This made me realize that we are building attitudes at home.  It’s too easy to be grumpy at home, to air our gripes and disappointments rather than looking for the sunshine.  In our multigenerational home, with its many personalities, it’s sometimes difficult for all of us to be upbeat all the time.

Kids smiling image: sxc.hu

However, it’s up to us adults to set the tone of the home and help youngsters build their attitudes…hopefully positive and problem solving ones.

• Do the youngsters in your home see you as an overcomer or as someone who lets life get you down?
• Do you find solutions to challenges or simply sit down and worry?
• Do you want your children to follow your example?

What do you do to affect your children’s attitudes in the home and in life?

Post from: Blisstree

Attitude Building With Children

It’s Okay To Be Me

“Time after time newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their lives… they have turned to easier methods… But they had not learned enough humility.”

So, I had to find a level of humility that would lead me out of the place where I believed there was so much wrong with me nothing would ever fix it.

“Humility sounds so much like humiliation, but it really is the ability to look at myself – and honestly accept what I find.”

Not only honestly accept what I find but also find that what I find isn’t all negative and hopeless!

“I no longer need to be the “smartest” or “dumbest” or any other “est.”

Darn. Throws a whole lifetime of feeling useless, hopeless, worthless and pointless right out the window.

Have you ever heard Bill Cosby’s line about when he was growing up not knowing whether his name was “Gawd Dammit” or “Jesus Christ?” He relates it this way…

When he was a child and committed a wrong he’d hear these words shouted at him – “Gawd Dammit, will you cut that out,” or “Jesus Christ, will you stop that!!!” He couldn’t be sure of his identity. Neither could I. I was a lot of “est’s” and a lot of “less’s.”

With AA’s help, today I’m simply me – whoever me might be right now

Post from: Blisstree

There’s No Longer A Need To Be An “est.”

As of this writing there will be 798 posts over 34 categories that began in December, 2005 when Anne wrote here for b5. Anne moved on to much bigger and better things and I was given the opportunity to begin writing here in April, 2006.

These are the 34 categories which I currently write in;

• AA History
• Alcoholics Anonymous Resources
• Beginners Meeting
• Books for 12 Steppers
• Courage To Change
• Did You Know
• Experience, Strength and Hope
• First Step
• Heard At Meetings
• Helpful 12 Step Sites
• In The Book
• News
• Opinion
• Pass It On
• Personal
• Principles
• Reality
• Recovery Humor
• Second Step
• Spirituality
• Sponsors
• The 12 Steps
• The Eighth Step
• The Eleventh Step
• The Fifth Step
• The Fourth Step
• The Ninth Step
• The Seventh Step
• The Sixth Step
• The Tenth Step
• The Third Step
• The Twelfth Step
• The Twelve Concepts
• The Twelve Traditions

I’ve made the attempt to offer you what practical knowledge I can about my experiences with The Twelve Steps and recovery. I’m not much for investigation into the deep, dark, nether regions of research like folks such as Glenn C. at Hindsfoot are. Not enough patience

But I love recovery and as long as the good folks at b5 will allow me to continue (and I don’t die and I can stay online) I’ll keep giving back what I can to help you in some small way find this wonderful life sobriety can bring. Thanks for stopping by!!!

Post from: Blisstree

For My New Friends Who Visit For The First Few Times

It says: “Happiness Is Not The Point”

And I can somewhat agree.

“I don’t think happiness or unhappiness is the point. How do we learn from the problems we face?”

Which makes sense unless my negative mind works it into “Everything I face is a problem” therefore I’m “learning 24/7 and I’m sick of it!”

Moving on – “How do we best learn from them and transmit what we have learned to others, if they would receive the knowledge?”

Well, that is the deal…

“In my search to be happy, I changed jobs, married and divorced, took geographical cures, and ran myself into debt – financially, emotionally and spiritually.”

Oh, heck no! Is there something wrong with these things? Changed jobs? Damn right! Married? Damn right? Divorced? He** no! Geographical cures? Nope. Ran myself into all those debts? You betcha!

“In A.A., I’m learning to grow up. Instead of demanding that people, places and things make me happy, I can ask God for self-acceptance.”

