Accidental Perfection

“Accidental Perfection”

 

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

Mother Teresa

           

Over the summer the kids and I went on a road trip.  This is the third year we have done so and it has become a much-anticipated event.  We have visited many friends but always go to see my college roommate and her family in Indiana as the main part of our trip.

This year, while visiting, my friend’s fifteen-year-old son made us guacamole.  It was really good and we told him so.  He didn’t seem to believe us, and, at first, deflected the compliments we were lobbing at him.  He claimed he had forgotten an ingredient, or that he hadn’t cut this or that correctly.  After his mother and I insisted that it was indeed really great guacamole, he smiled and shrugged and said, “I guess it’s just accidentally perfect then.”

I stored this memory in the notes section of my phone to revisit for a post later because it was a profound sentence and interaction.  Last night I thought of it again when I received a text message from someone in my twelve-step program.  I was asked to speak on New Year’s Eve at my home group.  I accepted and told the woman who will be chairing the month of December that I would be happy to and that it would, in fact, be an honor to speak at my home group.  She wrote back that the honor was all hers and proceeded to tell me that I was an inspiration to her and several other really lovely things that profoundly touched me.  Now I don’t mention that to pat myself on the back or because I want more compliments, but because it took me back as compliments always do.  My gut reaction is to deflect them like my son’s friend did about the guacamole.  My instinct is to tell her that I could not possibly be an inspiration to her or anyone else, that I was a hot mess for so long, that I am nothing remarkable and that she should not waste her breath.

However, that gut reaction is now quick to die out.  That voice in my head that told me for so many years I was worthless and still rears its ugly head when someone says something nice to me, is so much quieter than it was.

It took me many years to get to a place where I have re-trained my brain to move past the negative and allow in the positive.  It hasn’t been easy.  I didn’t get sober and go through the steps until I was 41.  In that process I found a spiritual connection all my own.  I found a Higher Power and understood myself for the first time.  That journey led me to discover my humanity and with that I embraced all of myself, including my many flaws.

Not too long ago Dermot and I were talking about standards of beauty.  He told me I was beautiful and my instinct was not to believe him.  I wanted to disbelieve my own son when he told me I was beautiful.  Think about that for a moment.  How much self-doubt and self-loathing do you have to have fed yourself on that you would doubt the sincerity of your child when they innocently compliments you in conversation?  I stopped myself in mid-thought, smiled at my humanity when he said it and simply thanked him instead.  I have discovered that the flaw is not in the way that I look, but in the way that I think about the way that I look.  The flaw is not in the way that people see me, but in the way that I think about the way that people see me.

I think about it this way now…  Before the steps and doing extensive work on myself, I saw myself as if I were looking through a funhouse mirror.  My impression of myself was skewed.  Now I see myself more through God’s eyes and there is beauty there even in my many imperfections.  So the next time someone compliments you, pause, smile and accept it.

Maybe we are all accidentally perfect.

 

Fifteen

“Fifteen”

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love.  It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest.  Grief is just love with no place to go”

Jamie Anderson

           

A friend of mine posted that quote to their Facebook wall the other day and it stopped me in my tracks.  I think it is spot on.  Completely accurate.  Grief does feel like unspent love.

I feel that way about Liam.  Like I have a lifetime of love for him that is stored up and has nowhere to go.  That the love I have for him, formed when he started to grow in me is still here and I don’t know what to do with it sometimes.

I remember thinking when he was gone and we were thinking of having more children that I was afraid I would not love them as much as I loved him.  I thought my heart would not be big enough to handle loving another child.  Of course as soon as I held Dermot I knew I had enough room to spare and then worried about the same thing again when I was pregnant with Wren and discovered again when she was born that I needn’t worry.  My heart apparently is vast and my ability to love has yet to find an end.  But there is a place in it that is just for Liam and that place feels full of unused potential.

