ohmygoodness--just read a post from the other side's perspective
Member
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Camelot
Posts: 90
Originally Posted by Chy
Our kids will always love us and once grown understand we were just a little sick at the time. The greatest joy I have today with my children and husband is rebuilding sober memories. We'll kill ourselves with despair before the drink if we don't allow ourselves to forgive ourself. Forgiveness of self and love for self is a slow process, baby steps will take you miles in achieving this.
Each day sober is a reason to walk with your head held high. *hugs*
Each day sober is a reason to walk with your head held high. *hugs*
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Shampoohorn City
Posts: 246
Everything you've done in the past brought you to this point. And from this point you go forward. My husband need ever drink he drank so that he could be sober today. His hard work at staying sober each day is all I ask of him and it is all I could ever want from him. Don't forget that that is hurt and frustration talking. That we love our "a's" as we refer to them and we know that they are good people. I heard a saying one time, "If you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future then you are pissing on the present." Kind of gross but the point is, stay in today.
Hugs.
Hugs.
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: road to recovery
Posts: 1,689
thank you all for your kind words and sage advice. it was particularly nice to hear from those of you who've been through it or are from the "other" side. gives me some hope. my kids are still small so i hope their memories of me as a lunatic drunk will fade. --keeping all the memories of their lunatic sober mom intact ;-)
and lilya, wow!
"everything that is taken from you will reappear in a different form - if you have the courage to accept it.
what a great quote!
you know, it made me think about what i've told others are going through intense trials of character: you question God "why are you putting me through this? and "why did you let this happen to me?" but try to understand that God may be using you for a purpose beyond your understanding. if someone else can learn from your example and pain, let Him use you. it will come back to you in time. it was like when my mother was dying slowly and people from work who i hardly knew would come up to me and say what an example i was to them. blew me away--like, how do they even know what i'm going through or what it was all about. but somehow, someone learned something through my pain.
maybe i should listen to myself more. but man, this guilt thing sucks...it's easy to give advice but harder to live it.
and lilya, wow!
"everything that is taken from you will reappear in a different form - if you have the courage to accept it.
what a great quote!
you know, it made me think about what i've told others are going through intense trials of character: you question God "why are you putting me through this? and "why did you let this happen to me?" but try to understand that God may be using you for a purpose beyond your understanding. if someone else can learn from your example and pain, let Him use you. it will come back to you in time. it was like when my mother was dying slowly and people from work who i hardly knew would come up to me and say what an example i was to them. blew me away--like, how do they even know what i'm going through or what it was all about. but somehow, someone learned something through my pain.
maybe i should listen to myself more. but man, this guilt thing sucks...it's easy to give advice but harder to live it.
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Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Olympia, WA
Posts: 180
Hi scootinbabe,
I think there are too many people thinking they are living with free will when they are not. You never got up each day trying to figure out how to make those you were tied to through blood and relationships miserable. Had you been able to be better, you would have been better. When the teachings of those first alcoholics pointed out to us that Selfishness and self centeredness was our 'root' problem they knew what they were talking about. But they learned it after they became willing to grow along spiritual lines. We had big egos and were driven by ego-neediness to get those egos stroked in whatever way we needed to get them stroked. We had a thousand reasons why it was okay for us to break free from the trap of relationships we found ourselves within, with all the responsibilities those traps imposed upon us. We were [I]different[I]. It was more important that we got our way than that others got their way.
With such attitudes towards life, how could we have been different from what we were? We were living a life of lies and rationalizing our right to do so. Living lies allows for no peace of mind, and absence of peace of mind is eternal internal misery.
We knew no other way to live than to turn off all the misery inside of us with chemicals. We simply had never learned that the purpose of being alive is to grow along spiritual lines and that that meant an ongoing change of our attitudes concerning what is important in being alive in order to learn how to live daily with serenity of spirit, peace of mind, and a sense of being at home in the universe. No teacher was available to teach us how to feel at home in our own skin. We were needy . . . and we acted out of our neediness. We were not evil. We were sick with excessive egoism.
