Shards

“Shards”

“True redemption is seized when you accept the future consequences for your past mistakes.” Eduardo Macedo

I saw this plate meme on the internet about two years ago and it struck a deep chord for me. I saved it because it is, for me, a perfect illustration of the concept of the work we must attempt to do in step nine.

In our active addiction, we addicts and alcoholics have wreaked havoc on the lives of the people we love. We have an illness that changes our behavior in such a way that our actions cut wide swaths of destruction through marriages, childhoods, friendships, relationships, jobs and finances; the list could go on and on. We have an illness, yes. It offers an explanation but does not give an excuse. The actions are still ours to own and to deal with when we enter sobriety.

Once the work of self-examination is done in step four and admitted in five, we ask our higher powers for guidance and alleviation of our shortcomings in seven. We then have a list of people and institutions to which we owe amends and in step nine embark on a humble pilgrimage of making amends. But what does it mean to make amends?

I think it is natural to be full of fear before starting this part of the process. Making amends means being intentionally vulnerable. It means admitting some of the worst things about ourselves to the people we have done the most harm to. It is simple but it is not easy. It also means not just blithely saying “I’m sorry” as the meme about the plate suggests. The people we have hurt have heard that countless times before and they likely won’t want to hear that again. “I’m sorry”, doesn’t glue the broken shards of the plate back together again.

We have to surrender the outcome of the conversation and accept that it may not go as we would like. We have to accept also that the relationship may not go back to the way that it was before; ever. The plate has been broken and though that does not preclude it being fixed, it will likely never be the same. In some rare cases for me at least, all remained were shards. In still others, the amends process took those shards and both parties recognized the plate could not be fixed but instead a beautiful mosaic was created from what was once so broken. That is what happened with Frank. Our marriage was that plate. It could not be pieced back together, but what a mosaic we have made since!

So amends are not about simply speaking words of sorrow, but about action. They are about trying to make something of the broken shards and realizing that you cannot control the outcome of the broken plate but you can be open to creating a mosaic if you are willing.

Talking to children about addiction... the story behind the book.

Talking to children about addiction... the story behind the book.
https://www.caron.org/media-center/multimedia/audio-video/2019/fionas-journey

Fiona is a recovery blogger, speaker, and published author who found peace and healing through writing, and is transitioning following 24-year career in media planning and sales in anticipation of 2020 receipt of Masters in Clinical Psychology:

“Rising From the Ashes” has been an active blog for five years at

https://www.fionapurcell.blogger.com

and on Facebook.

Published author of “The Queen Who Saved Herself,” a children’s book about addiction that explains the disease in terms children can grasp.

Speaker on topics ranging from addiction, recovery, resilience, trauma, PTSD, the 12 steps and writing your own life-narrative.

Against the Wind

Against the Wind

            

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”  Henry Ford

There are some events in life that carry a lot of weight with them; they challenge us. According to Health Status ( https://www.healthstatus.com/health_blog/depression-stress-anxiety/top-5-stressful-situations/) the top five most stressful life events are as follows:

1.    Death of a loved one

2.    Divorce

3.    Moving

4.    Major Illness

5.    Job Loss

I have dealt with all of the above.  This week saw me facing number five unexpectedly.  I got a call on Wednesday morning that my job was being eliminated and my last day was Friday.  It was a pretty big blow.  I am right in the middle of grad school and trying to keep it together till I finish and can transition to another career.  The company I had been working for and my bosses in particular could not have been more supportive.  But business is business and there were a lot of layoffs on Wednesday and so I know this was not something personal.

So what do I do now?  How do I cope with this situation?  I will tell you that Wednesday and Thursday were not great.  I was wobbly and I was weepy and I felt some panic and fear and there was some anger in there also.  Not all of those feelings were rational but I allowed them to be felt. I know now that if I try to suppress my feelings they will only come out sideways later.  I made a conscious decision that I would allow myself to feel sorry for myself through Thursday and then I had to start getting it together. Dermot was with me at one point and I had been in my room throwing myself a pity party and he came and knocked on my door and said he was just checking on me because I had been in there for a while. That was the kick in the pants I needed. I ended the pity party and made myself go for a power walk and it cleared my head.  I came back and started looking for jobs and working on my resume.

My last day was Friday and though I was sad I am also grateful.   Since last Wednesday I have had a myriad of emotions and feelings, but I am left in the end with gratitude and I am also remarkably calm.  Why is that where I am at the end of the weekend?  I came around because I have tools and because I have an army of people who care about me and most importantly I have learned to pray to a higher power and I have faith today.

