines. It was at least the sixth notice, and it had been years since I’d declared the book lost. ‘Til that point, though, I’d refused to send payment, both for the late fees accrued while I waited for it to turn up under the bed or at school, and for its replacement charge (because it never did).

    I was waiting for amnesty. I’d heard the library does this from time to time, waive all late fees. I didn’t feel I should have to pay $41.10 on a fantasy book about cats. My kid’s read all of them: the series on cats, dogs, wolves, and bears—for free, but I couldn’t cough up $41.10 for accrued fines? That’s insanity!

    Finally I saw it. I could screw up my kid’s credit before he gets the chance to do it himself. Everyone should have the right to ruin their own credit. No one should be robbed of that privilege by say, a spendthrift spouse, or a stingy, stubborn parent.

    So last week I finally fed three twenties, one single and one dime into the fine box at the local library. It felt great: a clear account and a clear conscience. The cost of coughing up proved well worth the relief it bought. Lesson learned: going forward, I’ll suck it up, pay promptly, and stop getting those “important notices” in my mailbox which have a way of souring my serenity.

    2. My Speeding Ticket

    Contrary to what the bumper sticker reads, I want to believe my choices behind the wheel don’t really matter.

    Not long after the library’s collection agency stopped courting me, I tore open another “important notice,” this time a $50 citation for speeding in a school zone.

    My first response was to defend myself: Oh brother, I wasn’t speeding! According to the fine print, I was going “41 mph in a 30 mph zone.” My second response was to rationalize: Come on, I was only going 11 miles over the legal limit. And my third response, finally, was acceptance. Yes, I was unlawfully speeding.

    I don’t write out many checks anymore, which might be why I get all pouty when I have to actually do it. It’s so damn involved: the writing, folding, sealing and licking (do I have a stamp?) and then the envelope knocks around my backpack for a week before I remember to mail it. But the mailing of that check made payable to the NYC Department of Finance felt good — the act of popping it into the blue box on the corner, both a physical acknowledgement of my error and a conscious effort to rectify it. It was another Step 10 moment, making amends to my fellow drivers and pedestrians of central Brooklyn. And hey, I found myself feeling a fourth response rising, gratitude: Hey, it was a school zone after all. I could have hit a kid crossing Ocean Parkway on the way home.

    3. My Unhappy Downstairs Neighbor

    Who does jumping jacks at 10:30 at night? I do, and it’s a problem because I have a neighbor below me who doesn’t sleep well. Sometimes my teen doesn’t get around to practicing piano until 10:30 pm either, and if it’s Haydn, I’ll break out into pretty awful pirouettes on the living room rug. Born about when Stalin first came to power, my neighbor always smiles kindly at my kids on the elevator. This babushka’s done nothing to deserve my thoughtlessness. It’s taken her banging the broom handle against her ceiling — more than once — to make me realize her reality and stop. This last time she knocked on my door in her housecoat.

    It shouldn’t have come to that. I apologized, again, but this time it felt different. I felt her frustration with me, and her chronic fatigue, bordering on despair. I prayed for the willingness to find a solution, and got one. My teen now practices by 9:30 pm, or not at all (mostly not at all). And instead of performing leaps and bounds to my reflection in the living room mirror, I’m using a folding chair from a funeral parlor as a ballet barre to do late-night low-impact leg lifts and silent swan arms. And I’m saving all jumping jacks for the laundry room.

    4. My Coffee Table Catastrophe

    Clumsiness isn’t a defect per se, but the carelessness that leads to avoidable accidents is. If you’re a good housekeeper, and sober, you don’t usually break shit. But when you’re willful, preoccupied, or impatient —whether drunk or dry — the odds are less in your favor. I was feeling all three when, to earn a few extra bucks, I was cleaning my neighbor’s home recently.

    It was an Ethan Allen bicentennial-era colonial table from the ‘70s, with a smoky glass insert. I could have just wiped down the glass. Or I could have taken a few moments to study the situation, then gingerly lift the glass to clean the crumbs along the maple-esque ledge upon which it rested. I did neither. In my haste to move onto activities more worthy of my talents coupled with my resolve to get at that damned dirt at all costs, I reached down underneath the glass and pushed it up with force. In slo-mo horror, I watched the six-foot tinted glass oval slip from my fingers, tilt up, then fall smack through the frame and shatter against the parquet floor.

    Oh f*&$%!

    Thankfully, after a little conscious breathing and a lot more profanity, I had the presence of mind to pray. I credit the serenity prayer for helping me come up with a sober 10th step strategy: apologize, clean it up, save a shard, identify a glass factory in the tri-state area that makes custom inserts for vintage coffee tables, place the order, pick it up and deliver the replacement glass to its rightful spot, nestled in that oval frame set between two plaid sofas in Mr. Donald’s living room. Good as new!

    The problem was, I didn’t want to do any of this. I wanted to cry and run home instead. I wanted to bail on this good neighbor, who’d been a true friend to me, my sons, even my ex, all these years, pre- and post-divorce. This neighbor who brought me fresh mint from the farmer’s market and cannolis from Bay Ridge, who got my latchkey kids off the doorstep and into their home when they’d forgotten their keys. I wanted to leave this true friend with a true mess. Fortunately, though, I didn’t. I sucked it up and swept it up, and followed through on all the rest. Today I’m even more grateful for the friendship of my forgiving neighbor. And I’m not ever allowed to touch his new coffee table.

    5. My $700 Face Cream

    And here’s a real dollop of sloppy spending. One recent morning I was trudging that road to happy destiny and stumbled. I fell, hard. Nose to pavement, that mindful breath knocked clean out of me, knees bleeding through the exposed portions of my distressed denim, I saw the cause: it was those stubborn roots of that ancient tree — my character defects. They’d buckled the pavement and tripped me up again.

    I’d just performed the single most obscene act of overspending in my not-short lifetime: I dropped down the Visa for a $765 face cream. My sober spending habits — and my sanity — snagged by those sinewy tendrils: vanity and fear. In that shockingly short-sighted moment when I confirmed the purchase, I sought false comfort in cosmetics instead of in the care of my creator.

    Pre-sobriety, I tried to self-soothe with a bubbly Bellini or a pitcher of sangria. Towards the end, it was bargain barrel red and Four Roses blended whiskey. Typical addict’s descent: desperately seeking substance for relief from self. So it was humbling now, five years into recovery, to admit to this irresponsible oopsie with the ol’ plastic. And no surprise, the high from spending on skincare lasted only as long as it took that confirmation email to hit my inbox. Almost instantaneously, I added panic and guilt to my shopping cart.

    That nagging itch of fear around aging, illness, and dying with a Siamese instead of a soulmate was now the sharp pain of fear and remorse that I might not make next month’s rent, and my kids’ summer holiday could be spent at the rundown neighborhood triplex — rumored to have bedbugs — instead of lobbing lemony tennis balls all day long at camp.

    I was stunned and embarrassed by my reckless misuse of purchasing power — certainly too embarrassed to admit to my sponsor that, in my quest for an eternally youthful jawline, I was galloping straight into the jaws of debt instead.

    Luckily I had just enough recovery to rein it in, and turn towards Step 2. I asked HP for guidance and got it:

    The solution was obvious:

    Return it.

    And still more lucky, dermstore.com, with more than 10K visitors monthly, takes all returns, no questions asked. What’s even better is that when those unsaleable items in my character — fear and vanity — trip me up, I can pick myself up today, blot my bloody shins, and choose a different path. In my drinking days, I was down for the count on all my defects….

    So, thanks, Second Step, you stopped the runaway horse of spree spending, and you too, Step 10, because I was able to reverse the financial harm done to self. My face, while not slathered in luxe cream tonight, feels radiant and clean, because I can face the Visa bill in the morning.

    My Sober Strategy for the Second Half of 2019: Steps 6 and 7

    But the habit of relying on Steps 2 and 10 to bail me out of scrapes is wearing on me. It feels un-sober. I’m starting to think that lasting emotional sobriety depends on my willingness to keep plugging away at 6 and 7, to really yank at those defective roots of self-centered fear and vanity.

    Soon after that life-affirming afternoon five and a half years ago, reading my 5th step aloud in a garden gazebo as mosquitoes ate me alive, my sponsor suggested I follow up by reading Drop the Rock: Steps 6 and 7: Removing Character Defects. Four years after that, I finally Primed the paperback to my doorstep and began reading. One story is resonating right now. A gal beset by sloth, who struggled with clutter for years, finally struck on a solution that pretty much sums up my strategy today:

    “I now know that if I don’t want to live in a mess,” she realized, “I need to pray to God for the willingness, courage and motivation to clean up my own mess.”

    Isn’t that what I tell my own teen 20 times a day anyway?

    I may never completely stop this habit of compulsively punching 16 digits into devices for ill-conceived purchases (did I mention I want to lease an Audi Q5?) but this week my impulse purchase was three Wham-O Frisbees. Progress.

    Half-measures avail me nothing. I gotta push myself to make those 10th step amends, to others and to myself, as promptly as possible, but better late than never! And I can use the steps (and the slogans, and my sponsor, and my sober sisters) to help me break each amends down into baby steps, steps that will take me further from, rather than closer to, that first drink. This feels like recovery, and a better set up for long-term sobriety and my happy life.