During our lifetimes we ran into plenty of others who were driven in the same way to hurt those around them out of their neediness, and sometimes it was us they hurt. If I want to feel the truth of saying, "God loves me and understands me perfectly and knows that I wish I could have been different than I was and couldn't be," what I need to do is free up everyone in my mind from the resentments I've had a right to hold towards them. I can have the feeling of God's forgiveness as well as my own if I see that everyone of us is operating in the best way we can to walk through this business of living; that when we finally learn better we do better; and that I must quit thinking I have the right to resent those who don't yet know better and who break the golden rule in their dealings with me.
That is not a new teaching, of course. I'm not a Christian, but the prayer that Jesus taught was certainly pointing out that same truth. God forgives us our trespasses to the same degree that we forgive those people who have trespassed against us.
After we get through the "willingness to grow along spiritual lines steps" we are asked in steps five through nine to do the best we can to clean up the wreckage of our past.
When it comes to those closest to me, scooterbabe, I agree with those who have pointed out that my continued sobriety allows me to continue making amends to them for the rest of my life . . . simply because I change as a result of working my program to the point where that is precisely what I most want to do.
("we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows").
Alcoholics don't deal well with guilt and shame. We often wind up going back out to quit feeling that way. That's why a Loving Higher Power becomes such a worthwhile priority in our lives. Perfect Love and Understanding really is available to us through prayer. Try it for yourself and see.
Love and Blessings - Chuck
I think there are too many people thinking they are living with free will when they are not. You never got up each day trying to figure out how to make those you were tied to through blood and relationships miserable. Had you been able to be better, you would have been better. When the teachings of those first alcoholics pointed out to us that Selfishness and self centeredness was our 'root' problem they knew what they were talking about. But they learned it after they became willing to grow along spiritual lines. We had big egos and were driven by ego-neediness to get those egos stroked in whatever way we needed to get them stroked. We had a thousand reasons why it was okay for us to break free from the trap of relationships we found ourselves within, with all the responsibilities those traps imposed upon us. We were [I]different[I]. It was more important that we got our way than that others got their way.
With such attitudes towards life, how could we have been different from what we were? We were living a life of lies and rationalizing our right to do so. Living lies allows for no peace of mind, and absence of peace of mind is eternal internal misery.
We knew no other way to live than to turn off all the misery inside of us with chemicals. We simply had never learned that the purpose of being alive is to grow along spiritual lines and that that meant an ongoing change of our attitudes concerning what is important in being alive in order to learn how to live daily with serenity of spirit, peace of mind, and a sense of being at home in the universe. No teacher was available to teach us how to feel at home in our own skin. We were needy . . . and we acted out of our neediness. We were not evil. We were sick with excessive egoism.
During our lifetimes we ran into plenty of others who were driven in the same way to hurt those around them out of their neediness, and sometimes it was us they hurt. If I want to feel the truth of saying, "God loves me and understands me perfectly and knows that I wish I could have been different than I was and couldn't be," what I need to do is free up everyone in my mind from the resentments I've had a right to hold towards them. I can have the feeling of God's forgiveness as well as my own if I see that everyone of us is operating in the best way we can to walk through this business of living; that when we finally learn better we do better; and that I must quit thinking I have the right to resent those who don't yet know better and who break the golden rule in their dealings with me.
That is not a new teaching, of course. I'm not a Christian, but the prayer that Jesus taught was certainly pointing out that same truth. God forgives us our trespasses to the same degree that we forgive those people who have trespassed against us.
After we get through the "willingness to grow along spiritual lines steps" we are asked in steps five through nine to do the best we can to clean up the wreckage of our past.
When it comes to those closest to me, scooterbabe, I agree with those who have pointed out that my continued sobriety allows me to continue making amends to them for the rest of my life . . . simply because I change as a result of working my program to the point where that is precisely what I most want to do.
("we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows").
Alcoholics don't deal well with guilt and shame. We often wind up going back out to quit feeling that way. That's why a Loving Higher Power becomes such a worthwhile priority in our lives. Perfect Love and Understanding really is available to us through prayer. Try it for yourself and see.
Love and Blessings - Chuck
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