By eye of einstein

In 1976, when I came to AA, there were few female members. In my 3^rd month of recovery, I had a profound spiritual experience which I have related in other posts. I quickly learned to shut up about God as many members wanted to talk about alcohol only. Being female and a God person almost insured that I wouldn’t have a lot of group acceptance.

The focus for my recovery took a profound change in direction when I discovered ACOA. I have never “forgot” that I am first and foremost an alcoholic and am deeply grateful to be in recovery. Nor have I ever considered myself as recovered. Why change something that works for me? But ACOA gave me permission to not only feel my feelings but also to talk about them.

ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) has gone through several name changes. In 1977, (one year after the beginning of my recovery in 1976), a group of Al-Anon members realized that they were all children of alcoholics. In later years, ACOA became ACA and/or COA.

Up until 1983, any Al-Anon meeting I attended was to help heal that child inside me who grew up in a very troubled family. But when I shared at Al-Anon meetings about my alcoholism, I felt a subtle change in the group of some members feeling that I didn’t belong in an Al-Anon meeting.

In ACOA or ACA meetings, I immediately knew that I belonged because they talked about feelings. I continued to be completely committed to my recovery with AA groups. But the AA groups were male-dominated groups whose members seemed to be proud of how far they had fallen to their bottoms. So I started attending ACOA and Codependents Anonymous as well as AA.I probably didn’t win any friends by reminding everyone in AA that you don’t have to be hit by a train to hear the whistle blowing.

I can’t find any CODEP meetings here in Ft. Lauderdale but I notice that several of the AA meetings include AFL (affliated with family) so maybe some CODEP went there. CODEP meetings were the most fun because the had many counselors who were there to lead the rest of us. They, of course, were well.

Right!

By Alice Popkorn

“If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, “I will be bigger that you. You cannot defeat me.” Then repeat to your­self the most comforting of all words, “This too shall pass.” Maintaining self-respect in the face of a devastating experience is of prime importance.” Ann Landers

Recovery is a spiritual journey. I believe we are souls with a human body. On my 40^th birthday I decided that I could take it with me. I could take my soul with me when I die. That was my conscious recognition of what would be the main theme for the rest of my life. Having had a spiritual awakening in January, 1977, I have sought to do God’s will for my life since then.

Having said that, I also recognize that many people who need recovery relief in their lives are turned off by spiritual guidance per say. So I have chosen to create an online addiction recovery center as a center for help, guidance, and direction.

In this, my 32^nd year of sobriety, and at the present age of 68 years, I am going through the hardest life experience I have ever had. I have decided to use my energy to move forward with my life. So I don’t spend time with any magical thinking to run away from reality. I have no job. I have spent the past four years writing which has culminated in 6 blogs. But I am receiving no income from them.

I have few readers due to many factors, I’m sure. So I am rereading the master bloggers that I read and love (see yesterday’s post “The Best Help”). From them I learn how to move forward in the blogging world.

One of the suggestions that I read was to combine two ideas together. I noticed several years ago that people who have changed the world with their creativity have combined an old product with a new twist. Ray Croc didn’t invent hamburgers. But he combined hamburgers with a clean environment. Who has not gone to McDonalds for the clean restrooms?

So I am combining my love of learning and teaching about our inner children (mislabeled as our inner child) with solutions for living in the real world. I will be adding healing direction with the problems each of us faces daily. I hope this will help others as much as it will help me.

I learned fifty years ago, if you want to learn about something, teach it. Teaching provides the vehicle for my sharing with the world. Not coincidentally, I have returned to the Twelve Step meetings with a much greater frequency. I know that nothing outside my self can heal me. So I begin the journey to my new self. She is waiting inside me and needs to be extra protected now.

God is good and is my constant companion and guide. I used to feel like I was the clay and He was the potter. Now I feel that I am in the stream of His consciousness. Heavy, I know, but this has been a 32 year journey.

Carny by kevindooley

I believe that emotion is energy. So choosing to use your energy positively is a choice you can make any time of the day. Staying in your fear won’t help you in any way except to keep you from moving forward. So the first thing I ask myself when I am feeling fearful is, “What am I trying to avoid not completing?”

Procrastination is one of my favorite methods to stay in my fear and not move forward. I have had to put several action thoughts, prayers, and deeds into affect to change my old self into new and better action goals.

1.  I use the focus–refocus –then review action steps to plan my day.

2.  I always keep small legal pads at each place I use in the home and/or office. I work at home but have three work places. The variety gives me new scenery and different computers. A writer’s life is a solitary profession. Writers also have to be relentless about rewriting. I have found physically moving to another work space helps to help me find a new train of thought.

