Sharing and Caring

[MajestyJo]

STAY POSITIVE, DON'T ACT OUT IN OLD PATTERNS AND BEHAVIOURS!



Steps Six and Seven are about changing and truly looking at myself and getting honest.

Why should I not continue the Steps? Why should I skip over a certain step because we don't like looking in the mirror. Most people see us before we can see ourselves. People knew about me before I knew myself, they could see the changes and I didn't have a clue. Be it a change for the better or worse, I am empowered to change things when I surrender to the program, and work it a day at a time.

Not taking time to talk to my God on a daily bases is an old behaviour. Telling God what I think He should do in my life and that of others, is bad no matter what way I look at it.

For me defects of character are a part of my DNA and thinking, clean or sober. Short comings are acting out those thoughts and reacting to events around me. No more hissy fits, no more pity pots, no more cussing and cursing, myself or others, no more putting on the blanket of denial and hiding from reality.



HUGS FROM ME TO YOU!

[MajestyJo]

Xenophobiais a fear, hatred, dislike of aliens and strangers.

Perhaps that is why I didn't like myself, because I always felt like I didn't fit in.

Old tapes continued to play out through my whole life. I was never able to let go, and new ones were added to the old tapes that caused low self-esteem.

Who said that your opinion counted?

Did you think we care about what you have to say?

What makes you hear me say "What do you think?"

If you were not so stupid....!

Look at what you made me do! I didn't know that I didn't have the power to make him/her do anything.

I took everything personal, and didn't know that there was my stuff and theirs. Most times when things are projected onto me, it is their stuff and not mine to take on.

When my husband started to run around with other women early in our marriage, I thought it was my fault. I wasn't good enough as a wife, a friend, as a housekeeper (which was true to some effect as I worked full time).

When he introduced me to two of the women he was bedding, as friend he worked with and I was still I didn't allow myself to acknowledge it honestly. I left him because he hit in the car when he was driving me to work, for opening my mouth when he told me to shut up. I was trying to discuss financial payments for the end of the month.

When I went into labour, he drove me to the hospital and disappeared. The hospital asked me to call him and I tried for four hours, because I was having labour pains every 3-5 min. and they were not changing, and they suggested he come in and be supportive and help me to induce labour by walking me up and down the hall. I went in to heavy labour about 11 p.m., my son was born at 4 a.m. and when the doctor phoned to tell him he had a son, he was not home.

I went to stay with my best friend because I didn't even know how to change a diaper, bathe, and care for him. I was 24 years old. My husband left me when our son was 2 months old. My landlady wouldn't let me stay because I was a single parent. My husband had sold all our furniture and moved us into this furnished apartment. When I found a new apartment, I had no furniture. I felt like a failure, ugly, unlovable, abandoned, rejected, which reaffirmed other incidents in my life, and every thing became compounded interest.

I didn't know how to grieve, I started back to work and slowly but surely pills and alcohol were added to the mix to help me to cope with life. The first person to rape me was my husband, I didn't know I had the right to say "No" and that I had a choice.

As a result, I was raped three more times, and I ended up looking for love in all the wrong places, because I couldn't find it within myself. I found that if I can't love and respect myself, others will not always love and respect you. As they say, "Let it begin with me."

I had to cleanse my body, mind and spirit.

Thanks for letting me share.

[MajestyJo]

Reading from: Just for Today April 1 - Daily Meditations for Recovering Addicts.

"Some of us first saw the effects of addiction on the people close to us. We were very dependent on them to carry us through life. We felt angry, disappointed, and hurt when they found other interests, friends and loved ones."

NA Basic Text, p. 7

Addiction affected every area of our lives. Just as we sought the drug that would make everything alright, so we sought people to fix us. We made impossible demands, driving away those who had anything of worth to offer us. Often, the only people were those who were themselves too needy to be capable of denying our unrealistic expectations. It's no wonder that we are unable to establish and maintain healthy intimate relationships in our addiction.

