The Hallway

You know that expression, the one that says "God doesn't close one door without opening another one"?

I've never particularly liked it - it felt too much like a Band-Aid over a bullet hole, like plastering a bumper sticker over an openly bleeding wound.

Of course it's true, like most over-used sayings.

The part that isn't mentioned, though, is the hallway.  The one I find myself standing in right now,
one door firmly shut behind me, but the new door remains out of sight, at the other end of a shadowy journey I can't define.

I spend a lot of time by myself. I can't drive, and so I leave the house only with help, and only when necessary.  It's amazing how much of my identity was wrapped around the woman-who-did-stuff.  I used to go non-stop, all day - rushing to and from appointments and errands and business engagements and housework, and making dinner, and activities ...and, and, and.

What I have learned is the vast majority of all that rushing around was unnecessary.  Life just felt more comfortable when I didn't stop moving.  I would never simply sit and think, or pray, or breathe.  When I did these things the feelings would start to come -the fear, anxiety and uncertainty I felt at the core of my being - and so I'd go someplace.  Like Target. Or Michael's. Or Stop & Shop.  I would lose myself in the mundane hum of normalcy, mindlessly pushing my cart up and down aisles, making hundreds of tiny decisions so I could avoid thinking about the bigger ones.

What happened, when I stopped - well, let's get real .... when I was forced to stop - was all the feelings came to the surface.  I could no longer dodge the reality of my fear.  I don't numb it from the inside-out with alcohol, and I don't numb it from the outside-in with labels I affix to myself to validate who I am.

I am slowly peeling away all those labels, and its scary.  I pick away at their sticky edges - Wife, Mother, Writer, Daughter, Blogger, Alcoholic, Cancer Survivor, Sister, Friend.

Every major way I defined myself has changed.  I no longer lose myself by slipping into the characters I assembled to feel better about myself through your eyes. 

Now, when I push the cart up and down the aisles, I don't feel like I fit anywhere, and it's uncomfortable.  The Moms I talk to jostle about, clutching their car keys and dashing off to the activities I can no longer take my kids to.  They talk about the husband I no longer have.  The family dinner I am no longer preparing.  Planning the family vacation I no longer go on. 

All of the major relationships I have in my life are changing, evolving. I have taken a giant step back from everything that used to define me, before.  My work. My family. My marriage. My social life. My writing.

I long, sometimes, for the way my life used to be, before the weight of all those self-affixed labels crushed me.  When my biggest problem of the day was how to fit it all in - get one kid to soccer and the other to CCD and get to the grocery shop and start dinner.  When my brain was so crammed with my To-Do list - my businesses, my family, my husband and friends - that I didn't have to think about myself.

I know I can't go back there.  I know this hard stop is in my life for a purpose.  I squirm in the silence, in the calm.  I'm great in a foxhole.  It's the lulls that scare me.

I suffer when I resist the reality of what is, as opposed to what was or what might be.  I am in the most pain when I scream and kick against all those closed doors, those maladaptive coping mechanisms - my people pleasing, my co-dependency, my self-medicating with alcohol or work.

I can't even hide from myself in my marriage anymore.  I am not Mrs. Anybody.  I am just me.  

When I can let go, when I can just stand still in this dark hallway and just be, I feel fleeting moments of peace. 

I am mourning the loss of the blueprint, though.  The one I so carefully drafted for how my life was supposed to look, like a perfect holiday card.  The one that made me feel as though I was in control of my destiny, although of course I never was.

I don't have any blueprint anymore.  Every pre-conceived notion I had - every label - is torn and tattered.

Now I stand alone, peeling back the labels, feeling naked and vulnerable without their papery armor.  I stand shivering in the Damn Hallway, waiting for God to crack open the next door.   So far, He hasn't.  He is making me wait. 

He is making me put up boundaries, ask for help, sit with myself awhile.

And so, I do.


 

Becoming

The hardest part of the day is the last part. Those six or seven minutes between wakefulness and sleep, as I drift off in the in-between space of moments past and moments yet to come.

Instead of those sleepy, mumbled conversations between two married people, parents downloading their day, giggling over a funny thing a kid said, or offering assurances that the work meeting the next day will go fine.... there is silence. 

Sometimes I unconsciously slide my foot over to his side of the bed, expecting the warm reassurance of his presence.  My toes are always icy, and I used to snuggle them up against his shin.  He'd wince and say "ah, c'mon!", but he wouldn't move away.

