A Positive Foundation

Hello, I'm Linda and I am an alcoholic.  Well, no I'm not but I have listened to so many YouTube "We Do Recover" videos that I have the urge to say that on occasion. 

Those recovery videos, along with my Al-Anon meetings have changed the way I think about the alcoholics / addicts in my life. They have changed the way I think and feel about the homeless man screaming as he walks along the street, the gal who waits at the bus stop but never boards the bus, the teen on the street who looks angry and man who makes it to work every day but numbs himself to the hilt after he gets home. Building a foundation of empathy with good, healthy boundaries is such an amazing blessing. 

Don't get me wrong, I still have a healthy dose of fear because of the unpredictability of the addict/alcoholic. I like to know exactly what to expect in any given situation...I didn't know that about myself before but it's true. It doesn't have to involve my qualifiers, it can be most anything. Not knowing sends me into a small panic. What will happen? How will I handle it? Do I have options? Are there other people out there like me??  I think there are a lot of them.

Still learning about myself and with that knowledge I intend to do better each day. By having empathy for those who suffer, by facing my fears and understanding that I will be OK, by understand boundaries and implementing them in a way that is calm and firm. 


Still moving forward on my road to positive thinking and happiness, are you?






Comments

Post a Comment

What do you have to say about that?

Popular posts from this blog

A Journey To Home

Image
My tender hearted girl decided she wanted to foster an old lady. Selkie is 14, is nearly deaf and nearly blind, has a hard time walking and uses her bark to get her needs met.  She got her home, took her for a bath and then basically loved this old girl for three weeks until the property manager decided that it wasn’t a good match (barking too much AND because she is a pit bull).  My girl knew it was probably temporary but she gave that dog a comfortable loving home, away from the chaos of the shelter, for a short time.  Ideally, she would have walked her home but that’s not how it worked this time.  Last night she stood and ugly cried on a strangers shoulder after giving her back.  I love that girl and her sweet heart.  I wish Selkie a new final home full of love. 
Read more

Private Eye

Image
We pass by the house frequently since it sits on a busy thoroughfare. We know to look every time we pass and guess what will we see. Will it be the two Dalmatians, sitting on the couch that backs up to the giant panel window, waiting for their human to come home? Or will it be their human, sitting slightly to the right of middle (allowing for a better view of the giant mounted tv across the room) of the said couch. They are never there at the same time. It’s one or the other. One sleepless night, when my body was willing but my brain was not, I did a little sleuthing. It’s amazing what you can find out about a complete stranger.   His name is Gary and, from what I can tell, he’s never been married. He has worked his way up in a air duct company. He’s now the senior VP but it’s a small company and he still goes out on jobs, judging from  the reviews on Yelp. I know he has two siblings and that their father passed away in 2018. His memorial was held in a Buddhist temple and Gary...
Read more

Go!

Image
 Vai. E, se der medo, vai con medo mesmo. When one is raised in an angry family, it’s not enough to say I don’t want to be angry. You must learn how to do it differently. That’s no easy task. If judgment and self hatred became a way of life, a new way to live has to be taught. There are many ways to do it. Reading, writing, sharing, practicing all help the change. Counseling, psychoanalysis, religion, meditation, gratitude, have the ability to transform but I needed to see it in action, it needed to be more tangible, visual, accessible. I needed to understand the possibilities. There is a YouTube channel that I watch over and over again in order to absorb how to live more fully, more open and from the heart. One of the first episodes that I stumbled on is this…. The channel is Reflections of Life and through it we get to meet people who are doing life a little differently, often more soul based. People who are living life, healing wounds and finding what is truly important.  I...
Read more