Today, in recovery, we've stopped expecting drugs to fix us. If we still expect people to fix us, perhaps it's time to extend our recovery program to our relationships. We begin by admitting we have a problem - that we don't know the first thing about how to have healthy intimate relationships. We seek out members who've had similar problems and have found relief. We talk with them and listen to what they share about this aspect of their recovery. We apply the program to all our affairs, seeking the same kind of freedom in our relationships what we find throughout our recovery.

JUST FOR TODAY: Loving relationships are within my reach. Today, I will examine the effects of addiction on my relationships so that I can begin seeking recovery.

I realized I didn't know what love was, I only knew what wasn't. The old patterns and behaviors had to change, and as I healed and found myself, I was able to find out what was acceptable to me, to set boundaries, and to find self-respect and self-worth for myself which I had never had before.

I couldn't have a healthy relationship until I learned to have a relationship with myself and my Higher Power. How can I share myself if I don't know who I am?

I thought I knew, but I came to realize that I had lived most of my life through other people and had no identity of my own. Recovery has been about me finding me and finding my own set of values and beliefs.

April 1st is my birthday. I always said, "It was the only reason for being who I was and then I found out I was an alcoholic/addict."

[MajestyJo]

The spiritual enlightenment for me was the phrase, "If you have to control it, it is alreadyout of control!"

I had heard this phrase around the rooms for several years and it mean nothing to me. I kept coming, I didn't think I was an alcoholic, but I wanted what the people in the rooms had. I knew I didn't want to go back to where I came from, so I just kept coming.

I thought maybe if just kept coming, some of what you head would rub off onto me. So I came, and said, "Hi, my name is JoAnne, and I am an alcoholic" and was in total rebellion, with the attitude, "I'll say it if I have to, and went through the alcoholic/addict stage. Ironically, I knew I was an addict, and I think it was because I knew the meaning of the word. Or I could relate it to chips, or cookies, and the feeling of more, but couldn't identify the alcoholism. I knew I misused and abused my medication, but it wasn't until many years later that I came to know it as dried-up alcohol.

I came but I did all the wrong things, I compared instead of identifying. I don't like beer, I didn't have black outs, I didn't pass out after so many drink, I could drive the car after drinking all day and night and not get pulled over, I could walk a straight line (my son use to say he looked out the window and saw Mom bringing B**** home). I didn't go to jail, I didn't get tickets, I didn't get cut off at the bar, and the list went on, and on, and on.

After I heard the phrase above, I came to realize "Don't look at what you didn't do, but look at what you did do!"
That was a different story. I decided I would rather be an alcoholic.

It wasn't until God saw fit to give me a dream to let me see how others saw me when I was drinking. I was a first class, manipulating b**ch, who told everyone how to do it, what to do, when to do it, and was aggressive and a loud mouthed person that I wouldn't have wanted for a friend. I had assumed that the reason that people had back away from us because of my ex-husband's drinking, when it truth, it was probably my conroling, manipulating and nagging ways. Now that was a spiritual awakening, and I was two years in the program. I was sober but I can honestly say I didn't have true sobriety until then. Sobriety for me means soundness of mind. You can't have sobriety and be in denial and life of secrets and control. I was continually at war with myself, and often with those around me because I didn't have my own knowingness. I only knew what was told to me, and I had to find my own path and my own truth.

My spiritual advisor said, "You will learn two thing. 1) How to work your program. 2) How not to work your program.

Keep coming, so you won't have to come back.

Posted in 2004 on another site. Many originated in my 15 sites that were finally deleted by MSN and Multiply and no longer in existence.

[MajestyJo]

Are you watching me or you?

Found this to be funny. How often does the paranoid alcoholic/addict think that they are being watched and everyone is looking at them.

When in fact every alcoholic/addict is looking at themselves and don't even know the other person is there.

A young guy in recovery said to me at a morning meeting, "Jo no one even noticed that I got my hair cut." Besides the fact that no one had seen him with his hair down, it had always been in a ponytail, no one is really looking at his hair, they are worrying if someone is looking at them.