Now the sheets are cold.  My toes are icy.  He is not there.

I knew separation would be hard, in the broad sense.  I worried about juggling all the moving parts alone.  I didn't know how I would handle the morning routine all by myself.  And what would I do about dinner?  Do I cook for just the three of us?  The kids only really like to eat about four things, so I mostly cooked for him. For us. Would the kids and I sit around the table, where we ate thousands upon thousands of family dinners, with his empty chair blaring silently at us?  I wrung my hands about the schedule - how much time to spend there instead of here?  How would they adjust? How would I adjust?

What I didn't know, what I couldn't know until I was in it, is the hardest part isn't the big picture.  In many ways, because of his long work hours, I handled many of the logistics on my own anyway. Mornings he was out the door before we were all up. Many nights he worked late, and what to eat or where to eat it never bothered me before.  And managing all the moving parts of the kids' schedule?  Well, that was always my role. I'm a pro at all those things.

The part I didn't expect?  The ghosts. Every inch of my life is our life. Was our life.  Is our life.

See?  It's confusing.

Over there is the bureau we bought decades ago, as a newly engaged couple, feeling very grown up on an afternoon of antiquing.  On the mantle are the metal statues of two cranes intertwined, purchased at a funky little store down the street from our first apartment.  When Greta was born we found a little baby crane. "Look, they are a family now, like us," we said. They whisper to me of what was, what is, and what isn't anymore.

I am surrounded by my most familiar and comfortable space - my home and everything in it - and nothing is familiar anymore.  Or comfortable. 

"We marry people because we like who they are. People change. Plan on it. Don't marry someone because of who they are, or who you want them to become. Marry them because of who they are determined to become. And then spend a lifetime joining them in their becoming, as they join you in yours."  ~ Huffington Post

The funny thing about becoming?  It's not a straight line.  It's not all forward momentum. 

Before I thought of becoming like brick laying - cumulative - each brick snuggling firmly on top of the other as we build.  Upward. Stronger.

Then life happens, and that brick wall is smashed to smithereens.  Every brick is still there, except they lie in an unrecognizable jumble at my feet.  Over there is the brick where we saw our first ultrasound picture.  We made a girl, I whispered to him in awe.  That moment is still there, as solid as it ever was, except now it has a crack down the middle.  All that happy, that certainty of how it would all play out, is altered.

Because sometimes, to become, we have to break apart what is to make room for what will be. 

People do change. We know that for a fact, right?  So why is it so hard to keep up?  To pay attention to the thousands of tiny moments, infinitesimal feelings, decisions, thoughts that accumulate every day?  And then it seems so sudden, when things fall apart, or fall away.  But it isn't.  Because we're always becoming.  Changing.  Evolving. 

But our expectations stay stuck.  It's human nature, I think. I am still that young woman clutching her first ultrasound picture, a Technicolor vision of how my life - how our life - would be dancing in my head.

That vision didn't have alcoholism. Or death. Or cancer. Or depression. Or separation. All these things are just as much a part of my becoming as all the joy, success, happiness and peace.


"Marry them because of who they are determined to become. And then spend a lifetime joining them in their becoming, as they join you in yours."

Ah, yes. Sounds straightforward, right?  All Hallmark card-y.  Hopeful.  Because becoming sounds so positive.  All new-agey and personal growth oriented.

But growth, like becoming, isn't all forward momentum.  Most of the growth I have experienced feels a lot like the opposite, in fact. It feels like zooming backward, blind to where I'm headed, white knuckles bracing for impact. 

It's how we survive the out-of-control moments, the backward zooming moments, that define who we become.

Back to marriage. To becoming, and growth.  How do I ask someone to stay with me as I zoom backwards?  As I cast my eyes at the broken pile of bricks at my feet, only to stare in amazement that I'm the one holding the sledgehammer?

I guess the answer is that I don't.  This moment in my journey is an inside job. 

I can kick and scream and lament what was lost, or I can set about, well, becoming.  

On Simplicity, Serenity and Struggle

I find myself in a tug-of-war.  I love writing in this space, and I miss it.

Following the chaos of my relapse(s) and subsequent 90 days of treatment, I vowed to take a break from living my life so publicly.  I have been doing serious thinking about the role blogging plays in my life, in my recovery.  I have more questions than answers.

I still receive numerous emails from people who identify with my story, have been helped in some way by my words. People offer bits of their own struggles, their own triumphs, and it comforts me, makes me feel less alone. 