I stopped by to talk to my brother-in-law and my nieces yesterday and my brother-in-law asked me how I was doing and I said I was sad.  I was sad as I looked at my fifteen-year-old niece, the only cousin to have met Liam when they were both babies.  I was and am sad because I miss him and yet I don’t know him and that, I think may be one of the hardest parts of all of this.  I’ve written about that before.  I don’t know my own son and that feels so inherently wrong.

I woke up this morning at three and could not fall back to sleep.  I was thinking about all the things I don’t know about him and all the things that have happened in the past fifteen years.  What would I tell him about life these days?  What would I want him to know?  Does he know us?  Does he see?

I would tell him that a lot has happened since he passed away; a lot.  His great-grandfather Wally died and his grandfather Tom.  But he has a little brother and a little sister now and four more cousins.  I would tell him that his dad is better; considered cured and healthy and running races, triathlons and half iron-mans now.

I would tell him that his Joanie still does too much for other people and Uncle Andrew is married now and he has an Aunt Melissa.  I would tell him that Big Jerry is just as cranky and giving.  That his little brother Dermot is full of passion and curiosity and is very funny.  I would tell him his little sister Wren looked just like him as a baby and is independent and fierce and very smart.

I would tell him about my struggles because I would be as honest with him as I am with everyone else.  I would make him understand that I am flawed and that I don’t always get things right but that I always try and that when I fall I get back up.

I would tell him that his dad and I are not together any more but that we do our best to do right by his siblings even when that seems really hard.  We live in separate houses and lead separate lives but will always love each other on some level because we made the three of you.  I would tell him that we are both perfectly flawed and beautifully human and that may be our biggest strength.

Mostly I would let him know that we miss him but that we are alright, because for the most part, we are and that today, on his birthday, we honor him.  We are going to take some of our unspent love and use it to do something good in his name. 

I would tell him that on this day each year, I get to be his mother again and I am grateful.

Love vs. Fear

“Love vs. Fear”

“I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.”

Oprah Winfrey

           

Over the summer I was driving in the car somewhere with the kids and I mentioned that I had some fear about something I had to do.  I can’t even remember now what I was afraid of, but I told the kids about it at the time.  Wren piped up from the backseat, “but mom, you’re not afraid of anything.”

I do remember being taken aback by the strength of conviction in her voice and the look of earnestness on her face when I glanced in the rear-view mirror.  She believed absolutely in what she was saying.  In her mind, I am not afraid of anything.  And how wrong she is.

Fear has been a theme throughout my life.  I grew up in a household that fed me a steady diet of it.  I was afraid of my mother’s mental instability from an early age.  I knew instinctively that something was off and that I needed to tread carefully.  My father was my ally when she was not around and he was sober, but he was seldom home without her and it was rare that I would catch him alone before cocktail hour.  And my brother filled me with fear of a whole different kind.

I feared confrontation and family strife and being myself and letting people down and being abandoned.  I could make an extensive list.  In fact, I did, when I wrote my fourth step.  I wrote for months and examined all facets of those fears and stared them down and turned them around and addressed them.

I can have confrontations now which I could not do before because of crippling fear.  I still don’t like confrontation, but I can have healthy anger now and won’t back down when I know something is wrong and I have a right to speak my mind.  I have a really close friend who jokes that rage is my sword because he has been on the receiving end of some of those confrontations himself.

I was afraid of becoming a mother once.  I looked at my own mom and was afraid I would repeat history.  I am not trying to bash my mother because she is ill, but because her illness was left unchecked where mine was not, damage was incurred.  I did not want to inflict pain on my children in the same vain.  I was afraid I would not know how to do it; to be maternal.  I can safely say that once Liam was born a switch flipped and it turns out I am more maternal than I could have guessed.

Recently, I have had a lot of fear.  A close friend of mine lost a family member in a tragedy and having to watch her hurting has been hard.  I feel powerless to relieve her pain and like I am flailing around for something to make it better.  I hate watching people I love suffer.