Ever walk into a room and everyone stops talking and you think they were talking about you. Just maybe, they were just glad to see you and stopped to acknowledge you.

[MajestyJo]

When I came into recovery, all I had to show for 49 years of living was a little square table and a tri-lite and eight green garbage bags of belongs to show for living. My attitude was stop the world I want to get off. When I left central Ontario to come to Hamilton I left behind a couch which was part of a $800. suite that my ex-husband ruined by laying down on it in his work clothes after he finished working in a machine shop all day. There was just a "little" bit of resentment there. It may have been left over from my first husband selling the furniture I bought when we were married for pitance to pay to have his car painted and moved us into an unfurnished apartment. The couch in the furnished place was ghastly, black with big ugly flowers on it. When my landlady asked me to leave when my husband left to move in with another woman, and she didn't want a single mother living in her apartment, I was glad my son had peed on it a few times, when I had changed his diaper. My son was two months old and certainly wasn't responsible, but somehow it seemed like sweet revenge in the moment.

When we moved her in 1984 it really was the downhill spiral for me because I knew I had to quit drinking and I started to escalate my pill use. My son got his own place in 1985 and he kept losing his apartments and he always moved in with me until the next time, and it became a vicious circle. Even after I came into recovery, I was still enabling him by allowing him to come home to mother.

In early recovery I didn't have a bed, I had left my apartment to my son and had moved into the YWCA and lived there for two years. At six months sober, I moved into my apartment and I borrowed a mattress and slept on the floor for three months until I could find some kind of bed. The first thing I got was an old chair with no arms that had a huge whole in it that I had to stuff with a blanket so I could lie flat, it was marvellous, I was six inches higher off the floor. It wasn't until I moved into my apartment at three years sober that my aunt made a decision to get new furniture and I got her bed chesterfield. I was put on disability in my first year and they bought me a bed, but I didn't have a couch.

After several years in Al-Anon, the guilt wouldn't let me continue, and it was about five years into recovery that I got the brilliant idea of giving him my couch and then he didn't have a bed to come home to. Then a friend of my son who was in the program relapsed and he lost his place, so I got his couch. It matched my swivel rocker and my easy-boy chair and I was happy. I have a thing about used stuff, it is new to me and if it is clean or cleanable, it is change, just like me.

Then when I moved to my new location last November I made the decison not to take this couch with me because it took up too much space and made my place too cramped. I am stll on disability, and though I quit smoking the exta money wasn't there because it became bridge money.

When I made the decision to leave the AA Fellowship and go to NA on the night of my first meeting in my new group, the gentleman who drove me home asked me if I knew anyone who needed a new couch. The owner was the first person I met in NA ten years ago, and his mother worked in the treatment facility I was at, although I didn't know that until several years later. I now have a two seater love seat, which pulls out into a bed and I am going to have my first guest tonight. The daughter of my unofficially adopted daughter is coming for a sleep over. My friend's real mother lives in a city about two hours away and I was adopted back in the YWCA back when I was using. She has been supportive and a good friend over the years, and is a student of Al-Anon and ACOA.

When I am grateful for what I have, instead of looking at what I don't have, I am at peace. I had nothing, so anything I have today is bonus. I didn't think I was going to live to be 40 and here I am 20 years later living overtime, with all that she needs, which includes a computer, a TV I don't find time to watch, and a life so busy, I have trouble finding time to get here to the site to post.

I love the native culture and I have a meditation I do with a book that is called "The Sacred Path Workbook." I finished a meditation one day, which said, "Give thanks, it is already on it's way." I said the words, "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" As I got up off the carpet the telephone range, it was my friend asking me if a bag of groceries and $20 was enough money to babysit her daughter for the weekend. My prayer was help to see it through to the end of the month until my cheque came in.

