Adult Children of Alcoholics Community Group
A Support Group for Adult Children of Alcoholics
Hey, I'm on my way outside to do yard work. Everything is blooming, and the Azalea's are just coming into their own.I like to check D/s each morning to see what's going on.I have been away from most dealings with the family for 25 years now. But as some you of now it's affects can be just a breath away. My Mother the Co-Dependent( with love) is 86, Up until 10 or 12yrs. ago I thought she was Alcoholic as well as my Father was.I have 4 brothers and we all seem to have grown up in different families even though we were all experiencing the same' chaos" respectively . Anyway, I just left a relationship very much like my parents relationship(Da!), .I stayed involved a little over a year , most of the time it was a lot like a relationship with a sister .as she" too"; grew up in a different family, than her 2 sisters. I left twice during the time we were together. I knew right from the beginning in spite of my good intentions and a very strong physical and emotional attraction to her. That it was not going to be a pretty site. I left twice even though I would have liked to have been there for her , I had to remember I really had to be their for me (which got lost in the Shuffle)..When I met her , she had just started a lengthy treatment plan with chemicals,for skin cancer on he face and chest. In the previous 10 yrs.she had had 30 operations which had left small scars on her arms, chest and face. At first I thought she Was afflicted with the practice of self-multialization (cutting on herself) to remove the emotional pain she has experienced most of, or if not all of her life. So with no contact with her family , strained relationships with everyone else,.I thought," I COULD BE A CALM IN THE Waters for Her'. But we just became A very Sick couple trying too sooth each other.Then came tragic results in a operation on her face. I came back around as a trusted friend, as she knew even though I had left the relationship a month earlier I cared. The second Round got even more abusive, for me, as she thought she could whip me into shape.She was diagnosed with breast cancer in December and I found it quite necessary to leave a week after the diagnosis.
So getting back to my family ha,ha: my mother is just starting to get forgetful, becoming even more irritated at her limitations and I'm here just trying to help.At times I know its" Just The way Its Suppose to Be". But at other times, its very difficult to remember I' m" Benefiting"and what it all boils down to is, Do I want to Grow from all this and Detach when I need to our Have to ,and just use the Tools ACOA, Alanon and AA have given to help me to recover from" The Family Disease", Alcoholism which never stops giving, or run So out to do yard work{ NOW!!}.
Billy C.
So getting back to my family ha,ha: my mother is just starting to get forgetful, becoming even more irritated at her limitations and I'm here just trying to help.At times I know its" Just The way Its Suppose to Be". But at other times, its very difficult to remember I' m" Benefiting"and what it all boils down to is, Do I want to Grow from all this and Detach when I need to our Have to ,and just use the Tools ACOA, Alanon and AA have given to help me to recover from" The Family Disease", Alcoholism which never stops giving, or run So out to do yard work{ NOW!!}.
Billy C.
lyndis.
I remember my early days in ACOA back in the late 80's early 90's when The recovery issues were rearing their ugly monsterous heads daily and the symptoms were raging through my life in relations with David and my baby girls.... before abstinence from alcohol and drugs....and in the early days of abstinence too..... issues arrose with the new relationships I was creating in recovery too.
I was walking through the awareness stage of all the shame and guilt, and personal flaws I was told by my family of origin I was so full of, and how worthless I was and how I was just taking up space where someone worthwhile could be standing instead of me....how it seemed that I was invisible most of the time unless someone wanted to show how "not perfect" and how "flawed" I was as a human child, teen, and young adult.... I never measured up to the measuring stick they used to measure a persons value with.
I learned my emotions were not to be trusted or felt or shown in front of any of them. My emotions were a liability and were wrong anyways so not to show them at all. I spent many a night crying myself to sleep with my head buried as deeply as possible in my pillow, for fear they would hear me or see me in my emotional state yet desireing more than anything for any of them to come in and save me and love me, and tell me I was right to feel the way I was feeling..... no one ever did. ( except for g-ma who was too far away to help by this age)
I remember one particular nite coming home from an ACOA mtg. where there had been some real good recovery taking place.... I found my self realizing the shame and guilt I had inside had been forced down my throat by the others in my family, and that these emotions and labels were a foreign substance in my body... they were not my own.... they did not belong to me now or ever.... they were so strong in not belonging there I began to cry at the realization and then to dry heave them coughing them up from the center of my identity and puking them out.... they were theirs not mine and they didn't belong to me or in me....I was literally crawling on the floor crying and dry heaving these emotions and values which were not mine... and the pain I felt.. my own abandonment and emotional betrayal from those who were suppose to love and protect me made my heart muscle constrict so hard I felt it in my chest just being put thru the wrinnger...
This illness was not mine to recover from... I was never sick or flawed... it was all a lie... a coverup for the way they all felt about themselves and I actually had a choice for the first time to not participate in continuing the chain and cycle of abuse, abandonment, emotional torturing of self and others.....
That same night I felt and saw a vision of Jesus in that room upstairs at the YWCA. He was standing in the middle of our circle holding his hands out and loving and healing each and everyone of us...... Not seeing things.... he was really there bringing healing to all of us that nite.
So.... sometimes you can recover from an illness that wasn't yours in the first place... but it is down deep at the level of raw human emotion where the illness and the healing is found. Being willing to sort thru and find what is truely yours..(not much) and what is truely theirs (most of it) is the key ..... the awareness and the strength will come.
We are not what they told us we were.... we are loving, loveable worthy and full of value in this world and God gave us this at the time of our conception. This is our birthrite as children of a loving creator and our duty is to be all of this love we can be.
Happy birthday Uncle Billy Baldy... you are truely a wonderful man with so much to offer this world and the people in it. And I am grateful for the fact that God saw fit for our paths to criss and cross and that we continue to celebrate each other in our lives today.
We love you and we miss you and we are happy you are learning to live in this world as a valued and worthy human being of all the love and successes you can hold in your heart. Smile today and know in your heart of hearts that you an awesome dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love always as we trudge this road of happy destiny.
TerrieAnn, and the girls and littlest ones too!