    Final Takeaway: Do the right thing, even when I don’t want to, even when it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Or, even when it is actually sort of a big deal; in fact, it feels so big, it’s kinda overwhelming:

    Still do the right thing.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How AA Hijacked Addiction Science and Came to Dominate Treatment: An Interview with Joe Miller

    How AA Hijacked Addiction Science and Came to Dominate Treatment: An Interview with Joe Miller

    The scientists at Yale liked what AA did, but they did not by any stretch think that AA was a cure-all for alcoholism. Neither, by the way, did Bill Wilson.

    Back when he was struggling to control his drinking, Joe Miller failed on a nightly basis. He would get stumbling drunk every evening, and suffer through every day. His treatment providers all delivered the same message:

    “Go to Alcoholics Anonymous.”

    That was hardly surprising advice — AA has long dominated alcoholism treatment in the United States. But Miller, an English professor at Columbus State University in Georgia, eventually learned that numerous other options were available to him at the time, such as Naltrexone, SMART Recovery, and Moderation Management. Why hadn’t anybody mentioned them?

    That is the question that Miller sets out to answer in The Us of AA, a slender, provocative book that tells the story of how Alcoholics Anonymous grew into the gargantuan organization that we know today, even though some evidence suggests that other treatments may be more effective.

    Miller is not “anti-AA.” He believes that there is little to be lost — and perhaps much to be gained — by trying 12-step solutions. But he adds that alcoholism is more complex than the AA model suggests. Miller holds that problem drinkers should explore an array of potential strategies, not just one. Though he writes with powerful indignation, The US of AA is not a tendentious or overly polemical book; it is based on careful analysis of a huge and diverse range of sources.

    I had the pleasure of speaking to Joe by phone on May 11, 2019. This interview is lightly edited for length and clarity.

    Many people know a bit about how Bill Wilson helped start Alcoholics Anonymous, but you argue that Marty Mann may have played a more pivotal role in building AA. What do we need to know about her?

    Absolutely, I think she is largely responsible for our nationwide concept of alcoholism as a disease, and our idea that AA is the go-to cure for alcoholism. She ran one of the most brilliant PR campaigns of the 20th century. She helped build a huge network with local chapters across the country, which distributed information at the individual level and the community level, [then progressed] to lobbying in state houses, and eventually, the federal government.

    Alcoholics Anonymous has the 11th Tradition, which states, “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion.” But Mann started out being a spokesperson for AA in the New York area — she was an excellent public speaker — and during that process, she developed a vision for a national campaign that would bring about a new understanding of alcoholism.

    You say in the book Marty Mann, and others in AA, were adamant that alcoholism should be understood as a disease.

    Yes. From the beginning, that was part of AA’s cure mechanism. AA said that alcoholism is not a moral failing. Rather, it’s an indication that something is wrong with you physiologically or psychologically (or some combination of the two). It’s beyond your control. You need to believe this is a disease.

    One thing Marty Mann did was reach out to a scientist at Yale, named Bunky Jellinek, who was kind of an odd character. (There’s some mystery about whether he had even earned a college degree.) But, by all accounts, he was an extremely energetic person, really passionate about the problem of alcoholism, and he seized upon Mann’s idea. He says, “Okay, we can have this PR campaign and it will help shore up our scientific research. We’ll sell the public on alcoholism as a medical problem and not a moral failing, and this will help us.”

    To boil this whole story down, the scientists got the cart before the horse. They didn’t have the money to research their theory that alcoholism was a physiological disease, but they got behind that idea, so the money would come. Then, when the money came, they learned that alcoholism was far more complex than the model they were using. The scientists at Yale liked what AA did, but they did not by any stretch think that AA was a cure-all for alcoholism. Neither, by the way, did Bill Wilson.

    That was something I learned in your book. I was surprised by Bill Wilson’s intellectual humility.

    All throughout his career, he could see that AA was not working for everybody. He worried about AA beliefs hardening into dogma, and he said “Just because something works for us, that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone.” Some of his later work was devoted to trying to find ways to get people other types of help.

    All along, the folks who were not beholden to AA’s story — i.e., the scientists who weren’t — had the sense that alcoholism is this really complex problem, which could be approached in numerous ways. At Yale, when Marty Mann was doing her campaign, researchers were developing treatment programs in Connecticut — some pilot programs. And AA was just one small part of them. It was very much like what science nowadays says is the way to go: You’ve got to use an array of different approaches to tackle alcoholism. It’s different for everybody.

    Today, many treatment programs are rooted in AA doctrine. And you say in the book that some forces in the treatment industry actively tried to suppress other approaches to helping people.

    It actually goes back to the 1960s. This psychiatrist in England, named D. L. Davies, found that a significant number of patients who went through alcoholic treatment programs later resumed drinking at levels he described as “normal.” He wrote a paper on his findings, and a number of big players in the AA movement disputed the study. One of them was Marvin Block, a doctor from Buffalo who had spearheaded the AMA’s (American Medical Association) campaign to recognize alcohol as an illness. Block said, “Well, the [people who learned to drink normally] must not be real alcoholics,” even though these men had been hospitalized for severe drinking problems.

    Another example is Mark and Linda Sobell. They did a study where they trained people in moderate drinking, and they found that a significantly higher number of them fared better [after practicing controlled drinking] than those in AA. Afterward, there was a fierce attack against them, which was publicized on 60 Minutes. It almost cost them their jobs, and it really set back any work in the area.

    My pet theory is that sobriety spreads in AA through “social contagion.” If a person who is discouraged about their drinking walks into an AA meeting, they’re likely to find a large group of people who have enjoyed substantial periods of sobriety, and who are willing to help them. I think people in AA are mimicking each other’s behaviors and attitudes – just like we do in other phases of life.

    I’ve had two quite long stretches of sobriety in AA, one when I was in college, in Boulder, Colorado, and another for about seven years in the 2000s, in Kansas City. In both cases, it was because I had strong social connections, and healthy routines. In Boulder, the meetings were almost a pretext for us to go out and socialize afterward. For the most part, I found the AA meetings in Kansas City to be insufferable. But there was a meditation house nearby, and after meditating, we’d go out for Mexican food afterwards. And that was enough to help me stay sober.

    But AA itself did not work for me. Especially after going through the steps, and really working them hard — and I really freaking worked them hard! — and hearing people say, “After you do that fourth, boy, it really changes your life.” And hearing them say that, over and over again. I just thought, “No. I do not believe this. It’s fine for you, but I just don’t believe in it.”

    In a recent New York Post article, you talked a bit about your drinking habits now. You practice moderation, but you say it takes some effort. Can you explain?

    It’s going well. I don’t take Naltrexone anymore, but that drug really helped disrupt my drinking patterns. I would take it and almost magically, I would drink about 50 percent less in a night.

    I combined that with that an app called CheckUp & Choices, which was developed by a psychologist, Reid Hester. That’s a kind of cognitive behavioral therapy app, where you do a very extensive questionnaire that gets you thinking about the situations in which you get triggered, and when you drink, and how much you drink. It helps you keep track of your frame of mind about drinking. Exercise is also a key part of my program. Having my spouse on board with this is also huge — evidence suggests this can make a difference, if you have spousal support.

    If you were to find out down the road that this approach does not work for you — if, heaven forbid, you fall back into full-blown alcoholism — are you confident you’ll be willing to revisit your approach?

    Yes. But I don’t see that happening. I see the opposite. I see, down the road, no drinking at all. That’s the direction we’re going. The direction is continually toward drinking less.

    I share many of your thoughts about AA. Sometimes I even have doubts about its strict emphasis on total abstinence and continuous sobriety. I heard a segment on NPR last week suggesting that AA’s chip system may even be counterproductive, because it can cause people who slip up in the program — or who drink very occasionally — to feel demoralized and ashamed. And as any treatment provider will tell you, those are precisely the feelings that may lead to even more drinking.

    That said, I think AA’s line about alcoholism being “cunning, baffling and powerful” is spot-on. People who struggle with addiction or alcoholism are prone to rationalization and self-deception. Everyone is a bit different, but it is obvious that some people should simply never drink under any circumstances whatsoever. If they do drink, the consequences can be devastating. This seems to me a difficult and tricky subject.

    I think the best answer to this is something one of the psychologists I interviewed said to me: if AA works for you, that’s the easiest and most effective solution. Similarly, with moderation, many people find in time that it’s much simpler to just stay away from that first drink than it is to try to control drinking.

    But if you look at large-scale statistics on drinking and recovery, most problem drinkers do not follow the traditional AA path of complete abstinence forever. Even those who are in AA for a while, working the steps and staying sober — statistics show that many will one day have another drink. What’s most dangerous in these cases, I think, is the belief that one drink will lead automatically to alcoholic behavior. That might be true for any given individual, but it’s not the truth for all, and studies have shown that believing it’s true tends to make it true.

    Purchase US of AA: How the Twelve Steps Hijacked the Science of Alcoholism on Amazon. For more about the book and its author, check out Joe Miller’s website.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Memories Like Velvet: Fear and Panic in Childhood

    Memories Like Velvet: Fear and Panic in Childhood

    Knowing that it’s “an emotional thing” doesn’t help much when I’m going through the anxiety and the terror and the fear in me, wondering if it will ever go away.