3.  After I have several ideas on several note pads, I do a “brain dump” of organizing for all the material I have notes. Sometimes I do a mind map (xmind) to see what is the direction I want to go in. I have been training my brain for 30 years how to be my servant instead of my master. I believe this is one of my life issues. I call my main lessons life lessons so that I can remember they will be with  me for life. Prior posts about what I call finding the observer mind:

How to Retrain Your Brain

We Feel What We Choose

Learning How to Reframe Our Thoughts

4. Writing down my goals or plans in a large, hardcover notebook that I have divided into 3 sections helps me to keep it simple. Then I use a red pen and circle my goals for the day. I may use a different colored marker for each day as I move through the week. But usually I have to move on to new topics.

5. For translating my goals and plans into action steps, I use clipboards. I learned clipboards from the Navy when I worked in Guantanamo Bay. I keep 5 clipboards focused on 5 different directions I may or may not be following. If something loses favor with the direction I want to go in, it is easy to discard that topic. I generally keep a clipboard free for home care and/or personal errands.

Some goal-setting links:

Goals are Dreams With a Deadline!

Living a Balanced Life

6. In the past few years, I have kept alphabetized white cover notebooks to keep all aspects of a topic I am researching. But, for now, I have so much material I no longer follow that smaller notebooks serve me better.

Cave by Greg Hayter

Main blogs: (see description under Changemaker Blogs)

kathyberman.com; original blog about my spiritual journey that I call recovery. It was named changemaker because we are each the changemaker in our own lives. I started this blog Thanksgiving, 2004.

answersbyemail.com; has the Changemaker Test I wrote 20 years ago to teach anyone 10 of his/her personality labels and what each means. Anyone can give it to anyone else and share the results with each other.

changemakergroups.com; I believe that the best personal growth happens in small groups. Because I believe that mental health is a fluid state and not a fixed state, I trust the group conscience. I’ve always wanted to start a small group using the Changemaker Test as a way to get to know each other. So I created this blog to teach about small groups.

cmlibraryonline.com; I read 90 books in the 3rd grade. How do I know this? Because my teacher made me stay after school to report on the. Si I’ve taken 10 topics from my blogs and created Amazon lists for each. And, yes, I am an Amazon Associate so I will collect a small percent for each sale.

healingforyouonline.com; The main message of my blogs is about healing—mind, body, soul and emotions. I believe addiction is an emotional disease  so the inner child has to be healed from our childhood wouns to really grow.

highenergygoals.com; I created the High Energy Diet three years ago which is on this blog. But I believe that our whole food experience has to be changed to stay healthy. So this site includes fitness. I believe everyone needs to physically exercise everyday because exercise is the only antidote to flush out stress from our ‘fight or flee” reactions to stress. I think stress is a good thing because it teaches me about myself.

Google Reader: I follow 512 blogs under 89 topics.

Twitter (kberman): Following, 2679; Followers, 2,613; Updates, 1,152. I have set up a RSS feed to Twitter which lists my post for the day. This goes to all in Twitter that follow me.

My Facebook profile: Kathy Berman

My WordPress.com blogs created to teach others about blogs:

coralcayblogs.wordpress.com I created this blog to teach about blogs to the community I live in.

blogempire.wordpress.com Started to encourage blog growth

coralcay.wordpress.com Created to demonstrate sales blog

My Squidoo Lenses: www.squidoo.com/cmlens. Also a short sampler of my life. My favorite Squidoo lens of mine is ACOA, Codependency and My Inner Child.

My bookmarks are at Delicious: changemaker. I have 2561 bookmarks there which anyone can access.

Feed Me Light by kevindooley

Having grownup in a home controlled by alcoholism, I was able to see my addiction very early into the disease. Thanksgiving,  1976, I told my family that I thought I was an alcoholic. I fully expected everyone to disagree with me because I had not had any outward signs. But, my mother said that she had been afraid of that. So I was stuck with the admission and being the “perfect daughter”, I never drank again and went to AA.

My third month into recovery, I had a radical conversion as described by William James in his The Varieties of Religious Experience. It was instant and I call it ‘”the moment that changed my life.” So I have been trying since 1977 to hear what God’s will is for my life. Many days I have followed my will and called it His. But there has been progress, too.

In June, 2009, my husband left me for another woman and they live down the street together. Without God and His followers, I could not have been able to pick up my life and move on. But I now have a need to support myself as my Social Security isn’t enough.

I have been writing on blogs for five years mainly about my spiritual journey which I call recovery. My original blog became so large that I have 6 blogs which each have a single main topic. I have about 30 blogs as I did several to help others learn how to do blogs. I have put all my online work on a separate blog which also has my resume. That blog is My Online Work and Resume.

I always believed that I would make money with my writing. But that hasn’t happened. There are 20,000,000 blogs now. The writing field online is glutted with other writers due to so many looking for any kind of work. There also is so much competition from other countries with writers who work for $1-$2 per article. Each article takes about 1-1 1/2 hours to write.

