step 5

spent saturday driving to the middle of absolute nowhere to meet my sponsor to give my step 5. we live about four hours away from each other, so we split the difference and met 1/2 way. we sat at a place called "the million dollar view" and it was beautiful. my family drove with me and sacrificed a lovely saturday trying to find something to do in the middle of nowhere. god bless them. we really had no idea it was so far from anything. they are good sports.

as i sat in her car, this woman who is committed to me, but nearly a stranger - i felt safe and assured that she was the right one to hear this. it is the fifth time i have done the fifth step. each time scraping away at the debris as i climb this spiral staircase known as the 12 steps. each time i pass by the familiar parts of my life - sometimes i have to face again the similar things because they still cause pain or i still have resentments. but surprisingly each time there are things that no longer push that button or pull that puppet string like they used to. and i am amazed. in awe of the process. things that used to baffle us....

it was a totally new process this time, really well done, charts based on the big book wording done in such an intuitive, nearly inspired way - i made connections this time through that i have never made before. it was a really good process.

i did have to face the crap from these past 2 years though and i did not like that one bit. face first in the refuse pile is not my favorite place to be. i had to admit my part in my community falling apart. i had to face my pain and resentments toward those who had hurt me so badly and i had to own my own desperate need for attention and approval and know that in these next few steps there will need to be amends made and character defects given to god.

it was grueling at times. face first. god help me. admitting my greatest character defect, my desperate need for approval and attention from spiritual men in authority (whatever the hell that means - and yes, i am untangling it) - mostly my dad - and the lack thereof has torn off a piece of my shielding and left me so vulnerable.

as i spoke with liam this week i acknowledged that there could not have been a more "perfect cocktail" prepared for me than the person i struggled with for the past two years. it truly has very little to do with him - but our velcro of needs pulled us together in a fearful way and it leaves me scared that it could happen again. we have not had any meaningful contact in ages. but the fear remains.

his wife means so much to me - she is in my recovery group and the hardest part of all of this has been my desire for absolution from her. i know this probably will fall into that place of 'more harm than good' - she is in great denial of this whole process. i am not the only woman her husband has sought out - this is far greater than just me - but for my part i truly want to look her in the eyes and apologize. having to admit that i wanted to "beat her" in the competition for his attention (to even the score on all of the great and wonderful things she has that i do not) was absolutely the lowest point in my recent history. i wanted to wretch when i had to first write it down, and again when i said it to god, again to myself, and thirdly to another human being... so i'm writing it here now too - hoping against hope that it will lessen it's shame as i truly don't know if i will ever be able to make direct amends.

i know that amends are 3 steps away - and wisdom and strength will be given when the time is needed, but today it still holds so much power over me, and i want it gone for today. i feel so weak, so needy and nearly desperate to fill myself back up. i am shaky, physically feeling wrung out and wanting to isolate myself in a deep way.

i have an hour or so left of reflection before i move on to step six. i will be spending time with god and the big book and looking back at the process and answering a few questions. my sponsor has also given me a mantra. 10x a day when i wake up and 10x a day before i go to sleep. it's only three lines - but i am having a horrible time remembering it. i can't even type it from memory right now - so i am searching for where i wrote it down.

found it...

i am capable
i am competent
and i am worthy.

couldn't remember competent. those words choke in my throat. i know that one day i might believe them. today i am turning them into an art piece to place next to my bed so i won't forget or have an excuse. i also found a sheet that has prayers for each step from an old OA newsletter. this is the one for step 5:

higher power,
my inventory has shown me who i am,
yet i ask for your help in admitting my wrongs to another person and to you.
assure me, and be with me, in this step, for without this step i cannot progress in my recovery.
with your help, i can do this and will do it. amen.

i am capable
i am competent
and i am worthy.

fake it till ya make it, eh? i can do this, and i will do this. amen.