I don't have regrets, because despite everything I continue to believe that being open brings more gifts to me than being closed. When I share some of my vulnerabilities with the world, the blessings I receive back are beyond measure.  I am long past worrying about judgment, censure or sideways glances on the soccer field.

This blog has been, in large part, about my addiction and recovery story. But I also wrote about motherhood, creativity, advocacy, balance and family.

The past six months have shown me that I do not need to share all the intimate details of my journey. Some things are meant for the sacred intimacy of real-life: family, close friends and recovery people.  

I have focused on living a quiet, simple life. I stepped away from the day-to-day of running Shining Strong, I took a hiatus from my jewelry businesses and from blogging.

My main focus has been on self-care and my family.  My kids are my priority - after my recovery, of course, because without my recovery I will lose everything.

I find myself in an in-between space. There are lots of changes happening in my life, and I ache to write about them.  But it's not just my story to tell.  What I say here impacts my kids, my husband, my family.  

Because I have shared my struggles here, I am stopped often - even from people I barely know - who look me in the eye and ask me, in a heartfelt manner - how are you?  

I don't know what to say anymore.  I am someone who shares; I find comfort in connecting with people.  I want to be truthful, but I find myself uncharacteristically speechless.  

I struggle with the balance between what is private and answering authentically. It feels shallow simply saying, "I'm fine!  And you?"

So what to do about here?  In the land of One Crafty Mother?  I realize, looking back, that I have never been untruthful or misleading here.  I have written as authentically as I could.  But there is a kind of safety in crafting words to describe my life to the unseen masses.  It's the parts I didn't even have access to myself - the pain, the depression, the grief and anxiety - that got me in the end. Writing is powerful, but it can allow me to skip rocks over the really hard stuff, even as I believe I am digging deep.

So here is what I can say:  I am okay. I have an incredible relationship with my kids, and for this I am beyond grateful.  My recovery is solid. I am able to live in acceptance and surrender and keep it in the day, with lots of prayer, meditation and support.  

Recently I re-opened my online jewelry shops, but I haven't been marketing them aggressively. Like sinking into a hot bath, I am slowing reintegrating into creating again.  It feels good.  I am writing a lot on the side, away from the public eye. It is healing.

I am smack dab in the middle of a fantastic recovery community; I reach out for help.  I stay active, present and involved.  I lean into my feelings, and share them face-to-face with the unbelievable support network I have right here in front of me.

I am also not okay. My husband and I are separating. I won't get into the details, because it isn't my story to tell.  It's our story. It will always be our story, no matter what happens in the end.  We are working together with love and respect for each other, and that's a lot.  That isn't to say it's not hard - man, is it hard, but I find that anger, resentment and fear block my contact with God.  It's simpler to live in compassion and faith. Well, maybe not simpler, but certainly more serene.

I know that God's got us, that we need to row the boat but that He is steering. I know I will learn and stretch and grow. 

Our little family has been through a lot in the past three years, and a lot of it revolves around my issues: the death of my Dad, my cancer, my depression/anxiety, my relapse, my absence during my treatment.  And now our separation.  

I find myself waiting for things to settle down, for life to return to normal again.  I find myself grappling for a foothold, wanting to shake answers out of the Universe because I want to know, dammit, what is going to happen.  

When I do this, when I live in the land of expectation, I suffer.  When I pry my white knuckles off the steering wheel, surrender and ask for help, I am calm and steady.  I know now that this is the only power I have over anything: how I metabolize my world.   

I have the power to let go.  

Pirouette On A Tightrope: On Addiction and Depression

I am emerging from my self-imposed break from writing because I feel an ache, a bubbling emotion that needs to come out in words.

Robin Williams' death hit us all hard. Just like in the wake of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's death, I feel
perplexed, gut-punched, incredulous.

Their deaths touch us because their talents were so massive, their performances so vulnerable, that we felt a kinship, a connection, with them.  The thing about that connection?  It only went one way.  The unrequited first row seat to their creative genius was the gift they gave us.  And, we know now, the pain driving those staggering performances - both comic and tragic - that hid behind all those characters.

At first glance Robin Williams appeared to be the opposite of vulnerable - full of crackling energy that surrounded him like a force field.  To be honest, his brand of humor always made me slightly nervous.  When I watched him interviewed, or hosting an award show, I felt as though I were watching through squinted eyes, waiting for the wheels to come off and the whole thing to fall apart.