    I listen to the radio mornings while I’m getting breakfast and I hear all of this bad news. I don’t like it. It’s too much. Too sad, too violent. Not my thing.

    All I can say is I’m glad these things don’t happen around me. Then people would really be sorry.

    I mean, the other day I had a dentist appointment. I was scared and jittery and I’d thought about calling the whole thing off. Of course my dentist is a man. He could have started right in, slipping his hand along my legs, up around my thighs and that would have been that.

    And Saturday I had to go shopping. Needed some shampoo and conditioner and things like that. I was sixth on line and there was only one cashier so it was taking forever. I felt the sweat build up then drip down my face in little droplets but I don’t think anyone noticed.

    The skinny lady ahead of me turned sideways once but I think that was to see the price on these furry little doggies hanging down that the store was trying to get rid of fast. I don’t think she was too impressed because it didn’t take her long to read the tag and turn forward again. To wait, bored, wait her turn.

    Meantime I kept shifting from foot to foot and back again but so did everyone else so I felt like part of the crowd.

    As I kept hopping around I kept praying that no one ahead of me would get grumpy and start a fight with the cashier because, slow as she was, it was one of my days and I would have burst right out crying. I can’t help it. People say “stop it” and they think that’s so easy to do but it ain’t. Just being around people fighting and cussin’ gets me going and once that starts there’s no telling what’ll happen next. It’s what I call unpredictable.

    It’s one of those emotional problems, that’s what they call it. All I know is when things are calm, I’m okay. But once people get to fussing, it touches off something inside — sort of a frightened part — and I get hysterical.

    Like the time Jessica and I were playing some music. Things were good — we had raided the refrigerator and gotten pretzels and Diet Cokes and everything we wanted when all of a sudden her parents burst in the front door yelling at the top of their lungs. It was a fight between them, I knew that, but that didn’t stop the upset that started rising.

    I tried telling myself that it was nothing, that it wasn’t my fault or Jessica’s but sure enough I felt the lump in my throat grow bigger and bigger and lodge itself right smack where I didn’t want it. My hands grew clammy and I got up and walked around.

    Jessica could tell that something was going on, something was definitely brewing. She asked, “What’s up?” but when I tried to respond the words just didn’t come out right. Sounded like I was talking backwards.

    Meantime they kept at it and I got frantic. Did they always fucking talk this way? They glanced over at us girls and I thought they knew something was wrong, thought they could tell I wasn’t right, but I guess since I didn’t show any outward sign, they couldn’t tell. They weren’t perceptive.

    They just kept going so Jessica called them to come quick and then — then — they knew that something was up so they stopped yelling at each other’s foolishness and insanity and concentrated on me and kept holding my hands asking what was wrong. I couldn’t even begin to explain.

    After a while of no yelling and peace and quiet, I came back to reality. I calmed down. My distress sure scared the hell out of them and out of me. Knowing that it’s “an emotional thing” doesn’t help much when I’m going through the anxiety and the terror and the fear in me, wondering if it will ever go away. Then wondering if this thing is a keeper. I don’t want it to be a keeper. Go away, I say to myself and sometimes out loud. Go away and don’t come back again. It’s a nice sentiment but the reality is that the peace, quiet, and calm don’t last. They never do.

    Last year and the year before that I thought drinking some beers would help the anxiety — so I drank myself senseless — but the beers didn’t help at all. The high just made me feel paranoid and during the lows I’d feel even more depressed than before I started drinking. So that was that. No more beers, I said to myself. It was a horror giving it up and going through the feelings. Going through the terror.

    Will this always be with me?

    Will “e” always mean “emotional” to me or will there come a time when, someday down the road, when I’m all grown up and working and thinking of other things, will the letter “e” represent anything else to me other than emotional? Will I maybe think of “enterprising” or “entrepreneurial” or even “evergreen”?

    Perhaps, but I doubt it. I think that my first thought will be “emotional.” And if you say “what’s an ‘a’ word,” I’ll always say “alcohol.” Hey, it’s the hand I was dealt. It’s the genes I got or maybe, just maybe I was conditioned to be fine-tuned. Sensitive is what some people call it.

    Some people react so strangely when they find out what’s wrong. They think it’s either imagined or it isn’t that bad. So they smile or wave or talk condescendingly to me. They use simple words and they try to placate me, and when the waves of panic are still riding over me I look at them like they’re crazy. Can’t they even imagine what sheer terror is like?

    In front of Jessica’s parents my anxiety passed eventually. It rode its course. I breathed again, normally, and the clamminess began to subside. They still looked at me funny, like Jessica’s friend here is a bit of an oddball but I looked at them funny, too, because why would they walk into their home yelling and screaming like some fucking idiots? Besides, I know what’s wrong with me. It’s emotional.

    Sometimes I think that the world is nice and sometimes I wonder what it’s all about. I can’t take it when people scream, as I already told you, or when pans crash to the floor. Or when a balloon bursts. When several balloons burst at the same time it’s not good. Not good at all.

    I hate it when we’re driving along nice and smooth and someone gets too close to our car and we hit the brakes hard, hard, hard; the screech of the tires on the road just gets right under my skin.

    Backed up lines on parkways? Traffic stopped on New York bridges? Especially when we’re at the highest point on the bridge — no longer going up and not yet heading down? That damn pinnacle is not my favorite place to be.

    I imagine all of us dangling over the side of that metal bridge with each one of us holding on with one hand, holding on for dear life and that sweat breaks out once again as I concentrate so hard to hold on and wait, wait, wait for someone to come along and rescue us. And I know it’s my overactive imagination at work, but why do the pictures it paints have to be so damned vivid?

    Walking along from one house to another when suddenly a lawn mower starts up so loudly I jump and cover my ears. Talk about breaking the sound barrier. That’s how it seems to me, anyway. I freeze in my tracks but then realize I’m not getting anywhere at all so I carry on, wondering why it is that a silent lawn mower can’t be made or at least a lawn mower that’s nice and quiet? That would be good. That shouldn’t be too hard to invent.

    I like the Fourth of July because everything looks so pretty with the sky all lit up like that with the pyrotechnics going off in various designs but I get so scared when a cherry bomb or something goes off next door. I just have to cry. I can’t help it.

    Noises aren’t the only things. Flashing lights set me off, too, like the time we had a school dance on a Friday night and someone hit the ceiling lights and suddenly those strobe lights were flashing, flashing, flashing and I know those disco lights were meant to add a certain ambiance to the party but my head started spinning and I had to just get out of there. Fast.

    It’s a weird thing. But the good times are good times. I like looking at flowers out in the backyard so closely, I want to squint to see every inch of them. Velvet they feel like.

    I love running around with my dog Penny, spinning and twirling and feeling the grass cool beneath my feet while an airplane flies gently overhead. You could call that one of my good days. It’s peace, quiet, and feeling comfortable. I call it progress. I’ll take it.

    I guess for once I feel I’m as free as the birds I see gliding overhead and I know there’s nothing to cry over and nothing to be afraid of anymore.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 10 Experiences That Are Way Worse When You Relapse

    10 Experiences That Are Way Worse When You Relapse

    There is no situation that cannot be made worse by relapse.

    No matter how you slice it, relapse is a drag.

    Making the decision to quit wasn’t easy. Your life hadn’t been going in the right direction for a while. A lot of things were going wrong, and most of them were because of drugs, alcohol or other addictive behaviors. The people in your life were starting to resent you and think you were nothing but trouble, and you know what? They probably weren’t wrong.

    You finally made the right decision for yourself and for those around you, and you got clean. You looked different, you felt different, and the people in your life that mattered were proud of you.

    Then you relapsed.

    Relapse isn’t part of recovery for everyone, but it is extremely prevalent. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, relapse rates for all substance use disorders, including alcohol, is 40-60 percent.

    If you’re one of those people who quit drinking or using and never looked back, good for you. You’re an inspiration to a lot of people and you should be proud of yourself.

    But if you’ve relapsed, don’t give up. You’re in good company. And what you’ll realize is that once you get clean and relapse, it just isn’t nearly as fun anymore. Sitting at the bar and getting hammered feels different; doing a line feels different; waking up in the morning broke as a joke feels different. I mean, even having a huge piece of cake feels different.

    Here are 10 disappointing side effects of relapsing:

    1. Two-Day Hangovers

    If you drank all night–or worse, all day and night–and think that your hangover doesn’t seem all that bad, you’re probably still drunk. Hangovers just aren’t as cute the second time around. While you used to consider yourself a professional drinker, now that you’ve relapsed you know you’re just some idiot that drank too much, blacked out and acted the fool. You now have to wait a whole day before you feel even somewhat human again. That’s if you’re lucky. The two-day hangover seems to be related to age as much as it is dependent on how much you drink. Day one is when your head pounds like a heartbeat and your mouth feels like the inside of a box of triscuits, while day two is when you’re just tired and missing 40 points from your IQ.

    2. Letting People Down

    Oh hey, people weren’t actually counting on you, were they? Get ready for some super awkward conversations. When you first got clean, a lot of people were proud of you. It could have been your significant other, your friends, or your coworkers A lot of them were probably even people that you didn’t think noticed that you had a problem. That felt good. You had some pride, and for once could hold your head high. Now that you relapsed you couldn’t feel more stupid. Because when you quit you admitted to everyone that you had a problem and you were trying to fix it. But did you? Nope.

