Addiction- A perfectly normal response to unhealed, unacknowledged, unsupported, long-term, ongoing trauma.
Trauma is an experience that overwhelms our capacity to process and integrate what is happening.
So- In my desire and pursuit to be merciful, I foolishly agreed to a highly undesirable arrangement for myself. I did so, in an effort to be of service to my boys' father. On each of the days in the two weeks which I provided my support, he consistently took more than what was offered with neither apology nor gratitude. Once again, I had confused being merciful and useful with allowing myself to be used and manipulated. In my stomach, I felt knots of…
I have been hungering, starving for a way to explore THIS, outside of my limiting perspective/ personal experience and SO—am now contemplating graduate school for a MA in Applied Ethics. Putting my mind to work in a course of study and research of a matter so very relevant to me, would be incredible. Who knows where it will lead? Maybe only one class or two, or completion of a Masters or even a PhD. My program of recovery introduced me to…
Even, through my thirties, I had not learned to appropriately respond to harmful behaviors and words. Consistently, my uninformed and humiliating reactions stole the show, contributing greatly to the wreckage of my life. Since the norm in my FOO is-- to not take responsibility for harmful words, choices, behaviors, but rather to deny, minimize, label it a joke, or blame the person who has been hurt-- I came to believe: I too, had no responsibility for my words and…
I did not comprehend or grasp anything close to sane thinking before entering into my program of recovery. After my first Al-Anon meeting, I attended every single 12 step program I could, because my hunger for the 12 Steps and 12 Principles was insatiable. I was thrilled and awed to discover that there existed, this design for living, which I could accept and apply, to help me change and live my life. I had not learned how to live-- only…