This may sound like Monday morning quarterbacking - all "I saw it coming".   I didn't.  But I know now why his energy made me uncomfortable.  I recognized that pirouette on a tightrope, the thin veil between comedy and melancholy.  

How many of us thought, when we heard of his suicide, "WHY?  He had so much to live for?"

As someone who battles both depression and addiction, I understand that how much a person has to live for doesn't matter in the face of these potentially fatal illnesses.   Most of the people I know who have struggled with addiction also struggle with depression and/or anxiety.   Drinking or using drugs becomes the Band-Aid over the bullet hole.

I ended up relapsing after years of sobriety because of untreated depression and anxiety.  I learned a valuable lesson while in treatment:  I can build a strong castle of recovery - massive and impenetrable from the outside - but if it is built on a foundation of sand, it will eventually fall.  The issues behind my drinking - depression and anxiety - were the shifting sands underneath my recovery.  Unaddressed, they would eventually take me down. And they did.

I had no idea I was depressed. I thought depression meant you couldn't get out of bed, that your world went grey and meaningless, that you were filled with lethargy and despair.

Mine didn't manifest that way.  My depression came out as manic energy - impulsive, compulsive, obsessive.  I didn't stop from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning until the moment I fell into a fitful sleep.  My mind never, ever stopped.  To the outside world I looked on top of my game - productive, full of life, passion and drive.  Recovery is an inside job, and I stopped working on my insides. I took my validation from the outside in, and for someone like me that is dangerous ground.

If I started to feel those shifting sands under my feet I ran harder, faster. I started another venture or project. Without consciously knowing it, I was afraid to stop, like a beast was nipping at my heels and if I paused it would get me.

It got me. My addiction is my beast - it was waiting for me to run out of energy, skulking in the shadows and ready to pounce. 

When I see the recaps of Robin Williams' performances - especially the improvisational ones, or the interviews - I recognize that mad dance. He was larger than life - he was so, well, Robin Williams. How hard it must have been for him to let down that veneer, to ask for help.  His humor was his armor, and we loved him for it.  We craved that version of him, we validated it.  And he delivered, at his own peril.

Recently he checked himself into rehab, and according to his publicist it was a precautionary move, to help prevent relapse. As details emerge, it appears his depression had such a grip on him that this came too late.

Depression is such an elusive concept. Most of us, when we hear this word, think:  sad.

For those of us who struggle with depression we know sad is a woefully inadequate word.   Just like I can't really describe what addiction feels like, I don't know if I can find words to describe depression.

To me, it felt like a mad scramble. A desperation to keep moving while appearing focused and outwardly fine.  Like that analogy of the duck - calm on the surface and paddling madly beneath the water.

Like addiction, for me denial played a huge role.  It wasn't an active denial - nobody was saying, "Ellie, I think you're depressed" while I protested.   I didn't know what I didn't know.  And because I am an alcoholic, that disease got me before the depression did.  But, in time, I realize that untreated depression is just as deadly and insidious.

Today I view my recovery as a three-legged stool: a program of recovery, therapy and medication.   I have historically had two of the three legs:  program and medication, therapy and program, recovery and medication.  I teetered on two legs as long as I could, but of course I fell.  Medication is tricky in recovery, and it took a while to find a safe and effective dosage. 

Now, with all three in place, I feel grounded.  My outside life is somewhat chaotic, complicated, as I work on the wreckage of my active addiction.  But I will take outside chaos with inner peace over inside chaos and outer peace any day.

I am staggeringly lucky.  I was able to get treatment for 90 days, with a lot of help from my family and friends.  I know without that treatment my chances of making it were slim.  I also know that I wasn't able to ask for help because I was so deep into my depression and addiction that I was incapable of saving myself.  It was people around me who got me the help I needed.

Many people aren't that fortunate.  Many people struggle and don't even know that they are depressed. Many people turn to alcohol or drugs to ease the pain, and many of them become addicted as a result.

We are a society of quick fixes. We applaud drive, determination and outward appearances.  Vulnerability and fear sit in the back seat, shushed and scorned.

I don't know how to end this post, what kind of statement I'm making here, exactly.  I can only share my own experience and hope it touches others.  If you are struggling on the inside, ask for help. Find just ONE person to open up to.  Even if all you can say is "I don't feel okay", start there. 

And if someone asks you for help, please listen.  Resist the urge to tell them how great their life is, how much they have going for them.  Offer up pieces of your own struggles to help them feel not so alone. 