The same close friend who jokes that rage is my sword might also possibly be ill.  He isn’t sure and is waiting to see from a biopsy what the future holds.  This has me full of fear.  I’ve watched Liam struggle and Frank struggle and I don’t want to do it again.  There is a part of me that wants to run away and hide because watching people I love suffer feels like too much.  It makes me feel like I might break in half.

I won’t run though, because I won’t break and because what Wren sees now as fearlessness is simply that I am no longer paralyzed by fear.  I will just be vulnerable and full of love for my friends and family who need me because that is what I do best.  I plan to just be maternal and loving and “mom” at them. 

Maybe love is my sword.

Invitation

“Invitation”

 

“Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space.  Invite one to stay.”

Maya Angelou

           

The other day I was so concerned that I would not have enough to do when school was out.  It’s laughable to me now because since I turned my final in on Tuesday, I have somehow managed to keep myself occupied.  I will say that I have done a good job of being balanced so far so before you shake your head in my general direction, there has been some good self-care in there and time with family as well.

I have had the flexibility though to jump in and do some spontaneous twelve-step work with other addicts and alcoholics that I would not have normally been able to do and that has given me such a spiritual boost.  My gratitude meter has shot up exponentially this week despite struggling with a few personal issues that reminded me of my very human nature.

To be able to go and talk to someone battling with the concept of a higher power and just let them know I battled too.  To share a meal with them and normalize the struggle and take them to a meeting.  To hear them say they tried praying and they don’t know what they are praying to but that they feel like things are starting to shift in their life.  For them to call you and tell you about the “weird” things that have been happening and that they are starting to feel just a little bit better.  That is hope right there; hope dawning out of darkness.

To see that rising out of the desperation on the face of another human being when I know the kind of purgatory they have been living in is hard for me to describe.  It is the stuff about which poetry and songs are written. 

I would not have guessed that these sorts of interactions would bring me such joy and comfort, but there it is.  This is the connection that makes me whole and sees me healthy and right-sized.  To watch another human being start on a journey of self-discovery that will lead them to accepting themselves for who they are and were meant to be all along; to stop fighting but loving their ownness.  This is what I wish for all my fellows, friend and foe.  For people to feel a sense of inner peace. 

I get to be a part of that today.  I get to watch that in others over and over and over again.  It is the most wonderful re-birth to witness, a metamorphosis of the spirit that I will never tire of seeing and will never cease to be in awe of.

Rainbows and Unicorn Farts

 

“Rainbows and Unicorn Farts”

 

“It’s not all about rainbows and unicorn farts.”

Unknown

           

There was a speaker at my twelve-step meeting the other night sharing about his concept of a higher power.  He spoke about how he had struggled to find a higher power initially and how he had been turned off by the twelve steps to begin with because they talk about God.  I could relate to much of what he was talking about because his story was so similar to my own.  He explained his struggle so well and the parallels were spot on.  He came to realize in the end that he sees God in other people and that is how I feel today.

I think I had been able to see God or feel the presence of a universal connectedness among people throughout my life.  I had caught glimpses of it here and there but I always managed to get in my own way of remaining connected to that presence.  It wasn’t until I was leveled by my own actions through addiction, when the last block in my own personal game of Jenga pulled the whole thing down on my head and I was forced to start over, that I started to feel that connection again.  I did the steps in a thorough and specific way that had me remove my ego from the picture and that connection was re-established and re-enforced.

Now, I see God in other people every day.  I feel God in the words people speak in kindness to one another.  I see God in acts of forgiveness and self-sacrifice.  I see God in redemption and good works.  I see God nearly everywhere I turn these days when my eyes are open and I am spiritually fit.

I laugh at my reputation for crying.  Anyone even remotely close to me knows I cry a lot and daily.  I’m crying now writing this.  I cry for a myriad of reasons like sadness, frustration, anger, joy, but I have come to realize I also cry when I feel the presence of God in other people.  Sometimes I just get filled up with the vastness of it.  It’s oceanic and I can’t contain it.