    3. Partying Feels Like a Job Now

    Remember back in the day when you first started partying? It was beautiful then, or at least some of it was. The scenes you were a part of were fun and celebratory, and there was an anticipation in the air like something good and amazing was going to come your way? Or maybe it was just a feeling you were chasing, and when you drank or used you finally felt okay. Yeah, well, once you relapse those days are gone. Whether you’re heading on down to the bar or getting ready to shoot up, you’re pretty much on the clock. Partying now is like strapping on your hard hat and going to work.

    4. Ruined Relationships

    Back when you first started using you didn’t even think that your addictions would affect your relationships. Maybe you found someone that partied just as hard as you do, or maybe you found someone that wanted to fix you and take care of you. Then as you moved through life you started seeing the failed relationships pile up. When you relapse, you aren’t kidding yourself anymore. You totally know your addiction is going to mess everything up but you do it anyway. It’s more just a matter of long you can pull off the con before you get busted.

    5. Hanging with People You Don’t Like

    When you were partying all the time you had all sorts of friends. Then when you stopped you noticed most of them vanished. But it didn’t matter because you also noticed that you didn’t like them a whole lot anyway. Like, seriously, why were you hanging out with that dude? This becomes way more obvious after you relapse. You know that your crew is a cadre of wastrels, scammers and con artists, but you keep hanging with them anyway because anyone else might call you out on your behavior.

    6. Being Broke

    Whether we like to admit it or not, money matters in this world. When you were younger and partying like mad, being broke might have even felt just a tad romantic for a little while, but most people who have struggled with addiction have money problems at some point. That is, unless you have an unlimited supply of money, which is even worse than being broke. When you got clean, all of a sudden you had more money, which in anyone’s book is a good thing. But now that you’ve relapsed, you’re back to bumming drinks, waiting until payday, and paying for things with change.

    7. Humiliation

    Okay, just admit it: you feel like an idiot. Back in the day, you might have used your substance of choice to feel more comfortable around people, or at least more comfortable with yourself. Whether you got messed up to feel cool at a social gathering or you used by yourself at home, you knew were different than anyone else. That you weren’t a sheep. You had your own vibe. Now you just feel stupid. Once you relapse, you’re either going to just try and hide your use or you’re going to use and just try to front like you feel cool about it. Either way, you’re not fooling anyone.

    8. Work Suffers

    Whether you’re a landscaper, a CEO, or a freelance writer, if you’re active in your addiction, your work is going to suffer as a result. When you were using before, you might have fooled yourself into thinking that your drug or alcohol use wasn’t affecting your work but at some point, you knew that it was. It might have even been a big reason that you stopped. Now that you relapsed you just can’t even fake it anymore. If you’re working for someone else, you know it’s just a matter of time before your poor job performance gets outed, and if you’re working for yourself well… Good luck.

    9. It’s Harder to Lie to Yourself

    People always act like lying to someone else is a big deal. Well, it is, but it’s nothing compared to how you might choose to lie to yourself. You know the lies. You’re under control. You can quit whenever you want. This isn’t that big of a deal.  When you relapse it’s pretty much impossible to do that anymore. You know just how much your addiction takes from you, and you know it’s just a matter of time until everything is just incredibly awful all over again.

    10. You Have to Find New People to Fool

    Maybe you need to find a new bar to start hanging out at where everyone doesn’t know that you’re going to get obnoxious and forget to pay your tab. Maybe you want to find someone new to date that doesn’t know how everything is going to end in total disaster. Maybe you need to find a job where your boss doesn’t know you’re going to be late all the time until you get fired. When you relapse it’s like starting all over again. But you know, not in a good way.

    Relapsing isn’t the end of the world, and since so many people have gone through it, you’ll have lots of support when you come back. You’ve learned what not to do next time you’re faced with whatever it was that triggered this episode of drug or alcohol use, and now you’re learning how to come back from it. Just keep your head up and keep working at it. You’ll get there.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Tales of a High-Bottom Alcoholic

    Tales of a High-Bottom Alcoholic

    Having a high bottom can be more dangerous because it can go undetected for life. You can end up just living a soulless life.

    When I first got sober someone referred to me as having a “high bottom.” A friend, trying to be funny, yelled out, “that’s just because she has long legs!”

    I was then told that a high bottom meant I had not caused too much damage to myself or others while I was drinking, but I feel like that’s subjective. A “low bottom” does not really leave much open to interpretation: jail, interventions, hospital, losing your family, your job, your home. You have to decide: get sober or suffer terrible consequences, one of which might be death.

    A person experiencing a high bottom may not appear to be suffering outwardly, but inside life can be unbearable, unmanageable, or just not as good as it could be. My periodical heavy drinking was interfering with my quality of life and I had had enough. Surviving isn’t half as fun as thriving, not just financially but emotionally and physically.

    When I first got sober I was sort of mad I didn’t have a low bottom; I might have gotten sober sooner and I would know for sure I had a problem. I was also mad that my idea of fun had to change. I wore beer goggles to view my whole life. Anything was tolerable if there was a “reward” later—later that night, later that week, or later that month. If I could look forward to cutting loose at some point, the rest of life seemed more bearable.

    I co-wrote and co-starred in a film called The Foxy Merkins. It went to Sundance, sold out premieres, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. I drank on and off when I was writing, filming, and at all the premieres. In every situation, I felt like something was missing and I would drink more to get to the place of feeling complete…but it never came. Drinking had stopped being fun or gratifying because I wasn’t connected to myself. For me, that was a low bottom. I want and need to be fully connected to great moments in my life.

    Some of my friends/enablers still try to get me to drink and don’t see what the big deal is, while other friends say “if Jackie can quit drinking, anyone can do it.” It’s not black or white, and that gray area almost kept me drinking for life. I can always point to someone else who has a worse drinking problem. If you have cancer, you’re going to treat it no matter how minor it is. Your mind isn’t trying to tell you to look at how bad the other guy’s cancer is. No one’s saying “your cancer is nothing in comparison. Stop being a baby. You can moderate cancer. Forget about it.” That is what my brain did for years, and what my enablers told me: “That guy is falling down drunk. Have you ever fallen anywhere? NO. Then you are not an alcoholic.”

    When I first got sober I thought “why me?” Today I still wonder “why me,” but it’s more “why am I so lucky to get to live in the moment and to feel all of my feelings?” When I finally got to this place, I stopped being mad that I did not have a clear low bottom. It sounds ridiculous to me now but I had been really frustrated about it. I thought: “I am doing this program with all I got, I should be able to half-ass it because I have not caused as much wreckage as most people.” That is an example of my crazy alcoholic diseased thinking.

    Now I know everyone has a different bottom. Every day of my life, my head tells me I can drink and I have to remind it I don’t even want to drink. My mind wants to kill me: it only leaves me alive to have a vehicle to run around in. It is my job every day to remind myself that my life is so much more rewarding now. Cash and prizes are just extras, the real rewards are free and deeply fulfilling.

    Being honest and useful to the world is priceless. It’s easy to sleep at night when I am not lying to anyone, especially myself. Even if I’d never experienced any external repercussions from lying, it took a toll on me, because I knew. There is nothing like going to sleep at night with a clear conscience.

    When I heard that they might be putting high-bottom stories in the Big Book, I experienced a range of emotions. I was happy that other high bottoms will find stories they can relate to in the book. My ego, on the other hand, went nuts: WHAT?!! I would have killed to have heard high-bottom stories when I came in. I might have gotten sober sooner. Or maybe my dad might have been able to get sober. But for today, I am not waiting to blow off steam. I don’t feel that I deserve to drink because I have been wronged. That’s how I used to live. If something went “wrong” I had to have a drink.

    I never want to make blanket statements, these are my opinions and they change often. At no time do I want to claim that my opinions are set in stone. As my perception continues to grow, my opinions will change for the better.

    “Normal” drinkers are people who never or rarely suffer consequences from drinking. They rarely get drunk, nor do they ask themselves if they have a drinking problem. They never feel they must learn to moderate their use. High-bottom drinkers can hold down a job, they can have relationships, and no one gives them an intervention; but their souls deteriorate over time. They tell themselves they will learn to moderate. High-bottom drinkers are usually surrounded by other functioning alcoholics and enablers—people who do not want the person with alcoholism to get better because that means they will have to look at themselves, and they won’t look better in comparison anymore.

    Having a high bottom can be more dangerous because it can go undetected for life. You can end up just living a soulless life. Everything seems fine, but you never feel real gratification or get to know the real you or the greatness you are capable of.

    With a low bottom, people are forced to quit drinking: they have to or they will die. High bottoms aren’t necessarily facing death, but they have to quit to really live. At least I did. Things still don’t go perfectly, but how boring would that life be? I now do my best to welcome my life challenges. I now know how to deal with them head-on, and if I don’t I have a crew of new friends that can help me help myself. Now, fun is always being in the present moment, connected to all that is, and not trying to figure out the next drink.

    Life is not perfect, but at the same time, it kinda is.

    See Jackie in Wild Nights with Emily, now playing in selected theaters!

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Equilibrium, Truth, and Hope: What It’s Like to Be a Writer in Recovery

    Equilibrium, Truth, and Hope: What It’s Like to Be a Writer in Recovery

    We speak to four accomplished writers about their writing process and how it relates to their recovery.