So – I demanded eh? Maybe I don’t think so. Uh huh – well, each time I attempted to wrest control of a situation, that was a form of demand. When I couldn’t control it, that was unacceptable and I re-discovered restless, irritable and discontent (many times).

“When a problem overwhelms me, A.A.’s Twelve Steps will help me grow through the pain. The knowledge I gain can be a gift to others who suffer with the same problem.”

I’ve got to help you too? Come on, I’ve had enough pain, thank you! What? You’re in pain too? Allow me to rescue you – huh? I have to keep growing through the pain to help you learn? And, then I don’t have to drink? I get to feel good enough about me? Oh, well then, okay…

As Bill said, “When pain comes, we are expected to learn from it willingly, and help others to learn. When happiness comes, we accept it as a gift, and thank God for it.”

There you go with those expectations again, Bill. Happiness is a gift? Do you mean to say I’m not entitled to happiness??? Wow, lots of folks will be let down by that!

Post from: Blisstree

Now – Just Hold On One Minute Here…

My day didn’t start out that way. In the course of the day, my friend Mike called and offered me many, many reasons to be grateful – for him and for me!

Mike has about a hundred different projects on his “plate.” I have substantially fewer.

One item on my plate is my responsibility to this blog. I believe I follow through on this responsibility fairly well and can’t criticize myself regarding it. If you want to that’s fine. Just remember – “those that judge don’t matter and those that matter don’t judge.” In another 10 days I’ll celebrate two years of writing here at A Dozen Steps and I am also extremely grateful to b5media and Jeremy Wright for the opportunity. I look forward to as much time as the God I understand allows me to continue writing here.

As a result of the gift of a program of recovery I am working on a project that will only enhance my presence online. I’m not ready to make it public yet. It is not different from what a lot of folks are doing but it will be a first for me.

Which is why today’s posts are a bit less than usual. I’m working on timing today. It is a concept, for me, to find a balance between things I love to do and other things which I darn well need to do. Yet, without the Twelve Steps, I’d never finish anything anyway. Alcohol would get in the way somewhere.

Not today…

Post from: Blisstree

Thanks To A Good Friend

First Things First – I had the distinct pleasure this past Thurs. evening to chair a first sober anniversary meeting for Bob B. from our South Side Group. Congratulations again Bob! And thanks to Jan G. for carrying an excellent message – a message that had the “hinge working.”

Don’t forget Bob – this was an anniversary celebration, not a graduation ceremony…

Gotta take a moment to say thanks to my new friend Alicia at Mental Health Notes for a really cool shout out and write up! Very much appreciated Alicia

So, a secret that I’ve only let a couple of seriously close friends in on. I still have feelings!

And the positive is that I am still capable of love. I had begun to believe that that part of my life was finished. It may yet be, but the important thing, to me, is that I can still feel it!

Mind you – everything, and I think I mean just about everything, about the other aspects of this would no doubt be perceived as wrong. Yep – wrong. I won’t even get into the “besides the facts” since there is one distinct factor that, right now, outweighs all else, one that is entirely, 100% up to HP (as if the rest aren’t also lol). She’s a newcomer…

And, no matter what God’s plan might be – I feel required by the feeling to be both sensible, responsible, and the opposite of stupid, and leave her to focus on her sobriety, her well-being, her peace of mind. She’s been here before.

Otherwise, the feelings would be a lie!

[There are clues in this post]

Post from: Blisstree

Still Capable Of Love…

Freedom From Bondage

If, for nothing else, how to be rid of a resentment.

This story, and the wise counsel of the oldtimers who were in my life at a time I needed them the most, went a very long way to helping me understand it is better to be about love than to be about hate!

A small bit of wisdom first – offering a dictionary definition: “Rationalization is giving a socially acceptable reason for socially unacceptable behavior, and socially unacceptable behavior is a form of insanity.”

From page 551 (4th ed.);

“As I said earlier, self-pity and resentment were my constant companions, and my inventory began to look like a thirty-three-year diary, for I seemed to have a resentment against everybody I had ever known. All but one ‘responded to the treatment’ suggested in the steps immediately, but this one posed a problem.”

As I continued reading I identified very strongly except that mine was a father rather than a mother.