I am tired at the moment.  I reached the end of my accelerated summer semester for graduate school last night.  Last class of the semester, with an epic take-home final that took a great effort to write and had me consumed with myself.  I have been going at 110% for a while and I feel it.  I snapped at my kid this weekend in a fashion that had me filled with guilt and apologizing to them later.  They were great about it and we laughed about the whole thing but it goes to show I was stretched and not at my best.  I was not as connected.

So last night I was driving from work to school to turn in my take-home final masterpiece when I saw it.  I saw the most incredible and most perfect rainbow.  I was struck dumb by how magnificent it was and I found myself crying behind the wheel of my car.  Crying so hard I had to pull to the side of the road and reach for the tissues I keep between the seats (yes I keep tissues in my car – it’s a necessary evil).  I sat in my car and was overwhelmed with gratitude because I felt the presence of God, my version of God, my higher power.  I felt gratitude for where my life is now.  I marveled at how it looks nothing like I could have predicted it would but how marvelous it all is anyhow and how far we have all come to be where we are today. 

I sat in amazement at how I can be tired for such a good reason now.  How I can be tired from doing too much rather than from being passed out in a chair having done nothing but disappoint the people I love and myself.  That was a God moment for me.  That was a reminder, a poke to say, “Hey, I’m here and you are doing just what you should, but don’t forget to stay connected.”

So sometimes maybe it IS all about rainbows and unicorn farts…

"They should have wine for us..."

“They should have wine for us…”

 

            Both Dermot and Wren have started taking music lessons over the last year.  Dermot is taking saxophone and this year Wren is taking guitar.  The lessons are out of the store where we got their instruments and each week sees one of us accompanying them to them to sit and wait while they are instructed.        

            The staff at the store are friendly and Dermot chats away with them like he’s Norm from “Cheers” when Wren has a lesson and Wren generally amuses herself while he has his.  If I am with them I have no shortage of things to do either.  I always have my book bag with me for school and I often take sponsee calls at that time of day or sometimes I allow myself to sit back and simply listen to them play.

            One Friday evening while Wren was strumming away with her teacher and Dermot was waxing poetic with adults at the front of the store I found myself sitting next to another mother.  I ended a call and she put her magazine down and struck up a conversation with me.  We talked about kids and music lessons and the hustle and bustle of shuffling family back and forth from activities on the weekends for a bit.  She mentioned that we had picked an odd time for lessons being that it was dinner time on a Friday night and I agreed that sometimes that could be a little brutal.  She sighed and said, “They should have wine for us while we wait, it’s the least that they could do”.

            I was struck by that as I so often am now, because that is the kind of thing I used to say all the time in my life before recovery.  The mommy wine culture is a thing and I had latched onto it and I took it to the nth degree.  When we lived in Annapolis, I used it as an excuse to drink at any event.  If I was gathering with friends for anything (and I mean anything), wine and alcoholic drinks of any variety needed to be included. If they weren’t I felt a mild sense of panic and I turned my nose up at the same time.

            I am so lucky now, because I don’t think about that anymore and I don’t even notice until someone mentions it like this woman had at the store.  I don’t feel like I need a drink to make it through my kids’ music lesson or anything else anymore.  Of course I may be reading into her comment a little, but I can comment on what my old thinking was, and for my old self, that would have been true.  I would have been calculating how long it would be until the lesson was over and until I could get to the next drink and I would very definitely be thinking how great it would be if they provided us wine.

            I see it a lot, the mommy wine culture.  The comments on Facebook and Instagram and elsewhere, about how people “need” a drink to get through this or that.  The outing with kids to the park jokingly accompanied with a “mommy sippy cup” or a handbag with a built-in flask.  I get it, or used to, and would have been all about it, but it makes me sad now.  Try booking an event at one of those paint nights for a group and say that you don’t want the drinking option and see how far you get.  Book clubs don’t have to include wine and cheese, and other events and outings don’t have to be centered round a bar or cocktail as all of mine used to be.