shadow pain

i can always tell when i react (or overreact as is usually the case) that it's rarely about the situation that i'm currently in - but it's about the unresolved junk from my past that is pushing my buttons. i call it the shadows. they lurk behind whatever it is in my present that makes everything look bigger, darker and loomier (i just made that word up) :D

identifying and taking away the shadow helps reduce everything to it's natural size and stops it from looming over me and pushing my buttons. hope just put this quote on her blog and i really liked it alot:

"Life work is always about learning to respond to the events in our present life with the emotional intensity appropriate to the event and not with the emotional intensity that was appropriate to tragic situations twenty or thirty years ago........Serenity or living in a state of recovery is all about letting yesterday be yesterday and today be today. Recovery is training ourselves by practicing daily disciplines to act in the present as the present and not from the emotional stance of a thousand past yesterdays"

Earnie Larsen

via Hope

making amends to ourselves

i awoke at 4:44 this morning knowing that was probably all the sleep i was going to get last night. liam was snoring and my mind was whirring away already. it's that time of the month for little sleep, but also a fertile mind. it's a trade off i can live with. yesterday i blogged on the daily examen and after i did i began to do some research on it. i found out that i had spelled it incorrectly "examin" and so my google search was lean - but i did find a beautiful exercise on the "small boat big sea" website that i sat with last night. it's a postmodern church in australia and the exercise begins half way down the page here:

Small Boat Big Sea: Bells
i think the exercise is meant for children, but i enjoyed it and was struck by how much of my day i truly did remember when i sat down to really think it through. as part of my recovery i sent an email to my friend at the end of the day or at the beginning of the next. far too many times i can't even remember what i ate for meals - so i was skeptical that i would be able to review my day.

the thing that stuck out to me the most was a conversation i had with hope. she called in the middle of a painting project i was doing. when we replaced the washer and dryer i took that opportunity to quickly paint the little closet that is my laundry "room" - more like a laundry hallway - two doors pass through a space large enough to hold a washer and dryer on one side and a hot water heater and an electric panel, and under that i tuck in a little shelf i store pantry goods on (which of course i had found at the curb...)

i got the walls painted but was waiting for the patch to dry on the ceiling so i could paint it too - and i thought "well, while i'm waiting i can take a quick hour and paint this sad little shelf". hope caught me at the end of the priming stage - there was this tiny little red dot of some mysterious substance that WOULD NOT be covered in primer. it kept bleeding through (no it wasn't blood) and i knew that when i tried to use my off white paint it would keep poking through. i remembered that i had a quart of kilz primer in my back room for another project and while i was chatting away went to grab it and gave it a good shake, opened it, got a small brush and touched up the red blot.

this whole time hope is getting filtered running commentary amongst our conversation. as i wash out (try to wash out) the brush i realize too late that this is OIL primer and not the latex i had been working with. i now have white oil paint all over one hand and no mineral spirits in the house. this is not the point of the story, but the backdrop to explain that hope said something like "hey, you're really hard on yourself and have a lot of negative self talk here" (i can't remember her exact words) but all of a sudden i heard myself. i realized she was right. i verbally beat myself up all the time.

it's subtle - i used to be 100 times worse - standing at the mirror and saying horrible things to myself. i don't do that anymore - but i didn't realize how much i did this other running commentary, criticizing myself, berating myself for mistakes made or dumb decisions.

the day before at church i was speaking to a couple of the women who would have been my mom's age about menopause. one of the women said she had been getting acne as part of her 'stage of life' now and i said "oh, don't talk to me about bad skin - i have the worst skin of anyone i know". both of them looked at me like i had a hole in my head. i used to have lovely skin - peaches and cream my mom called it. kids, hives treated wtih hydrocortisone for decades and rosacea, adult acne and scarring due to all of these things. without makeup i say my face looks like a road map.

these women were incredulous - "you have lovely skin" they said - i challenged them. for about five minutes. i said, "no i have lovely make up, not lovely skin..." i really feel like every time anyone looks at me in conversation like they are staring at the road map of my face. one of them had been at a going away party for a mutual friend the evening before and i said "when you gave me a compliment for my earrings last night i thought i had caught you starring at my face and you covered by complimenting my earrings". she looked me straight in the eyes and said "i thought your earrings were beautiful, and you are beautiful. your skin is beautiful and i have never once thought what you think or been distracted by it."

