Mizz

Jupiter. You have the power to change your life. Believe in yourself and your power. Positive thoughts. Positive movement forward.
Do not be defeated. Today is your day!

SouthernSober

Day 2 sober? If so great news & sure hope you're still going. Day 6 here...already light year of difference. SS

Jupiter11

Thanks guys, finishing day 3. Been on aa 24/7 zoom meetings practically 24/7. Have a sponsor. Have been taken to the breakout room there twice already (where they get women to talk to you 1 on 1). Still wracked with horrible regret, but have a little hope now.

silentrun

Congratulations Jupiter. It sounds like you got a good thing going for yourself.

SouthernSober

"We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it." --AA BB

"I don't regret a single drink I ever took, because that's what it took to get me here." --old sponsor with 25+ years of sobriety

Dee74

Great going Jupiter

D

AlbaSober

Well done on day 3 Jupiter.

Regardless of what day 4 throws at you - make certain you log in here at night and tell us you've smashed day 4 out the park.

Jupiter11

​​​​​​
Thanks for the post, but I will always regret that drunk where I hurt my daughter. Even though she was the bride SHE tried to make her day perfect for ME and it was. Then I get drunk days later and throw some imaginary slight on my part in her face. I would rather have died from the drink than had that drunk and kicked her in the teeth like that.

Jupiter11

Thanks for the support here guys. I'm a bit happier now, my daughter texted of her own free will to tell me she felt the baby kick for the first time 😀 If I had given into the really bad low feelings and guilt and cravings and drank, I wouldn't have been able to reply or would have replied stupidly. I'm so happy I just got through by finding all the support I could from people who knew how I was feeling and where giving in would lead and helped me keep away from it.​​​​

Hevyn

That is great news, Jupiter. I can imagine how relieved you were to get that text.

SouthernSober

"If I had given into the really bad low feelings and guilt and cravings and drank..."

There you go.👍 Does that put the idea of regrets and the past in a different perspective? As we grow in recovery, even our regrets, guilt and shame--huge drivers of our self-punishment and relapse--can be transformed into positive vehicles. And thus we heal and help others.

Hope that clarifies my earlier post, and great to see your most recent.

Jupiter11

Yes sober, I can see where you are coming from. But I still do regret doing that and always will, even if it was a turning point. Because I sacrificing my daughter's joy and good intentions even if it benefits me in the long run is not acceptable to me x

snitch

I completely understand why you regret what you did. I regret so many things I did when drunk. However regret serves mo one. The past is done. Gone. Finished. There is nothing we can do to change it.

What we can do is change our actions today. Stay sober. Make amends. Never let something happen like that again.

Don't beat yourself up. Alcoholism is a cunning and baffling illness. What matters now is you are sober and you are putting in action to continue to stay sober. What could be more precious than to be a sober mum and grandmother?!

Well done and keep going!!

Outonthetiles

Coming to grips with regrets and bad memories is a healthy and necessary part of recovery.

Jupiter11

Thank you again, for your replies. I know, I can't undo what I did, I have to find a way to move past it, which I will but it's still very raw ATM. I swear down, I couldn't have done it at a worse time! She had just been saying how proud she was that I walked her down the aisle and did my mother of the bride speech, even though I was nearly vomiting with nerves and I didn't drink all weekend, then I had to go and upset the apple cart, for both of us. Cos I was proud she was proud of me!
But thinking, that was all a front, my drinking problem was just put away for the weekend. It was still there. Now I am forced to address it, truthfully. And it's not pretty viewing.

silentrun

Jupiter, sometimes beating ourselves up can be a kind of addiction as well.

Jupiter11

Yes silentrun. There has to be movement forward, which I am trying to do. Or I will have just replaced the dark place of addiction with another dark place. That's no trade off at all.

silentrun

There is a reason we all did that. My reasons for beating myself up really didn't have much to do with my actions. Bre Brown has some good thoughts on this.

Jupiter11

Thanks silentrun I had a quick look at her stuff. I will read more into her. I already came to the conclusion I am NEVER my authentic self. I am either "playing" the part of respectable, non drinking "me" (public face) Or being a dribbling drunk, that I have refused to identify as "me" I feel the real me has been lost in all of this

Obladi

Hi Jupiter,

I can identify so much with your deep remorse over your actions. I have a grown daughter who didn't speak with me for close to five months - and I was sober! And I didn't know what I'd done wrong! In the end, I decided that I had to just let go. There were certainly plenty of things that I'd done while drinking that would contribute to negative feelings toward me - toward her image of me. She had every reason in the world to be angry with me, and I told her that I knew that. I also invited her to tell me about her feelings. She declined, which was painful but it was her right.

It sounds so easy, saying "I had to just let go." It wasn't. For a time, I was distracted by the pain I felt about this separation. I felt bad that I'd behaved badly, I was willing to own up to that, and she had no interest in any words coming out of my mouth. Who could blame her? I'd said all of the right things repeatedly, but from her perspective, nothing ever really changed. To make matters worse, she had hope before - because I'd stopped drinking before. But having disappointed her over and over again, she was done trusting me.

There was nothing I could possibly do to make things right. Except for to not drink. Because it was only by Not Drinking that I had any possibility of finding the authentic me; the one I need to be for my kids, but also for myself. I had an idea of who that woman was, but learned that I had to be sure. And in fact, I always did know who I was, but I felt so strange and different that it was easy to feel that I was "wrong," a fundamentally wrong person. A lot of that was due to my upbringing - family, religion, school - I had to unlearn those concepts of being "not worthy," you know? Humility doesn't mean that I (you) have to feel like the lowest being on the planet; it means self-acceptance and doing the best I can.

So I understand not giving yourself a pass on this. I get how "not regretting the past" isn't an apt phrase for you - it isn't for me either. The Alcoholics Anonymous book has some excellent wisdom expressed via some really nice-sounding phrases, but the wording isn't always spot on for everyone. The way I think of that concept is that I will not rue the past; I won't forget it, but I also won't wallow in it. Because wallowing makes it about me, you see. It's not up to me to decide when or if any of my three daughters will forgive me. That is completely their business and none of mine.

The end of the story (which isn't the end, of course) with the daughter who wasn't speaking with me is that it's been about a year since things started thawing out. We aren't 'back to' where we were before, but in the final analysis I don't think that's the best place to be. She and I had a codependent relationship; it was close, but not what things should be like between a mother and a grown daughter. It took a lot of time, a lot of work on my own issues, and an awful lot of patience. And it's worth it.

I have a younger daughter who still really can't abide being in my presence. I can only hope that she will also thaw one day. One thing that's for sure is that drinking again would only make the ice harden further. I do have an awful lot of regret for what I put this one through, but I don't punish myself over it anymore. Because that would be about me, and really - that pain is hers.

I second silentrun's suggestion about Brene Brown. You can find her TED Talks on line, and I would highly recommend her book, "The Gifts of Imperfection."

Stay the course.

xo
O