The idea of faith was so foreign to me for so much of my life that to write about it still seems like a new pair of shoes that isn’t quite worn in yet.  I said the third step prayer a lot over the first few days and that prayer goes like this, “God, I offer myself to Thee – to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.  Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy power, Thy love, and Thy way of life.” That prayer reminds me that what I am feeling is human and real but I also know it is temporary and will pass, as feelings are indeed not facts.  It also keeps me in acceptance of my circumstances and starts me thinking of ways I can turn my thoughts outward to others.  I know that when I am thinking about others, helping others, doing for others, I feel better and I don’t perseverate on the circumstances I can’t control.

Now, does this mean I sit back on my haunches and simply wait for my next mortgage payment to fall into my lap once my severance runs out or expect my phone to ring with a job offer from out of the blue?  No, it does not.  Relying on faith does not work that way and never has.  What it means is that faith provides me with more peace and clear-mindedness.  I know that I have to accept the circumstance of “now” and have faith that things will be okay “then”.  I have to also work toward making “then” happen as well.  That phrase I heard growing up in Sunday school pops into my head at times like this, “God helps those who help themselves.”  I have to work at this too.

The title of the children’s book I wrote, “The Queen Who Saved Herself” is now a mantra for me.  I have to be that queen again and always.  I have to walk the walk.  It isn’t anyone else’s job to swoop in and save me but mine.  It doesn’t mean that I won’t rely on my closest friends and family for support and advice, but I have to dig deep and figure this out and I have faith today that I will.

So through faith and prayer I lessened the fear, gained perspective and landed on gratitude.  I am grateful to a company and a group of people who gave me a chance when I was barely out of a recovery house five years ago.  They did not know that when they hired me, but they found out very soon after and they still embraced me.  One of them wrote a recommendation for graduate school that helped me get into my current program even though he knew it would mean eventually I would leave to change careers.  The other was supportive with scheduling and listening and the whole culture of the department stressed work-life balance.  These are rare things to find in business and I know it.

The truth is my plan is to transition to counseling and behavioral health.  I had hoped to do so when I finished school at the end of 2020.  Maybe this is a sign I should make that move sooner.  Maybe this is a sign I am meant to.  If I really think it through and there had to be layoffs, I am glad it was me rather than one of the other remaining people in my position.  That is no longer my path and it is still theirs. I think that rather than this being the end of something it is perhaps the beginning of something good and new and different even though I can’t see it clearly just yet.

Someone asked me on Friday if I was afraid of relapsing and I smiled because up until the point of them asking I had not even thought about alcohol.  It is no longer my go-to as so many other positive things have taken its place.  That doesn’t mean I will not remain vigilant, but I have tools in place for a reason.  I’m going to navigate these new waters using all the tools in my kit.  I will reach out to friends and family, remain connected to my recovery community, work hard to create a future for myself and keep praying and thanking God even when things go wrong.

I don’t have a phoenix tattooed on my arm for no reason and I may have to rise against the wind on this one.

Living in the In-Between

Living in the In-Between

The summer semester of grad school is hard.  I had not forgotten and I had prepared for the accelerated schedule and the papers seemingly due back-to-back and the impossibility of getting to all the reading.  This is the third summer of four I will do before I complete my degree.  What I had not been prepared for was the added pressure of my internship being thrown into the mix.

The internship adds a fresh layer of burden to my already packed schedule and taxes my organizational skills.  It is like juggling another job and one I don’t get paid for, yet is equally important to the one that pays my mortgage because it paves my future. 

 

Then there is the scope of the internship itself.  I am honored to be interning at a rehabilitation facility for substance abuse that has a specialized unit for first responders.  I am getting a master’s degree in clinical and counseling psychology with concentrations in co-occurring disorders and trauma.  This internship is quite literally right up my alley.  That being said, I leave there some evenings and weekends with my shoulders up by my ears after hearing some of the trauma the patients have been through and some of the pain they are learning to share.  I lately have had this over-riding feeling that the world is maybe not such a good place.

I have a class at college called Practicum Review where we meet to discuss our internships with a supervising professor and fellow students.  It is essentially a weekly peer supervision where we can bring issues we are struggling with and put it up for general discussion.  I asked them the other week how they cope with the weight of the topics we deal with.  How do they bring their shoulders back down from their ears when they are driving home?  They had some good suggestions for me about self-care but I had been doing most of them and some of them did not resonate and I knew I had to find my own way back to base camp as it were because I have been struggling for a while to feel normal.

Before recovery and before doing the steps and meeting myself for the first time, I lived in states of either self-aggrandizement or self-loathing.  I seldom visited the pleasant middle ground I tend to occupy now.  The middle ground is a place I heard myself refer to the other day as the “in-between”.  The in-between is a quieter, more resonant place, where I hear more of what other people say, I catch more nuances, I sit longer in silences, tune in to the world around me and understand beyond things.  The in-between is where I see the face of God in the face of the people I love and hear His message in the words of other people when they share at meetings or in books I read or songs I listen to.  The in-between is the frequency where I am not selfish, but giving.  The in-between is where I am not angry, but forgiving.  The in-between is where I am not stressed out about the little things, but capable of moving mountains without a second thought.  The in-between is home.  The in-between is where I am the most Fiona I can be.