Enough.

How I wish I could find a way to share with you what the past nine weeks have been like. 

For once words fail me, because one of my greatest gifts - the gift of story - is also one of my greatest liabilities.

I love a happy ending; a hopeful garnish to ease the sting of pain.  

There is no room in my life for decorative flair these days. I am on a journey inside, to the unvarnished truth.  I am traveling through time and space, to the very core of me.   It is both a wondrous and terrifying experience.  I cannot afford to dodge unpleasantness or pain.  This is not to say I do not have hope or happiness; I have plenty of both. 

But I have learned that my preference for a neat, tidy, happy ending has allowed me to avoid uncomfortable truths about myself. 

I read my own words about the difficulties of the past three years, and I see a lot of grace, hope and gratitude.  I see myself weather the loss of my Dad, battle cancer, wrestle with depression, anxiety, and struggle with relapse.

The words I have written in this space are all true. I am skilled at finding grace in the darkness. 

It's what has not been on the page that matters now.  I wielded my words like a shield, hoping they would protect me from the increasingly shaky ground under my feet.  I didn't want to look down, at the cracks. I wanted to reach for the sky.

The thing about the sky?  It is unreachable.  What matters is what under my feet, a solid foundation. The parts that nobody sees, deep in the earth, are what holds everything else up. 

I don't know where I belong these days.

All I know is that it is impossible to go on a sacred internal journey and write about it for the world to see.  

But because I have written so publicly about recovery for so many years, I do want to share this:  I have spent the past 60 days at an all women's inpatient residential treatment center.  I completely stepped away from my life, my family, my kids, my world.   It is the hardest thing I have ever done, because I so want to be needed. I want to be the mortar that holds everything together. It is much easier to do that than to look at myself. 

Moms aren't supposed to do this, step away and focus only on ourselves.  We are hardwired, most of us, to sublimate our needs to help others.  We aren't supposed to put ourselves first - especially after the selfishness of addiction has held the whole family hostage. 

I have hurt a lot of people over the past few months.  I lost myself, and instead of asking for help, I thought I could tough my way through it on sheer force of will.  I was so, so scared, but I kept madly weaving myself a tale of strength and hope, instead of admitting that fear had me by the throat.  I would like to say I should have known better, but the irony is that all the knowledge in the world can't help against addiction.  I forgot about God. I took my will back.

When it comes to addiction, self-care is key.  In general, women struggle with this.  Women in recovery have an even greater struggle, because we wrestle with so much guilt, shame and remorse that we overcompensate and give even more of ourselves away.  At least I did.  Maybe this will sound familiar to some of you, too.

As much as I want to be with my kids, at the moment that is not fair to them, because they can't make me well.  It's an inside job.  I need to be here, among other recovering women, and I am no good to anyone, especially my kids, until I am on steadier ground.

So here I am, post treatment, sitting in a little room in a sober house on Cape Cod, living with four other recovering women.  I am taking it slowly this time, my re-entry into life.  I have lost a lot of things I used to take for granted, everything from driving to the privilege of being part of my kids' everyday lives. 

I don't know what my life will look like going forward. It's no longer up to me.  I am living moment-to-moment, praying, doing my best and letting go of the outcome.  I am sitting in lots of discomfort. I can't afford to wonder what people are thinking of me, if I am being judged or scorned.   I don't know what will happen.  All I know is that if I am sober it will all work out the way it is supposed to, and that may not be the way I would like it to.

My suburban life feels very far away at the moment.  I have spent two months living with people who are battling for their lives, and it changes my perspective on a lot of things.  I feel disconnected from the things that were so much a part of my identity: writing, blogging, advocacy, jewelry making. 

Those are things I do, but they aren't who I am.

I am a work in progress: a flawed, joyful, messy, broken, hopeful, grateful woman in recovery. 

And today, that is enough.

Philip Seymour Hoffman: How COULD he?

I was scrolling mindlessly through my Facebook feed, the day the news broke, and I saw someone post "RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman. So sad."

My response was visceral and possessive:  WHAT? I thought.  MY Philip Seymour Hoffman?

I have no claim to him, of course. I never met him or even caught a glimpse of him in person.  It is a testimony to his strength as an actor that I felt such a connection with him.  His achingly beautiful performances, where he so often portrayed the dichotomies that lie within us all - sinner and saint, courageous and vulnerable - touched us all.