            I don’t mean to sound as though I am lecturing.  I know that most people don’t have the same issue that I do with addiction and can take it or leave it alone.  I suppose I am commenting on the culture and commenting because I know that for all those among the group at paint night or book club who can take it or leave it alone, there is, among them, a Fiona who can’t think about anything else but the next drink and who could not sit through the whole music lesson either without the glass of wine, or the thought of one, and missed listening to their child’s music.

Walking the Walk

“Walking the Walk”

 

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

 

            I haven’t written a post in a while, mostly because I haven’t had the time.  I am coming to the end of the summer semester of grad school, and, as I learned last summer, the accelerated summer semester is rather brutal.  I have ten weeks of classes when I would normally have thirteen and those thirteen are a little more spread out so there is time to work on papers and projects.  In addition to a Tuesday night class that went from 6:00pm to 9:45pm, I took a Saturday class that met for five Saturdays and ran from 9:00am to 5:00pm.  There was little time to breathe and though I have two more weeks of the one class, I am essentially finished with little left to turn in and complete.  There are others things on my schedule besides my full-time job, I won’t go into all of it, and though Frank and his parents do the lion-share of the time with the kids while I am plodding my way through this program, I still do spend time with them.  Suffice it to say that I am busy.

            So you would think that now that the semester is winding down and I know I will have time to relax for six weeks before the next semester starts and the madness begins again, this time with an internship which will ramp things up a notch, that I would be relieved.  Well, yes, and no.  Yes I have been looking forward to a break, but as it approaches I find myself starting to feel an old sense of mild panic at the thought of too much time on my hands.  Let me explain.

            I discovered once I stopped drinking, that the booze was, “but a symptom” as it says in the Big Book.  I drank because I did not like being inside my own head.  Being alone with my own thoughts was a terrifying state in which to be.  Being bored and alone was a perfect storm and it still can be.  Now don’t get me wrong, my mind can be a wonderfully, creative and entertaining playground, but it can also contain horrors and nightmares, the likes of which I would not wish on my worst enemy.

            When I came out of the recovery house in June of 2014 and got an apartment, I was alone a lot.  I became accustomed to it.  At the time I was working my fourth step which required a lot of self-reflection and a lot of writing.  That was the period of time when I had started this blog as well and so I wrote a lot and more consistently.  I spent a lot of time alone and a lot of time in self-examination.  It was my own Walden Pond period.  I had an apartment and the only things I hung on the walls were a picture of each of the three kids.  It was a nice little apartment but I kept it stark I think for a reason.  I didn’t want to be too comfortable there.  I didn’t want it to feel too much like home because I didn’t want to stay.  I was either going to be going home to Frank and the kids or I wasn’t and I was trying to figure that all out.

            Fast forward four years and I have a house and a very different life.  I know what I want and where I am going and what I am worth.  I think I pack my days because I don’t want to miss out on opportunities.  It is as if I am making up for lost time, the time I lost from addiction.  If I examine this creeping sense of discomfort I feel at the idea of having time alone in my head, then I know I need to take stock.  This is a warning sign.  Maybe I am going at this pace because I want to learn and to help others but maybe I also like not having that time alone in my head.  Maybe I should recognize that and see it for what it is and make some adjustments to balance my mind so when I have time to myself I don’t feel uncomfortable.

            I spoke to a close friend in recovery about this panic I feel the other day and he pointed out that perhaps I need to walk the walk.  He asked me what I would tell a sponsee in the same situation.  I answered, that I would have told them they need to sit in the discomfort and spend time alone, doing nothing, and re-acquaint themselves with themselves.  So I guess I have to do what I would tell others to do and hang out with me for a bit.  I have to do something shocking, like read a book for pleasure (and preferably not one about treating others with PTSD).  I have gotten so used to running at 100 miles an hour that I have forgotten what it is like on my own private Walden Pond.  So you can expect more blog pieces over the coming weeks, because when I visit Walden Pond in my head, I generally have a lot to write about.