I was driving Wren home on Friday night from her music lesson and we were laughing and listening to “Memory” from Cats in the car and belting it out at the top of our lungs.  We turned the corner and Wren gasped and pointed, saying, “Mom, look! A rainbow!”  There was the most gorgeous rainbow peeking out of the cloud just after the rain.  She took a picture through the car window.  The whole car ride had been so in-between.

I’m going to be fine.  I just have to fine-tune my frequency a little to get myself back to where I need to be and stay there so I can hear and see the messages that are always coming at me.

The Vader Key

The Vader Key

“Of this be sure:  You do not find the happy life… You make it.”

Thomas S. Monson

I think one of the things that people worry about in early recovery is that they will never have fun again.  I know I did.  I was scared that I would not know how to have a good time without drinking, that I would never be happy.  I didn’t think it was possible because alcohol and the culture of it had seeped into my bones and I could no longer think beyond it.

We are surrounded by the message today that once you are an adult and Friday comes along, the weekend is all about drinking.  TGIF, you made it and its now “happy hour”.  There are pub crawls, there are races where you get a beer every mile, there are “paint and sip” art studios,  “twerk and wine” work-outs, “scent and sip” candle-making parties and “clues and booze” escape rooms.  Let’s not even get into the mommy wine culture that tells us we need alcohol to survive parenting and that once the kids are in bed at night we must reward ourselves because we “need a drink”.  Trust me, I bought into all of that and more at one point in my life.

What alcohol did for me was numb me from my own feelings.  It drove me further from myself and therefore further from those around me.  At some points along the way it was entertaining for sure and I could be the life of the party at times, but let me assure you, no one was laughing at the end of my drinking career; no one.

So you go from thinking that alcohol or drugs (or both) are that things that make life fun or make life bearable or make you happy, to removing them altogether.  There is a period of time there in the beginning when you are full of shame and remorse and you are just learning the ropes of life without the numbing and you are floundering and you realize you don’t really know anything.  You don’t know how to function without the substances, let alone how to have fun because you don’t really know who you are anymore.

I have a friend in recovery who opens his home to people in my home group all the time for get-togethers.  He has parties to watch the Superbowl, to watch movies during Oscar season, a big Christmas party and more.  You would never guess from the amount of people who come and the amount of laughter inside that there is no alcohol.  It just isn’t an issue.  In fact someone not in recovery came once and brought a bottle of wine as a hostess gift because she had no idea that not only were the host and his wife sober but that the majority of the people she had been hanging out with at other times were also sober.  It just had not come up.

I think over time, as I reconnected with myself, or more accurately connected with myself genuinely for the first time, I started to find joy in little things.  I found things funny and I began to carry myself in a way that showed I was happy.  I see that in other people in the rooms as well who have joyful recovery.  It’s as if the people who are most at ease with themselves exude this sort of simple peace.  It’s a quiet calm that radiates.

I don’t mean that I am happy-clappy all the time.  But small things make big differences and I cultivate those things.  I don’t have to have major life events or seismic shifts create happiness in me anymore.  It’s literally the little things.

Wren needed to get something from my house the other day when I wasn’t home and Frank took her over.  She got the spare key out from its hiding place and went to open my front door but promptly dropped the key down the side of my deck and despite her attempts to find it, it is lost down a crack beneath my house.  She was really upset about it and wanted to do the responsible thing and have a replacement key made.  She and I went together to do this and I decided to try one of those key kiosks you see at drugstores.

It was fascinating to watch.  You put the key you want copied in the machine and they make a 3D print of it and you can save the impression for future copies if you like.  Then when it was time to buy the copies once the key was made we were given options.  We could get a regular key or we could choose from a few designs.  Well, once of the designs was a black key that looks like Darth Vader.  Really a Darth Vader front door key for a dollar more.  Well, I mean, it was a no-brainer! 

I can’t even tell you how much joy I get from opening my front door every single time I come home!  I love my front door key…  The kids love their spare keys and the silly key chains I got for each of them.  It didn’t cost much and I smile every, single time I open my door.

I think we overcomplicate how to be happy.  I know I did.  We don’t have to have our lives perfectly fixed.  We don’t have to have everything in order.  We don’t have to have the perfect job.  We don’t have to have the perfect everything.  If we wait for everything to be perfect, thinking, “I’ll be happy when…” we’ll never be happy.  It’s the little things that make the difference in the end.  Little things like the Vader key.