    Writing has been the greatest gift of my recovery. Seven years ago I sat at my desk — as instructed by a sponsor who’d asked me to start journaling — with my pen poised, but with a numbness between my mind and the paper. I just didn’t know where to start — what to write, or how to say it. I was numb. My mind felt blank and my hand wouldn’t move. My sponsor told me to start small: write a plan for the day, or express how I feel. Record what you’ve done right each day, she said.

    Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Words flowed out of me like a dam had been removed from an overflowing river. Seven years later, I’ve filled many journals, become a full-time writer and journalist, published hundreds of articles online, and have begun writing my memoir. Writing is my number one means of expression — I often choose it over an in-person conversation. Some kind of magic happens when I place my fingers on the keyboard. Writing helps me to connect my mind and body, to ground myself. It gives me the breathing space to process my thoughts. Writing shows me how far I’ve come, but also what’s left to heal. I can’t imagine a life without writing.

    AWP 2019, Portland, OR

    As I’ve started to take myself more seriously as a writer, I decided to venture out into the world of my peers. I recently attended an Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Portland. It is the largest literary conference in North America readings, panel discussions, and lectures. What struck me the most about the conference was the sheer volume of people—there were 12,000 attendees. If you’re new to the writing world, AWP can leave you feeling a little out of your depth — looking out the lens of comparison as opposed to shining in your own light. For this introvert and empath, it was way too much. I hate crowds, and I struggle to make meaningless chit-chat.

    While I found I’m not alone in my feelings of overwhelm and my desire to lock myself in a dark room surrounded only with books and a flashlight for the next month, I did take the opportunity to indulge my curiosity about the emerging cohort of writers who have spoken openly about their recovery. I wanted to know if it was possible to co-exist in a world that is usually associated with copious amounts of wine, and whether these writers’ pain from addiction could be used as a catalyst for healing in the world.

    Writers in Recovery

    I spoke to writers Kerry Neville, Randall Horton, Kelly Thompson, and Penny Guisinger to understand their writing process and how it relates to their recovery.

    Kerry Neville

     

    Kerry Neville is the author of the books Necessary Lies and Remember to Forget Me. She is the recipient of numerous prizes in fiction, a former Fulbright Scholar, and the coordinator of the graduate and undergraduate creative writing program at Georgia College & State University, where she is also an assistant professor of creative writing.

    How has recovery influenced your writing, and in what ways?

    When I write out of my own experience, out of my own complicated relationship with bipolar disorder and about my recovering from an eating disorder and alcohol use disorder, for instance, I often navigate between the implicit bias I have that comes out of my own factual experience and the imperative to try to translate that into a more universal felt understanding. I am interested in how such struggles with these types of disorders might reveal something more about what it means for us to be in connection or disconnection with each other. When I am “inside” my own experience of this illness, it’s isolating — insularity prevents insight. So in my writing, I try to understand how grief, loneliness, and depression, the tightrope many of us walk regardless of a mental health diagnosis, might link us together and how we can help each other to continue on.

    Conversely, in what ways has writing helped your recovery?

    In my movement toward recovery and stability and back into my writing self, I understood that while it might be desperately lonely out there, we have an obligation to reach out for each other, to pay attention, to live in truth and integrity. This understanding, once I emerged from that bleak, dark well, fueled the writing, helped me find my way back through words that built sentences that created paragraphs that imagined stories — and writing is an act of hope.

    How do you deal with the ups and downs of being a writer (rejections, etc.) in a healthy way?

    In terms of dealing with rejection? One day at a time, one submission at a time. And remembering I write not for acceptance but for connection — to myself, to others. 

    Randall Horton

    Randall Horton is the author of several books: The Definition of Place, Lingua Franca of Ninth Street, Hook, A Memoir and Pitch Dark Anarchy: Poems. He is the recipient of various poetry awards and prizes, including the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award. Randall is a member of the Affrilachian Poets and an associate professor of English at the University of New Haven.

    How has recovery influenced your writing, and in what ways?

    To be honest with you, I don’t know that it has. However, when I was in JAS (Jail Addiction Services) in Montgomery County, I was introduced to the idea of writing through a group session we used to have with a social worker. This person took an interest in my writing during this time and encouraged me to continue the path that I now currently follow.

    Conversely, in what ways has writing helped your recovery?

    I will say this: Writing helps me to not want to sell drugs, pick up a package and hustle, or the myriad things I thought were necessary for me to live. For me, writing shows me how to be human; even when I resist, the writing is my equilibrium.

    How do you deal with the ups and downs of being a writer (rejections, etc.) in a healthy way?

    Well, the first word I learned as a little child was “no.” So rejection doesn’t bother me one bit. I have been to prison. I have lived on the streets and had a whole alternate existence as a human being in this society. With that said, writing and the writing life is easy because I’m playing with house money, so I never lose. Feel me?

    Kelly Thompson

    Kelly Thompson’s work has been published in Guernica, Entropy, The Rumpus, and various other publications and literary journals. Her essay “Hand Me Down Stories” was nominated for a Pushcart. Kelly curates Voices on Addiction at The Rumpus, where she also serves as a contributor.

    How has recovery influenced your writing, and in what ways?

    Recovery is a way of life. My recovery determines my writing, relationships, daily life, and choices. I prioritize my sobriety over everything else. It comes first. My recovery is based on certain principles. As Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” So that, as well as other principles like honesty, openness to new ideas, and nonresistance constitute a daily practice in my life. That flows into my writing practice as well. So I really can’t separate the two. For me, it is all one thing. Recovery helped me uncover my truth, which led me to write.

    Conversely, in what ways has writing helped your recovery?

    To write is my heart’s desire. My passion. By writing, I am doing what I was born to do. Once I peeled away the layers of conditioning that kept me from writing —and there were many — once I committed to writing as a lifelong practice, doors began opening, and any obstacles in the way of my writing began to dissolve. I have learned that purpose is integral to recovery, so by fulfilling it, by following my passion, so to speak, my recovery is strengthened. They inform each other. My recovery and writing go hand in hand.

    How do you deal with the ups and downs of being a writer (rejections, etc.) in a healthy way?

    I think it was Barry Lopez who said, “Despair is the great temptation.” I can’t afford to go there. It’s a numbers game, so in the beginning, I started by submitting my writing frequently to publications I admired. I set a goal of getting as many rejections as possible and considering that a win. The rule I set for myself was that upon receiving a rejection, I would immediately send the piece to the next tier of submissions. By doing that, I was able to transition into not taking rejection personally. I also learned from the process. I learned that I was often sending things out prematurely. I learned to sit on my writing for a bit and then return to it. Now, as a curator for The Rumpus and “Voices on Addiction,” I’m on the other side of it, as well. That experience has taught me firsthand that rejections often have nothing to do with the quality of the writing. It’s usually more a matter of timing, fit, and the column’s needs. At the same time, the best submissions are truly final drafts and need little to no edits. That continues to teach me a lot about my writing and submission process. If you can become a reader for a publication, go for it, because you’ll learn from it.

    Penny Guisinger

    Penny Guisinger is the author of the book Postcards from Here. Her work has appeared in various publications, such as River Teeth, Guernica, the Brevity blog, and Solstice Literary Magazine. She has been nominated for a Pushcart, has won the Maine Literary Award, and was twice named a notable in Best American Essays. She is the assistant editor at Brevity Magazine, the director of Iota: Conference of Short Prose, and the founder of the popular and hilarious blog, My Cranky Recovery.

    How has recovery influenced your writing, and in what ways?

    I’m a CNF [creative nonfiction] writer, and so am constantly mining real life for writeable moments. Recovery demands that we dig deep into ourselves and develop a clear understanding of our own minds and how they work. As I go through life as a person in recovery, I have learned how to experience the experience of every experience, which is a ridiculous thing to say but it’s true. I am always taking several steps back to maintain awareness of what’s happening and how it might be impacting my sobriety. As such, it’s honed my self-observation skills which I also use as a writer. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that recovery makes rich material for writing. (Is that cynical?)

    Conversely, in what ways has writing helped your recovery?

    Writing has not helped my recovery at all, but publishing about recovery has helped a lot. There is a lot about 12-step programs that I don’t find useful, but one very useful thing that happens at meetings is this thing where we admit our addictions out loud by saying (in my case), “I’m an alcoholic.” Saying those words helped make it real for me. Publishing this particular truth is like saying that to the whole world. It’s terrifying and, ultimately, very freeing.

    How do you deal with the ups and downs of being a writer (rejections, etc.) in a healthy way?

    I take the little downs in stride: rejection is part of the job, and usually it doesn’t bother me. (There are some significant exceptions: a few that I’ve taken pretty hard!) I get more weighed down by the big ones: imposter syndrome, comparing myself to other writers, feeling let down after this-or-that publication didn’t manage to transform my life. I manage that exactly the way I manage my recovery: through community. I would be as dead in the water without my writing community as I would be without my recovery community, and what a gift it is when those two communities overlap.

     

    Do you have some additions? Tell us in the comments.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Mistakes I Made on My Journey Toward Self-Compassion

    Mistakes I Made on My Journey Toward Self-Compassion

    The emotional and physical abuse had cost me every last ounce of self-respect I had. But I refused to see myself as weak, a victim.