He supplies my needs, sometimes my wants, and even my desires, because I desire each and everyone who reads this, another happy, prosperous and healthy twenty-four hours.

(originally posted on www.another-24-hours.com)

The holiday season is one day at a time.

[MajestyJo]

From: "There Is A Solution"

Here was the terrible dilemma in which our friend found
himself when he had the extraordinary experience, which as we have already told you, made him a free man.

We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the
desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a
flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful
hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you
prefer, "a design for living" that really works.

Alcoholics Anonymous, page 28



Today I became aware how we can still look for that outside source to make ourselves feel better. As it says here, they are flimsy reeds indeed and I need to have that strong foundation that I have only found in building that new life with the strength and guidance of my Higher Power. I love the quote "a design for living," It sure beats the old one!

Originally posted in 2008, the same sentiments are still valid in today.

[MajestyJo]

First of all, I am trying to speak American!

Secondly, I was doing a Zen meditation and asked if it was possible to find a common denominator, so that everyone could find common ground and identify and the word I got was "Wishful thinking!"


Quote:
Our mind is the wish-fulfilling tree-whatsoever you think, sooner or later it is fulfilled.


This was followed by the word "Challenge."


Quote:
Misery only means that things are not fitting with your desires-and things never fit with your desires, they cannot. Things simply go on following their nature.


My sponsor told me to look at "problems" as challenges. Something to be overcome and to work on. And the "Piece de la resistance" was the word "Accident."


Quote:
It is not a certain sequence of causes that brings enlightenment. Your search, your intense longing, your readiness to do anything-altogether perhaps they create a certain aroma around you in which that great accident becomes possible. - Osho


Looks like I may have to 'stink' up the place a little to get everyone's attention.

Hey people, we are family. We have travelled different road to get here. It is my understanding that we have one goal, one destination and that is recovery. It doesn't matter the substance, it doesn't matter the trauma and difficulties you overcame to get here, it doesn't matter what stood in your way of getting here sooner, the important thing is - you are here!

We can do what I can't. God Bless.

When I see post that I made like this, I have to laugh. How could I have stayed in denial for so long? I use to be the life of the party, then I became so introverted, that if I talked, you couldn't have heard me, not that I had a lot to say by then that was worth listening. You can't talk to a drunk, especially if you are trying to make sense of what they are saying. The lies, the lies by omission, the telling the way they think you want to hear it, or just out and out manipulation, fabrication, and totally without any sense of reality.

I think I shared in my story that I was in Akron, Ohio for my ex-husband's cousin's wedding. I was too sick to drink the wine at the burgundy breakfast the next morning and I was so hung over that I couldn't help with the driving home. Yet I remained in denial about my alcoholism and didn't find acceptance for two years after I got here. I think it just took me that long to detox and for the brain to clear so I could face reality.

Posted in 2004

[MajestyJo]

When I came into recovery, I was told "We don't do this forever. We do it one day at a time." When we project into tomorrow worrying about staying clean and sober, we lose out on today.

When I stay in today, I have one day's feelings, one day's thoughts, one day's denials, one day's events and situations.

If I look at the whole picture, I get overwhelmed. Some days it is simply staying in the moment. I had a sponsor who told me for her it was three seconds because she was prone to seizures.

For me it has been doing what ever it takes to stay clean and sober, just for today. I can't, God (group of drunks) can, and just for today I choose to let Him/Her show me the way to sobriety (soundness of mind).

[MajestyJo]

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment the moment you know how, you being to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

- Agnes de Mille

How arrogant and ignorant of us to believe that we can do anything but live one day at a time! We are so deluded by our illusion of control that we really believe that we can control the future, make things happen the way we want and completely control our lives. When we do this, we cease living.

Living fully I living a life of faith. We do our footwork, make our plans, and then let go. Living fully is taking a leap of faith and, before our feet are squarely on the ground, leaping again. When we think we have things under control, we "begin to die a little."

It takes a lot of faith to live one day at a time, and the alternatives don't look that inviting.