The main reason that I love helping others is because we are each born with a core of goodness from birth. I also believe that contains our creativity which is the source of our joy. I also believe that helping anyone find this creativity is the answer to awakening others to the beauty of himself/herself. Finally, I believe maturity is returning to the joyful, playful child that God created.

2 People Beach Shadows by mikebaird

“When two codependents enter a relationship, they often overtly or covertly try to manipulate the partner to provide the love and approval needed to fill what John Bradshaw calls the “hole in the soul”. Both partners attach themselves to the other for a sense of completeness, a strategy that stunts personal growth and development. By surrendering responsibility for our happiness to other people, we create power struggles, arguments, and ultimately broken promises, expectations, and hearts. We can break out of the codependent trap….by working through the pain of our unmet childhood needs and by cultivating an inner life.”       Ronald S. Miller

Because I am in the middle of a divorce, I am determined to find my unmet childhood needs in order to grow more completely. One pattern I have seen is that I don’t feel that I deserve affection from a man. My father was very self-absorbed. Being the oldest child of three girls, I must have learned very young that he didn’t have much to give me or anyone. Instead I apparently decided that I needed to parent him. Actually, I guess I became the parent for both of my parents at a very young age.

I know now that my husband and I have paid a high emotional price for each other. It is amazing how clear it is to me now and how I never realized it sooner. Maybe because his leaving was so traumatic, I was able to see my anger for what it was. Instead of trying to work through our trouble with each other, we chose to attack and criticize. We were on a collusion course for disaster. I know that I need to heal and to mourn.

While I’m healing, I am continuing to read Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples. The author, Harville Hendrix , and his wife, Helen Lakelly Hunt, continue to help healing couples. This book was originally written in 1988 and has been updated. I am reading it very slowly and am hoping that I will be learning with my heart and not just with my head.

I am pondering this selection now: From “Becoming a Lover”–”We all have an understandable desire to live life as children. We don’t want to go to the trouble of raising a cow and milking it; we want to sit down at the table and have someone hand us a cool glass of milk….This wishful thinking finds its ultimate expression in relationships. We don’t want to accept responsibility for getting our needs met; we want to “fall in love” with a superhuman mate and live happily ever after. The psychological term for this tendency to put our frustrations and the solutions to our problems outside ourselves is “externalization,” and is the cause of much of the world’s unhappiness.”

So each day I focus on being a happy person. It really is a daily choice I have. To accept what is and to be grateful for it sometimes takes me several start-overs for the day but it is getting easier.

Tulips by chrismichaels

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”       Rainer Maria Rilke

I am living the greatest emotional upheaval of my life. When a catastrophe erupts my every aspect of living, I batten down the hatches and go to ground. The only decision I make as I live the question is to be gentle to myself. I am my own best friend and I seek out refuges for the soul. My soul needs protection and strength during trouble.

Taking naps or rests whenever possible helps me to focus my energy on moving forward. One of the main choices I make is to not “should” myself.  Shoulds are for times when I have excess energy and not for when I am running on near empty. I am reminded of the times when I was young and driving with very little gasoline in a car. I would go down hills in neutral believing this would get me further. So now I try to coast through this trouble.

The love of my life has found another. Will I survive? Of course, but my whole future will be changed. Part of the solution must be the dreaded division of goods. I have decided to let go of mostly everything. I think selling what I have collected will allow me a much better launching pad for my new life.

So I will offer most of what we have to the new couple. This house we’ve both worked on is more his home than mine. It is has two decks on a freshwater canal and I don’t fish. Plus it has a wonderful latticed deck that I rarely use. Better that they have it and enjoy it.

I am quite surprised at this letting go. But I came to this solution slowly and without forcing anything. So I know that this will free up the energy needed to move forward.

God is good and always brings our answers if we surrender to the process. My puny little brain couldn’t have decided this. But I make the biggest choices with my heart. He has been as good a husband as he could be. But our life agendas are completely opposite. No need for me to add to the pain.

I first want to begin by reposting about my spiritual experience–”The Moment That Changed My Life”.

“Each life has defining moments. The moment that changed my life happened in a home for alcoholic women in 1976. I was in a discussion with Lois, another alcoholic from Brooklyn, and she was talking about her life. Midway through her talk, I felt intense warmth toward her and compassion flowed through me. The miracle was that I had had a very sheltered life and she had had a very tough life, but in that moment we were sisters and kindred spirits.”

“When I got up and walked outside, everything was different—trees, cars, the street—I saw everything with new eyes. It took me much searching to find out what had happened to me. In a book by William James entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), I found that I had had a radical conversion.”

“Did I answer a calling? I don’t know what happened to me except I knew that God had given me that compassion and love that I felt that day. I know that someone with an experience is never at the mercy of someone with an argument.”

“From that day until today, I have tried to accept the guidance that God gives me and it has been the most amazing journey. I don’t believe that God does more for me now than He did before that day. The difference is that I now can see the daily miracles. “Once I was blind and now I see.””