    John is escorted into the courthouse wearing a dirty ochre jumpsuit, cuffed at both the wrists and ankles. He looks straight at me in the wing and then quickly lowers his eyes, while I follow him boldly with my gaze, as if this is a staring contest I intend to win.

    I notice the public defender right away, a small bald man who pulls his briefcase behind him like a suitcase. He is wiry and can’t sit still, either hopped up on coffee or cocaine. The district attorney has instructed me not to get emotional. “This is just a hearing,” she says, “there’s no jury yet, and judges don’t like it when you seem like an unreliable narrator.”

    I roll my eyes. “I’m not going to get emotional,” I say, “It’s not my thing.” She tells me she has seen public defenders get hostile, make accusations, try strategies to get a victim discombobulated, to contradict herself, to look mentally unstable.

    Not me.

    When I received the subpoena to testify, I was also given a victim’s packet, a small handful of pamphlets informing me of shelters, therapists, and resources available to petition for restitution. I threw them away. I refuse to be a victim.

    They call me Jane Doe and I am satisfied with this identity. I would rather be anyone than who I am: a survivor of his raging chaos, the predictable woman who positions herself as collateral damage in a psychodrama in which she envisions herself the savior. I internally restructure my story to cast myself as a resilient hero, an arbiter of the complicated events of my life that have somehow made me stronger, clearer, more potent in my circuitous journey.

    I tell myself John was an opponent, not my perpetrator. A perpetrator is an illusion, a false dichotomy of black and white hats. He didn’t beat me up, I beat myself up. He was my sparring partner, and I wanted to know my weaknesses and where to grow stronger. Like Clouseau with Cato, I gave him access to my home, my body, my mindset, my skill-set. I gave him my weapons and the keys to my personal kingdom. I asked him not to use them against me, but God knew we would eat of the fruit and gave us access to it anyway.

    I run through the ways I never trusted John, as this is proof that I couldn’t have been betrayed. Either I don’t believe I deserve happiness, or I generated my own ultramarathon training session. I suspect it’s the former, but I try to convince myself it’s the latter. I may lose a battle, but I won’t lose the war. I repeat this to myself as I sit in the DA’s office, waiting to be called to the stand.

    “Did anything the defendant do frighten you?” she asks.

    Very little the defendant has done the past four years has not frightened me. To be more precise, the emotional and physical abuse have cost me every last ounce of self-respect I had. But I refuse to see myself as weak, a victim.

    “No.”

    She doesn’t shake her head in disgust, but rather acquiesces, as if she has seen this over and over.

    ***

    The first time John broke into my home, I was at work. When I got home, he was on the balcony with a kitchen knife he’d used to cut his hair. When he saw me, he pressed the knife to his throat, just slightly, to make an indentation without blood. He stared at me until my fear softened to compassion. I hadn’t seen him in months, but I didn’t call the police. I just calmly talked him down the stairs, as if he were a negligent child, and reminded him that he could have seriously hurt someone. I politely asked him to please not break in again.

    “Okay,” he said.

    When his mom hadn’t heard from him in over ten days, she called me to ask for help. I researched addiction symptoms online, and searched local arrest records until I found him. Since his arrest had nothing to do with me, I convinced myself I could be of service and made an appointment to visit him in West Valley Detention Center. The weeks that followed were a jumble of court proceedings and miscommunications.

    He was released in less than a month with a misdemeanor and a punch card for Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

    I saw him as the victim of a system that didn’t understand his illness and I was defensive and proactively defiant. I spent his first night out of custody in a motel room with him, nurturing his wounded spirit.

    Then I helped him get his car out of impound, let him borrow money, helped him get medications and appointments, helped him get back into school and into a part-time job, and genuinely believed we would fight the madness with surefooted logic and love.

    No matter how deep into the rabbit hole of illness he descended, through the drinking, cocaine and hallucinogens, and even when his numerous arrests would sometimes lead to jail and eventually prison, nothing shook my loyalty.

    “I love you,” I reassured him, “As long as you exist in any form, anywhere, I will find you. I will always come to you. Wherever you are, I will be there. There is nowhere I won’t look. In life or in death, I will come for you.”

    And I meant it. I loved John irrationally, with an intensity I didn’t have for myself or my well-being. I loved him in all the ways no one loved me, and I nurtured his brokenness like I wish someone had nurtured mine. I couldn’t go back and hold myself as a little girl, so I clung to him, and to the idea of rescuing him.

    I didn’t ask him to change, I didn’t even know what change would look like. I loved him without regard to what he did. I loved every muscle and hair on his body, every nuance of his mouth: the way it silently shook instead of making noise when he laughed, the wide sardonic grin, and even pursed with displeasure. I loved his deep voice and his dramatic anger, louder and more direct than anything I am or could ever display.

    I loved him for his ability to fall apart.

    When he broke into my home again, the consequences were more dire.

    ***

    After John was convicted, I broke all communication with him and got myself into therapy. After the hearing, the judge insisted on a protective order for me and my children. Shaking, I took the papers into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, a skeleton of a woman, 25 pounds thinner than I was when I was first subpoenaed. I didn’t recognize the frail woman looking back at me. All I knew is that I needed to change.

    I was raised to turn the other cheek. If someone takes your cloak, give him your shirt. If he imposes on you for one mile, go with him two.

    My mother taught me if a man tries to abduct you, pretend you adore him, and you won’t get hurt. I never fought back. I was raised to respond to aggression with a smile.

    I was drawn to people with addictions the way I am drawn to sugar, metabolizing them quickly and easily, with a counterintuitive calm. I was drawn to the way they let me play a supporting role in their life drama, so I didn’t have to recognize my own drama. With someone chaotic and wild and suffering, I didn’t have to think about myself. There was always somewhere to hide.

    I thought turning the other cheek made me a good person. I didn’t care how many slaps that got me or how much it hurt. I just kept turning the other cheek.

    My therapist recommended a daily yoga practice, so I began the journey of learning to listen to and trust my body. Through yoga, I learned to pay attention to my body. I began to recognize I could feel, and that I did feel, and I learned to be more honest with myself about the trauma lodged in my body.

    Before yoga, I didn’t even recognize trauma.

    It took sitting in my pain, rather than working to fix everyone else’s, to teach me to pay attention to my own needs. The process started with breathing mindfully, and then moving mindfully. Eventually I learned to feel my body, then recognize its pain, and eventually, recognize desire.

    I am a recovering enabler. I had to unlearn self-abnegation to understand that you can’t really be empathetic until you know where you end and someone else begins.

    Meeting my own needs serves as an example for others to meet theirs. When we show compassion and care for ourselves, we give others in our lives implicit permission to find wholeness in themselves, without needing or relying on us.

    Now I begin every morning with sitting in stillness, listening to my body, and paying attention to what comes up, even if it’s painful. Especially if it’s painful. Since I’ve committed to this daily spiritual practice of ruthless self-honesty, I haven’t had time to rescue anyone else. I have enough to rescue right here.

    Listening to the wisdom of my body has healed the cognitive dissonance once lodged in my psyche. I can now talk lovingly to the demons inside, rather than projecting them onto other people, trying to heal in others what I didn’t know was wrong in myself.

    Letting someone hurt you in the name of love hurts them too.

    Before we can be in a healthy relationship with another, we need to be self-aware enough to know who we are, and to identify what we want and don’t want. And we can’t do that when we spend all our time running around trying to fix other people.

    I no longer want to be anyone’s light or hope or savior. Now, I’m committed to being my own best friend.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How I Stopped Hurting Myself in the Name of Love: Tales of a Recovering Enabler

    How I Stopped Hurting Myself in the Name of Love: Tales of a Recovering Enabler

    The emotional and physical abuse had cost me every last ounce of self-respect I had. But I refused to see myself as weak, a victim.

    John is escorted into the courthouse wearing a dirty ochre jumpsuit, cuffed at both the wrists and ankles. He looks straight at me in the wing and then quickly lowers his eyes, while I follow him boldly with my gaze, as if this is a staring contest I intend to win.

    I notice the public defender right away, a small bald man who pulls his briefcase behind him like a suitcase. He is wiry and can’t sit still, either hopped up on coffee or cocaine. The district attorney has instructed me not to get emotional. “This is just a hearing,” she says, “there’s no jury yet, and judges don’t like it when you seem like an unreliable narrator.”

    I roll my eyes. “I’m not going to get emotional,” I say, “It’s not my thing.” She tells me she has seen public defenders get hostile, make accusations, try strategies to get a victim discombobulated, to contradict herself, to look mentally unstable.

    Not me.

    When I received the subpoena to testify, I was also given a victim’s packet, a small handful of pamphlets informing me of shelters, therapists, and resources available to petition for restitution. I threw them away. I refuse to be a victim.

    They call me Jane Doe and I am satisfied with this identity. I would rather be anyone than who I am: a survivor of his raging chaos, the predictable woman who positions herself as collateral damage in a psychodrama in which she envisions herself the savior. I internally restructure my story to cast myself as a resilient hero, an arbiter of the complicated events of my life that have somehow made me stronger, clearer, more potent in my circuitous journey.