“This resentment was against my mother, and it was twenty-five years old. I had fed it, fanned it, and nurtured it as one might a delicate child, and it had become as much a part of me as my breathing. It had provided me with excuses for my lack of education, my marital failures, personal failures, inadequacy, and, of course, my alcoholism. And though I really thought I had been willing to part with it, now I knew I was reluctant to let it go.”

My resentment towards my father was almost identical in the fact that it was a bullet-proof vest to wear to excuse away my failures and alcoholism also! But an oldtimer fortunately pointed out to me that my father hadn’t poured not one single drop of alcohol down my throat, not one…

“One morning, however, I realized I had to get rid of it, for my reprieve was running out, and if I didn’t get rid of it I was going to get drunk – and I didn’t want to get drunk anymore. In my prayers that morning I asked God to point out to me some way to be free of this resentment. During the day, a friend of mine brought me some magazines to take to a hospital group I was interested in. I looked through them. A banner across one featured an article by a prominent clergyman in which I caught the word resentment.”

Yep! No coincidences there right?

“He said, in effect: ‘If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don’t really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks, and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love.”

The most traumatic circumstances of my life, those that caused me the most emotional upheaval, have lost their bitterness because of this wisdom from a person I can so deeply identify with when she says (speaking about her childhood);

“I concluded too that if I never allowed myself to love anybody or anything, I could never be hurt again. It became second nature for me to remove myself from anything or anybody I found myself growing fond of.”

Ironically – today’s struggle… though the bitterness towards my father and my ex has disappeared, today I find I am able to move on and away from intimacy with “great aplomb.” (sarcasm)

Post from: Blisstree

Freedom From Bondage

Please, don’t give yourself permission to drink. These folks all have a few years of sobriety. Two of them have been out and back a few times and have thankfully been able to put sober time together. See if you can identify with them.

“My job is driving me crazy and if I don’t say/do something about it I’m going to lose my sobriety!”

No! You’re not!!!

I understand it is “prescribed” that we “rat” on our disease which isn’t why I’m talking about it. The first person did exactly that and was doing the right thing. The other folks who spoke about “if they did/didn’t do this or that, if something like this happens in my life, if a loved one…, I’ll drink,” that’s what I’m getting at.

Creating and allowing a condition to exist whereby I have given myself permission to drink is not acceptable behavior, for me. I would suggest it isn’t for you either.

Post from: Blisstree

Don’t Give Yourself Permission To Drink!

I’ve been accused of a lot of things in my life. Most recently, my feelings (and my friend Mike’s feelings) were accused of killing suffering human beings. That’s pretty caustic but not unusual, for the person who made the accusation is obviously in a defensive state of mind. Gosh, I’ve been there too.

In the 12 & 12, in the talk on the Fourth Step;

“The sponsors of those who feel they need no inventory are confronted with quite another problem. This is because people who are driven by pride of self unconsciously blind themselves to their liabilities. These newcomers scarcely need comforting. The problem is to help them discover a chink in the walls their ego has built, through which the light of reason can shine.”

The dilemma? Well, let’s see… so many express that they get upset when an “oldtimer” is crusty and holds nothing back when telling the newcomer the truth. At the same time they’ll look to the literature for a comforting answer. About like the person who goes from sponsor to sponsor, sponsor shopping, until finally they find the one who will co-sign their bs and give them the answer they seek. Right up there in that quote it says “These newcomers scarcely need comforting.”

Directly from our literature! Their ego has built a wall, a solid wall without any deformities or holes through which reason can enter. They don’t even have the opportunity to worship the God of Reason! (That’s also from our literature!). Further on, the talk says “For most of us, self-justification was the maker of excuses; excuses, of course, for drinking, and for all kinds of crazy and damaging conduct.” We had made the invention of alibis a fine art.”

Crazy and damaging conduct? Reads thusly, “It is because of people like yourself that a sick person might pass on and not get the help because of the self righteous rhetoric that your mouth spews forth.”

Further still, we read “But in A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted pride. We had to see that every time we played the big shot, we turned people against us. We had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we had intended to use on others. We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it.”

Slowly learned. Big Shot – which in this instance I will personally point at one person proclaiming themselves “recovered” after less than four years away from their last drink, having never to drink or drug again! Harbored grudges. Isn’t it possible that when harboring grudges one of the ways it manifests itself is through character assassination? Anger? That previous paragraph makes a clear reference, I believe.