This reminds me of my saying about myself and being an Aries, "The left foot is moving forward and the right doesn't know it has to move yet."

People get upset when they ask, "What are you doing Saturday, and I respond, "I don't know!" I may make plans, but I have found out one thing in recovery and that God and I don't always think alike!" Also, "We aren't always on the same wave length," although I do try to align my will with His, and "God doesn't always let me know what His plans are for me" although this inquiring mind often wants to know.

[MajestyJo]

What I bring from my past is my old tapes, my old behaviors and beliefs, and that is what I need to change in today.

If I want a peaceful and serene life, then if I work on my recovery today, it will make for a better tomorrow.

If I keep looking over my shoulder at my past, then I miss out on today. It can also cause me to trip up in today because I am not watchful of the direction I am taking. The decision I make in today are based on yesterday's experiences instead of the good orderly direction from my Higher Power, if I am not focused and spiritual connected in the moment.

There is no right way or wrong way, all we are asked to do is try.

It is a program of practice, and for me application. I can only do what I can do in today. I can't go into those coulda, shoulda, if onlys, not that I don't, but I try to bring myself back when I am aware that is where I am at.

Really, all we do have is the moment. When you think of it, even an hour ago is old news. The day can start in the moment, just for today, I choose not to use.

[MajestyJo]

Received this in August of 1993 from the lady who introduced me to AA. I thought it would have been good for my dad and my ex-husband with no identification for myself, it was always about them. When she saw me at a Saturday morning meeting, she got up, gave me a hug and said, "I am so glad that you lived to make it!"

This is a greeting card she had printed for my 2 year anniversary. She got me moved into my first apartment at 6 months sober. The sad part was that she couldn't stay clean and sober herself, kept relapsing, but she carried the message to me and for that, she will be very special.

She signed the card: Keep up the good work, it sure looks good on you.

Congratulations Anna.

It's great to share these special times
And to accept friend's words of praise
To express gratitude to our Higher Power
And all who helped us thru the days
Early in recovery when it was often rough
Knowing that support is there
Whenever the going gets tough
We've received so much, what can we give
In return on this special day?
A promise to God and all our friends to simply give it all away.

[MajestyJo]

OPENING THE HEART

"Everything is made of light; everything is alive. The Great Mystery of life has little to do with intelligence. The universe is not an intellectual process. The intellect is helpful; but our hearts are the wiser part of ourselves."
-- Mellen-Thomas Benedict

Heart is a word that refers to many different levels of our being. Essentially, it is the love aspect of soul, capable of making direct, intuitive contact. Soul love is not emotional; it is highly impersonal and intelligent, capable of grasping the essence of someone or something without any projection on our part.

Appreciation significantly turns on the heart. Appreciation is not an emotion that arises spontaneously, but a soul quality we can choose. The more often we choose to be appreciative, the easier this choice becomes and the more frequently our heart opens to give and receive love.

"If you open your heart, love opens your mind."
-- Charles John Quarto

Is your spiritual development important to you?

From Higher Awareness, used with permission

It has been the only way I can stay clean and sober in today. The only defence I have against this dis-ease of addiction.

Last night my son phoned me and asked for $100. and told me that he really needed it, if I didn't give it to him, he would be beaten up. I said, "Deal with it" and I shut off my phone.

I was talking to my sponsor when it happened and he kept ringing and ringing (14 times), and I apologized to her for the interruption. She said, "It is okay now that I know what it is." I called a friend for support and had a good talk with her. He didn't get beaten up, and all the dramatics was a lie, just to con mother out of money to use, because his cheque wasn't as big as he expected.

It was difficult, but without my God, it would have been impossible.

I almost didn't call my sponsor because I thought she was at her daughter's, but she doesn't go until today. I phoned my friend and she was well enough to take my call, she has been in bed for several days.

[MajestyJo]

The spiritual enlightenment for me was the phrase, "If you have to control it, it is already out of control!"