    I tell myself John was an opponent, not my perpetrator. A perpetrator is an illusion, a false dichotomy of black and white hats. He didn’t beat me up, I beat myself up. He was my sparring partner, and I wanted to know my weaknesses and where to grow stronger. Like Clouseau with Cato, I gave him access to my home, my body, my mindset, my skill-set. I gave him my weapons and the keys to my personal kingdom. I asked him not to use them against me, but God knew we would eat of the fruit and gave us access to it anyway.

    I run through the ways I never trusted John, as this is proof that I couldn’t have been betrayed. Either I don’t believe I deserve happiness, or I generated my own ultramarathon training session. I suspect it’s the former, but I try to convince myself it’s the latter. I may lose a battle, but I won’t lose the war. I repeat this to myself as I sit in the DA’s office, waiting to be called to the stand.

    “Did anything the defendant do frighten you?” she asks.

    Very little the defendant has done the past four years has not frightened me. To be more precise, the emotional and physical abuse have cost me every last ounce of self-respect I had. But I refuse to see myself as weak, a victim.

    “No.”

    She doesn’t shake her head in disgust, but rather acquiesces, as if she has seen this over and over.

    ***

    The first time John broke into my home, I was at work. When I got home, he was on the balcony with a kitchen knife he’d used to cut his hair. When he saw me, he pressed the knife to his throat, just slightly, to make an indentation without blood. He stared at me until my fear softened to compassion. I hadn’t seen him in months, but I didn’t call the police. I just calmly talked him down the stairs, as if he were a negligent child, and reminded him that he could have seriously hurt someone. I politely asked him to please not break in again.

    “Okay,” he said.

    When his mom hadn’t heard from him in over ten days, she called me to ask for help. I researched addiction symptoms online, and searched local arrest records until I found him. Since his arrest had nothing to do with me, I convinced myself I could be of service and made an appointment to visit him in West Valley Detention Center. The weeks that followed were a jumble of court proceedings and miscommunications.

    He was released in less than a month with a misdemeanor and a punch card for Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

    I saw him as the victim of a system that didn’t understand his illness and I was defensive and proactively defiant. I spent his first night out of custody in a motel room with him, nurturing his wounded spirit.

    Then I helped him get his car out of impound, let him borrow money, helped him get medications and appointments, helped him get back into school and into a part-time job, and genuinely believed we would fight the madness with surefooted logic and love.

    No matter how deep into the rabbit hole of illness he descended, through the drinking, cocaine and hallucinogens, and even when his numerous arrests would sometimes lead to jail and eventually prison, nothing shook my loyalty.

    “I love you,” I reassured him, “As long as you exist in any form, anywhere, I will find you. I will always come to you. Wherever you are, I will be there. There is nowhere I won’t look. In life or in death, I will come for you.”

    And I meant it. I loved John irrationally, with an intensity I didn’t have for myself or my well-being. I loved him in all the ways no one loved me, and I nurtured his brokenness like I wish someone had nurtured mine. I couldn’t go back and hold myself as a little girl, so I clung to him, and to the idea of rescuing him.

    I didn’t ask him to change, I didn’t even know what change would look like. I loved him without regard to what he did. I loved every muscle and hair on his body, every nuance of his mouth: the way it silently shook instead of making noise when he laughed, the wide sardonic grin, and even pursed with displeasure. I loved his deep voice and his dramatic anger, louder and more direct than anything I am or could ever display.

    I loved him for his ability to fall apart.

    When he broke into my home again, the consequences were more dire.

    ***

    After John was convicted, I broke all communication with him and got myself into therapy. After the hearing, the judge insisted on a protective order for me and my children. Shaking, I took the papers into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, a skeleton of a woman, 25 pounds thinner than I was when I was first subpoenaed. I didn’t recognize the frail woman looking back at me. All I knew is that I needed to change.

    I was raised to turn the other cheek. If someone takes your cloak, give him your shirt. If he imposes on you for one mile, go with him two.

    My mother taught me if a man tries to abduct you, pretend you adore him, and you won’t get hurt. I never fought back. I was raised to respond to aggression with a smile.

    I was drawn to people with addictions the way I am drawn to sugar, metabolizing them quickly and easily, with a counterintuitive calm. I was drawn to the way they let me play a supporting role in their life drama, so I didn’t have to recognize my own drama. With someone chaotic and wild and suffering, I didn’t have to think about myself. There was always somewhere to hide.

    I thought turning the other cheek made me a good person. I didn’t care how many slaps that got me or how much it hurt. I just kept turning the other cheek.

    My therapist recommended a daily yoga practice, so I began the journey of learning to listen to and trust my body. Through yoga, I learned to pay attention to my body. I began to recognize I could feel, and that I did feel, and I learned to be more honest with myself about the trauma lodged in my body.

    Before yoga, I didn’t even recognize trauma.

    It took sitting in my pain, rather than working to fix everyone else’s, to teach me to pay attention to my own needs. The process started with breathing mindfully, and then moving mindfully. Eventually I learned to feel my body, then recognize its pain, and eventually, recognize desire.

    I am a recovering enabler. I had to unlearn self-abnegation to understand that you can’t really be empathetic until you know where you end and someone else begins.

    Meeting my own needs serves as an example for others to meet theirs. When we show compassion and care for ourselves, we give others in our lives implicit permission to find wholeness in themselves, without needing or relying on us.

    Now I begin every morning with sitting in stillness, listening to my body, and paying attention to what comes up, even if it’s painful. Especially if it’s painful. Since I’ve committed to this daily spiritual practice of ruthless self-honesty, I haven’t had time to rescue anyone else. I have enough to rescue right here.

    Listening to the wisdom of my body has healed the cognitive dissonance once lodged in my psyche. I can now talk lovingly to the demons inside, rather than projecting them onto other people, trying to heal in others what I didn’t know was wrong in myself.

    Letting someone hurt you in the name of love hurts them too.

    Before we can be in a healthy relationship with another, we need to be self-aware enough to know who we are, and to identify what we want and don’t want. And we can’t do that when we spend all our time running around trying to fix other people.

    I no longer want to be anyone’s light or hope or savior. Now, I’m committed to being my own best friend.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • AA 2.0: Why the Evolution of Alcoholics Anonymous Needs to Happen Now

    AA 2.0: Why the Evolution of Alcoholics Anonymous Needs to Happen Now

    The founders purposely left the door open for science to come into the realm of recovery, and unlike modern AA, they did not discount its potential importance when it came to helping people.

    I am an alcoholic, or, as conventional wisdom goes, an alcoholic in recovery. I’ve had my share of rehabs, detoxes, and IOPs. I’ve dealt with numerous counselors, doctors, psychiatrists, and even a hypnotist. I have mastered “white-knuckling.” And I’d “given myself fully to the simple program” that is AA. Nothing worked. This is not to say I did not have my dry spells, as well as full-on productive years of zero consumption of anything that contained ethanol. Still, I relapsed, and went down a black spiraling abyss pretty confidently when my consumption quickly became prodigious in both amount and frequency of use.

    Sheer yet fully predictable insanity ensued. Binges went on for weeks and ER visits became routine. Doctors gave me a bleak prognosis, as coming out of the drinking spells had become nearly impossible. Maintenance drinkers had nothing on me — I drank to breathe, to sleep, to go to the bathroom. Beer and wine became juice, annoyingly un-intoxicating. Blended whisky — aka brown vodka — was the only thing that worked, before it didn’t. A rehab intake clocked me at .43 blood alcohol content, with the fatal spectrum usually starting around .35. I am not a large guy by any means; turns out it was the tolerance I’d developed that saved me from kicking the bucket from alcohol poisoning. I stayed drunk for two days just on what was in my bloodstream, and then the withdrawal hit like a train. Librium, Zofran, Librium. An in-house doctor woke me up; my pulse was barely there. But, as always, thankfully, in a week I started feeling better. 

    A Revolutionary Program… for 1939

    The role of AA in my recovery has been significant. The fellowship of men and women — a genius brainchild of Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson, and wholeheartedly endorsed by Dr. Carl Jung himself, has helped countless families. It is incredible in its selflessness and honesty and yet, today’s AA is rigid, too antiquated, and legacy-driven. It’s normal, though, for an organization of this stature and with this much history. After all, back in 1939 this was an absolutely revolutionary, even visionary, break-through. But we’re not in 1939 or even 2009, and so AA must adapt or it will lose its edge. 

    Both Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson were complex, highly educated, empathetic, and caring individuals. Their realization of a prominent role of Higher Power in recovery did not come easy. Skeptics, cynics as they were, they had to overcome an internal struggle before making peace with the fact that human nature was helpless in the face of the monstrous foe of addiction. The resulting text, which we all now know as the Big Book, was the product of a multi-year intellectual effort, which was by no means easy or straightforward. For example, one little-known fact about the book is that initially it used the 2nd person throughout its chapters, as in “you recover, you need to, you have a problem.” The authors decided to change it to the 1st person (we), which brought a completely new tone to the script. From preachy and authoritative it became welcoming and tolerant.

    In addition, when it comes to finding ways to recover from alcoholism (specifically becoming a “normal drinker” as opposed to an alcoholic), the Book mentions that “science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn’t done so yet.” In fact, multiple recovery groups and schools of thought have stepped in to fulfill this prediction. For instance, the Sinclair Method introduced its harm reduction model, based on the pre-emptive use of Naltrexone to reduce cravings and use. Like with everything else, if it works for you, great. It did not for me or any other alcoholic I know. 