i think i might be dealing with a bit of a self image/loathing problem that i hadn't recognized. i guess because my self loathing used to be at 100% the 50% i've been living with seems non-existent. but it is still causing me a lot of damage. i am still so broken in this broken place.

anyway - back to this morning. laying in bed i recalled my examen time yesterday and thought about my day and realized god had answered my prayer to recall any amends that i had forgotten to make. i had forgotten to make amends to myself. i didn't know what that would look like, but i needed to take some time to figure that out and that step 10 and the daily examen will help me to keep my own self-loathing list short and checked.

so self, i begin today by saying sorry. i have beaten you up (both verbally, emotionally and even sometimes physically) far too often. loathed the very existence of you, the reflection of you and the inadequacies of you. please forgive me. i know this is broken and somehow we need to find a better way. together i think we can do it.

milestone

to the best of my ability i have truly and honestly finished step 9 today. i am a puddle.

Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

i have been praying for the past couple of weeks that god would bring to mind any other amends i might have missed - but today i finally received a response for the amend i had been putting off for years.

and it was the most gracious, loving response - from someone i love dearly - and i have grieved the loss of this relationship for over a decade. today i feel like i might have it back. it means the world to me.

this man was my boss during my 10 years in hamilton. he was the most engaging, passionate, intelligent, fun person i have ever had the honor of working with. he was also the first man who really truly listened (minus my husband, who still to this day struggles with this, but his heart is there) to me, sought my input and honored my skills. i loved him dearly, and he loved us back.

he was also incredibly generous. we owed him money. money we just could never seem to find to repay him. so it just got easier and easier to avoid that contact, sometimes it even dropped totally off of our radar screen like it never happened. but then cracks would appear in the denial and i would grieve again the loss of the relationship and the shame of the debt would drive me back into my addictions.

we even at one point sent a letter that went unanswered - and so i assumed that my effort was enough. it was not. i knew in my heart that i was not done with this. i have googled his name 100's of times, hoping to find an email address that could find it's way to him. i finally found one a couple of weeks ago and sent it. it was a email address where applicants could send their resumes to the company he owns. it was a shot in the dark hoping it would get to him - and today, about 10 minutes ago i received a response.

i called liam in from the other room as i just couldn't read it alone. my stomach was flipping and my hands were shaking. the subject line said "great to hear from you" - so that was encouraging, but still it was scary to see if the friendship once shared was strong enough to endure the silence of this past decade. he was so excited to hear from us and updated me on all of his kids and how much his business has grown and then he wrote this:

As for the money you owe us I would forget about it-it's long gone and it
appears for a while there you really needed that relief from financial burdens so forget it happened and so will we.

Please keep in touch and hopefully if and when you're in the area we'll be able to spend some time together and catch up.

grace received is such a beautiful thing.

logjam

i have made two amends today by email - the people involved are too far away to do face to face. i have one more to make today and then a phone call to clear the decks with a friend locally.

i am using the anxiety i'm having about the phone call to spur me on to making the amends i have set aside for months (years for one) and it's working. instead of eating the anxiety i am pouring the energy it gives me into moving foward and working my program.

this past week has been full of massive ah-ha's, answers to prayers and revelation. the penny dropped yesterday on a stalled area between liam and i - and the revelation truly felt miraculous. the images and ah-ha's we had could only have come from god - answers to about a dozen questions we have had - it was like a curtain lifted and we were given insight into some really destructive behavior we both have that has been foiling intimacy, healing and recovery.

now the work begins - but at least we have a starting point.

it feels like the logjam has been freed for me - like a hinge has turned and opened a door that has long been stuck shut. i have answers to questions and prayers i didn't know i was even asking.

resurrection is happening in places that have long been dormant and dead. spring is arriving and life is being made new. it's terrifying, emotional and wonderful.