I had heard this phrase around the rooms for several years and it mean nothing to me. I kept coming, I didn't think I was an alcoholic, but I wanted what the people in the rooms had. I knew I didn't want to go back to where I came from, so I just kept coming.

I thought maybe if just kept coming, some of what you head would rub off onto me. So I came, and said, "Hi, my name is JoAnne, and I am an alcoholic" and was in total rebellion, with the attitude, "I'll say it if I have to, and went through the alcoholic/addict stage. Ironically, I knew I was an addict, and I think it was because I knew the meaning of the word. Or I could relate it to chips, or cookies, and the feeling of more, but couldn't identify the alcoholism. I knew I misused and abused my medication, but it wasn't until many years later that I came to know it as dried-up alcohol.

I came but I did all the wrong things, I compared instead of identifying. I don't like beer, I didn't have black outs, I didn't pass out after so many drink, I could drive the car after drinking all day and night and not get pulled over, I could walk a straight line (my son use to say he looked out the window and saw Mom bringing B**** home). I didn't go to jail, I didn't get tickets, I didn't get cut off at the bar, and the list went on, and on, and on.

After I heard the phrase above, I came to realize "Don't look at what you didn't do, but look at what you did do!"
That was a different story. I decided I would rather be an alcoholic.

It wasn't until God saw fit to give me a dream to let me see how others saw me when I was drinking. I was a first class, manipulating b**ch, who told everyone how to do it, what to do, when to do it, and was aggressive and a loud mouthed person that I wouldn't have wanted for a friend. I had assumed that the reason that people had back away from us because of my ex-husband's drinking, when it truth, it was probably my controlling, manipulating and nagging ways. Now that was a spiritual awakening, and I was two years in the program. I was sober but I can honestly say I didn't have true sobriety until then. Sobriety for me means soundness of mind. You can't have sobriety and be in denial and life of secrets and control. I was continually at war with myself, and often with those around me because I didn't have my own knowingness. I only knew what was told to me, and I had to find my own path and my own truth.

My spiritual adviser said, "You will learn two thing. 1) How to work your program. 2) How not to work your program.

Keep coming, so you won't have to come back.

Not sure if this is a duplicate, I know I have share part of this on other posts. Posted this on another site in 2011.

[MajestyJo]

Posted this on another post earlier this week. This was the original. The post I made up, I wrote as it came to mind in today!

Let me tell you my story about the two doors. I think I posted this on the AEB site so some of you may have seen it before.

One door with a room full of CHIT behind it and all you will find in this room is CHIT. If you put your hands in it, even dig right up to your elbows, jump right into it or even wallow in it all you will ever find is CHIT Next to the door there are 12 steps and you can take the 12 steps and leave the CHIT behind.

There is a new door with many gifts called sobriety. Anytime you want to, you can go down the stairs and you can wallow in the CHIT; But you can always take the steps again and get out of the CHIT. In the new room there are many gifts for having worked the steps; They are yours for the taking as long as you remember to use the steps.

Firefly (Me)

=======================================

There was a little boy who was the worlds greatest optimist. He could find the good in anyone and anything. Not wanting him to be hurt as he got older, his parents thought they would teach him a life lesson. It was his birthday and they got a whole truck load of horse manure and dumped it into his room.
When they opened the door for him, he jumped right in digging with both hands. When they asked him what he was doing, he said, "With all this manure, I know there has to be a pony in here somewhere."
We can choose to see the dark side, or we can choose to see the light side. We can choose to be happy, or we can choose to be miserable.

Wolf

=======================================

People say to me, well I have done the steps!

I remember asking "What happens when I get to Step Twleve?" I was told, "Start again at Step One! You should have grown as a result of working the steps, so you will have a new perception of yourself and your life, so if you want to keep growing and changing, keep working the step!"

Self-honesty doesn't happen overnight, and it is only through working the steps that I was able to get "REAL" and remove the layers that block my vision and kept me in a world of illusion and denial.