Then, to end this portion of this discussion, we read “To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time. We could perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves. First of all, we had to admit that we had many of these defects, even though such disclosures were painful and humiliating. Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word “blame” from our speech and thought. This required great willingness even to begin. But once over the first two or three high hurdles, the course ahead began to look easier. For we had started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another way of saying that we were gaining in humility.”

Blame. I think most would agree that this statement “Old timers like yourself kill suffering people because of how self-righteous you feel” may not use the word blame but is all about blame. That’s pretty bad behavior friends. It isn’t honest and is definitely justification for the bad behavior both before and after it. All that aside however, it most certainly is nothing like making a gain on humility!

Again from our literature – “Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:” Somehow this has become rather repugnantly twisted into “Remember a person cannot work your ‘program’ and you can’t work theirs.” So, now we each have our own program? Here’s a news flash! MY program gets me drunk! Run that past any sponsor worth their weight in sobriety.

A program of recovery A program of recovery A program of recovery A program of recovery A program of recovery A program of recovery A program of recovery!!!!!

Perhaps next we’ll discuss anonymity and the only requirement for membership and a few more Traditions that have been vehemently ignored. Perhaps?

Post from: Blisstree

Driven By Pride Of Self

Well, I’m NOT your target! I’m certainly NOT your huckleberry!

Why? Many, many reasons, the first of which is I’m sober and have been for quite some time. Secondly, I’ve made my amends to you and have ended the damage I was doing to you.

From page 125;

“A man may criticize or laugh at himself and it will affect others favorably, but criticism or ridicule coming from another often produces the contrary effect. Members of a family should watch such matters carefully, for one careless, inconsiderate remark has been known to raise the very devil. We alcoholics are sensitive people. It takes some of us a long time to outgrow that serious handicap.”

I’m here to tell you that this is a true statement and we do outgrow this handicap. I’m NOT your huckleberry!

From page 126;

“Having been neglected and misused in the past, they think father owes them more than they are getting. They want him to make a fuss over them. They expect him to give them the nice times they used to have before he drank so much, and to show his contrition for what they suffered.”

A very interesting definition for “contrition”

“Deep sorrow and repentance for sin either because sin is displeasing to God or arising from love of God.”

You, my family, have decided that I am not deeply sorrowful and repentant? Now who’s playing God?

You have no idea the hurt…

Again, beginning on page 126;

“Both father and the family are mistaken, though each side may have some justification. It is of little use to argue and only makes the impasse worse. The family must realize that dad, though marvelously improved, is still convalescing. They should be thankful he is sober and able to be of this world once more. Let them praise his progress.”

Praise? You see the deal here, right? No? The deal is that I am not alone! I am not the only one who has a family that knows absolutely nothing of praise and thankfulness and forgiveness. Many of us have families that only desire to have us suffer for our sins endlessly.

Well,

I Am NOT Your Huckleberry!

This is a true commentary on my life from the Big Book page 127;

“Since the home has suffered more than anything else, it is well that a man exert himself there. He is not likely to get far in any direction if he fails to show unselfishness and love under his own roof. We know there are difficult wives and families, but the man who is getting over alcoholism must remember he did much to make them so.”

Yes, I did. Yes, they are. Another challenge – from a professional’s mouth – I didn’t do all the damage but I was blamed for all of it. There was alcoholism in a previous family. The wife’s. Much damage already existed.

Had I been afforded the opportunity who knows how today might have unfolded but that was not the plan. So, where does all this lead?

I’ll skip ahead to page 133;

“So let each family play together or separately, as much as their circumstances warrant. We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us. But it is clear that we made our own misery. God didn’t do it. Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence.”

There will be no apology for what is the grace of God and my personal sobriety. I placed myself beyond human aid and was brought back by the love of a wondrous Higher Power! To allow myself to become and stayed depressed, feeling less than, feeling victimized, feeling persecuted, feeling unloved, would be the deliberate manufacture of my own misery at your hands. The disease would win and I’d no doubt be drunk. Not happening – for today.

I Am Not Your Huckleberry!!!

[Pic credits - Useless Graphics for the devil and Maxine.com for Maxine]

Post from: Blisstree

I Am NOT Your Huckleberry!