    AA’s Founders Expected AA to Change

    The founders purposely left the door open for science to come into the realm of recovery, and unlike modern AA, they did not discount its potential importance when it came to helping people. Today’s AA, on the other hand, has forgotten that approach, adopting more of a “my way or the highway” when it comes to alternative recovery techniques.

    My respect and love for AA is beyond mere deference. I firmly believe that its overall purpose is remarkable. However, I also know that it could be more effective in reaching more people if it actively adopted — or at least discussed — modern-day scientific findings when it comes to addiction. Yes, rigorous honesty and humility are key, however, an inquisitive and questioning mind is not something that should be shunned; on the contrary, it should be celebrated. Ask Bill Wilson. 

    The Book should be akin to the concept of a “living, breathing” Constitution, which celebrates evidence-based evolvement of the original understanding of the Supreme Law of the Land (for example, ever-present discussions of the Fourth Amendment as applied to modern-age surveillance technology. Back when it was written, there was no phone or Internet surveillance, yet the maxim against unreasonable search and seizure is alive and well). Evolution of approaches, when it comes to addiction treatment, is a natural occurrence and fighting it is like trying to cross-breed humans and monkeys hoping we can get better, more advanced Homo sapiens, or even a new humanoid altogether.

    Let’s also take a look at the concept of singularity, as defined by famous futurist and (coincidence?) Google’s Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil. Essentially, he summarized it as an ever-developing concept of a progressively consequential role of technology in everyday life. One of the most striking illustrations of that concept is Kurzweil’s conclusion that today, an average child in Africa (or Russia, U.S., Cuba, China, etc.) with an off-the-shelf smartphone has more information at her fingertips than the president of the United States had 30 years ago. As any brilliant idea, singularity was successfully explained and encapsulated in simple terms by the above example.

    Science and Spirituality

    The same type of evolution awaits AA in particular, and the fight against addiction in general. Get with the program or get run over, as progress does not stop, and that is exactly what Bill Wilson understood so well in his pragmatic ingenuity. 

    From the reptilian middle brain and limbic system responsible for survival hijacking the thinking territory of the prefrontal cortex (in the AA lingo, home of the white-knuckling demon), to the brain’s neuroplasticity and ability to heal itself and learn new reward pathways after alcohol (or meth, heroin, porn, etc.) has done its scorched-earth number on its dopamine receptors, today’s science has explained it all. That is not to say that it has effectively pre-empted the field and left no room for miraculous recovery (doctors sometimes call it spontaneous remission) or any other spiritual component. To the contrary, following Dr. Carl Jung and his glorious pronouncement Spiritus Contra Spiritum, with which he famously concluded his 1961 letter to Bill Wilson discussing the viability of AA, science leaves ample room for spirituality when it comes to addiction. Now it’s time for AA to return the favor and welcome science in its rooms. 

    AA (or any other single-tier approach) cannot win this war on its own. And I am not even talking about the alleged (yet well-researched) 5-7 percent long-term success rate of AA (see Lance Dodes, MD, The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry).

    What I am referring to instead is inclusiveness and intentional wariness of rigidity. Like Tolkien’s Balrog, addiction is a shape-shifter, a cunning, conniving, vindictive foe with an overpowering ability to maim and kill. Gandalf the Gray — arguably the strongest protagonist of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, simply could not dispatch the demon of all demons through his conventional, albeit awe-inspiring powers, and had to adjust and in a way shape-shift himself into Gandalf the White.

    So, who’s to say that what’s good for the U.S. Constitution, Kurzweil, and Gandalf is not good for Alcoholics Anonymous? More importantly, will AA even survive if it doesn’t embrace its own evolution?

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Mother’s Day: Recovery, Love, and Light

    Mother’s Day: Recovery, Love, and Light

    At night, tucking my kids into bed, I would make a deal with myself: hold on just a little longer until they needed me a little less and then I could go through with my suicide plan.

    Mother’s Day is Mothering Day, isn’t it? A day that honors all of us who mother our children—loving, caretaking, nurturing, offering our time and energy, setting aside more selfish pursuits and pleasures to help support our children’s journeys. Of course, we love receiving the homemade, crayoned cards, the store-bought roses or dandelion bouquets, and the pancakes delivered in bed (even with kitchen disasters). These gifts remind us of our essential role in our children’s lives. But for me? Mother’s Day is my chance to offer my gratitude that I am now a sober and stable force of love, hope, and healing for my children.

    Almost 10 years ago, I started writing my blog, Momma May Be Mad, during a complete bipolar collapse: I was anorexic, alcoholic, in and out of psychiatric hospitals and rehabs, and determined to die. But what anchored me to this world were words; more specifically, my blog, a public journal that allowed me to wrestle openly with the lies and the truths of illness and wellness, of despair and hope, of isolation and community.

    At the time, recovery seemed an impossible and cruel promise: light and hope and love would always be just out of reach and I believed it would be better for my children if I died. In the morning, I woke up too early and at night went to bed too late because of a ruminative argument that forced this point: How could I ever be a safe and loving harbor for my children when I was the storm threatening to smash us all against the rocks? I did not believe that I could get sober and stable and well enough to mother my children into their own growing, complex, miraculous lives.Rather than feeling like a mother, a source of creative nurturing power, I felt like one of the furies, a toxic destructive cyclone.

    Do you know that “mother” also refers to the thick scummy substance in liquor, the filthy dregs? This truly was how I thought of myself. At night, tucking my kids into bed, I would make a deal with myself: hold on just a little longer until they needed me a little less and then I could go through with my suicide plan.

    My first post was a manifesto to truth. For years I’d been lying about how much I drank, how often I cut myself, how little I’d eaten, and how I was planning to die. It was a way to hold myself accountable to a deliberate, intentional, and public directive: to recover my health, my balance, and most importantly my integrity. My aim was nothing less than radical transparency:

    March 1, 2010: Truth: Here I am, Self and the Blank Page, fingers nervously typing. Time to write this down, to deal with the shame and the self-loathing, and turn it around. This is the story of IT: ‘IT’ is my abstract pronoun, the catch-all for my variety of afflictions. IT inhabits capital letters, an impassive, unfeeling monolith. In contrast, ‘I,’ (or for your sake, ‘me,’) who lives in love, in forgiveness, and in the shrieks of pleasure I hear coming from my kids right now in their playroom. I am thirty-seven years old, the Momma of two, the wife of one, and I have bipolar disorder, and eating disorder. Oh yes, and the nasty habit of cutting myself. And drinking, too much. I am in therapy, on mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, and sleep meds. But what I must accept: Life on Life’s Terms. No mere 12 Step cliché, but practical truth. I’m ragged and frayed and scattered, fractured and splintered by shame. I want to be whole for my children.

    My essential sacred directive was to stay alive. Short-term goals at first. Stay alive for my son’s cookie crumb, sloppy kisses, his warm hand on my cheek, his tiny body finding mine at night, spooning up against me. He needed me in the primal way four-year-olds need their Mommas, close and tight. He is my son, and, at the time, I was his sun—the one he revolved around. When I picked him up from preschool, he would tackle me and say, “I love you Momma. Will you marry me?” A sincere proposal—live together forever.

    And to stay alive for my daughter who needed me more and differently as she navigated the intricacies of being a seven-year-old who preferred dragons, bugs, and furry creatures over Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers, and boyfriend-girlfriend role playing. And then there were the rapid-fire, shifting friendships that often relegated her to third-in-line best friend. My heart broke over and over as she tearfully told me that she had “a funny feeling in her belly all day long,” and wanted to move far away. “Vermont,” she said, “or Greece.”In her Mother’s Day Card from that year, she wrote that I made yummy muffins, was, contrary to fact, good at mathematics, loved when I tickled, hugged, and kissed her, and that she “relly relly relly relly relly relly relly relly relly relly relly relly” loved me.

    Twelve relly’s.

    Stay here and love us, forever: this was the sacred directive given to me by my children.

    In the years since that public declaration, I’ve done the hard work in therapy, I take my meds, respect my body (no cutting, no starving), got sober, and continue to write my way out of hell and into health. Sobriety and stability are clarifying and being a Mother in recovery means showing our children that they don’t have to stay stuck in a bad situation. By our own example one day at a time, we show them how to persevere, to stay hopeful, to recover and thrive after what seems insurmountable failure. 

    I am mostly happy these days and can hardly remember those years foundering at the bottom of the dark well, the years I believed I would never find joy again, never be the mother I wanted to be for my children again, never write another word that mattered again, never look forward to the next day and the day after that again. Now? I know that I am not (and never was) the scummy, filthy dreg at the bottom of a bottle of booze, and that while I might have been a mad Momma for a time, I have always been loved. Now? I am the safe harbor, my steady beacon blinking: Here-Here-Here-Always Here-Always Here-Always Here.

    Bipolar disorder is not curable, but it is manageable; sobriety is hard even on the easy days; and I fought to regain my life and my life with my children.

    Know this to be true: if you are where I was, please do not despair because you are worth fighting for, skinned knuckles and scraped knees, bruises and blood. Fight for your life, your joy, your own self-love. The world wants you back, the light is waiting, and your children are here.

    View the original article at thefix.com