It is no surprise that he was such a talented character actor.  A hallmark of all addicts is that we're great chameleons.

His death effects me on another level, as someone who had recovery - good recovery - and then relapsed. It is hard to respond to the question how could he? because it is a question I ask myself, too.  How could I? With everything I know about addiction, with all the blessings in my life:  how could I? 

Let's start by talking about you for a moment.

Think back on resolutions you have made to yourself.  Perhaps to lose weight? Eat healthier?  Exercise three times a week?  All of the above?

You know, intellectually, that your life will improve if you stick to your plan. You come out of the gate going gangbusters.  It isn't hard to stick to your plan, because the benefits are immediate - hey! I have more energy! I'm sleeping better!  I can button these jeans!  My cholesterol went down! 

You are a disciplined, intelligent person, and you don't like to be bested by anything, so you stick with this plan.  For months.  You do this until the point where getting up in the morning and going to the gym is second nature. You reach for the carrot sticks instead of the cake without even thinking.   Friends compliment you on how good you look/feel.  The rewards for this healthier lifestyle make it easy to stick with it.

Over time, this healthier you is just, well, you.

One day you have an early morning meeting and you can't go to the gym. You haven't been scheduling early morning meetings, because it's your gym time, but hey, just this once won't matter. Things are nuts at work. The next day you decide you'll work out in the evenings because you got so much done at work early in the morning.  Except when you get home that night you're tired and don't go.  The next night there is a traffic jam and you get home too late to work out.

A few days, or maybe even weeks, later you skip your healthy home-brought salad and go out to lunch with co-workers.  While you're out at lunch, nibbling french fries, you think:  I should do this more often. It's important to socialize with work people. 

After a while, you're only bringing your healthy lunch once or twice a week, and you're only working out occasionally.  But you still feel good. Your clothes still fit.  You tell yourself you will amp up the workouts if your pants get tight.

One day you can't fit comfortably into your suit, so you head out and buy one - just one! - work outfit.  Just until you can take off the few extra pounds.

Weeks later you are mindlessly digging through your closet for your old two-sizes-bigger clothes.  It's just that you have been so busy.  You know what you need to do, and you've done it before, so you'll get back into shape when things calm down.  It's not like you're going to stay this weight.

Eventually you're not only back to your former weight, you're heavier.  How did this happen? Things were going so well!  You feel ashamed.  You feel like a failure. You feel so despondent.  Dieting doesn't work for me, you think.

Does any of this sound familiar?

What is so hard to see, in these situations, is that you didn't just end up heavy.  It all started the day you skipped your morning workout for what seemed like a perfectly good reason: work needed you.

It's death by a thousand paper cuts. It's a slow, almost invisible slide into old behaviors.

Recovering addicts need constant vigilance to stay sober. It's hard at first - everything (and I mean everything) feels different. Putting recovery before everything else is hard, counter-intuitive, because you are accustomed to letting the hectic pace of life to put the healthier, non-drinking you, last.

Eventually, though, with daily discipline, structure and support, being sober becomes second nature. You feel so good that you don't ever, ever want to go back to that dark, shameful, secretive place.

Someone who has worked hard to get fit doesn't want to go back to being heavy, either. But still it happens to almost all of us who try to lose weight. Very few of us do it once and keep fit for a lifetime.

With recovery it isn't a matter of what we want, either.  We all want to stay sober, but addiction is a brain disease, and what we want doesn't hold all the cards.

Put very simply - back when we (meaning addicts/alcoholics) first used alcohol or drugs, we triggered something in the primitive part of our brain - the part that governs survival instincts like shelter, reproduction, food, thirst.  Our addiction takes root in this primitive part of our brain, snuggled up next to the things we need to survive.  With time, as the addiction grows, our brain puts drinking first.  It moves up the ladder of needs - starting as an emotional addiction and ending as a physical one - and eventually it trumps everything. Active alcoholics will choose alcohol over food and hydration.

Their brain is literally telling them:  you need this to survive.

Additionally, the neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for rational thought, and the amygdala, which controls emotional processing, get hijacked.  The site youthcomm.org, which targets teens, explains it simply:

"...drugs and alcohol also affect a part of your brain called the neocortex that keeps you from doing dangerous things. Ira Moses, Ph.D., who used to run a drug abuse program, calls the neocortex “the brain’s brakes—it controls most of the brain’s functions.” The neocortex helps us think through consequences of our behavior, consider risks, and stop us from doing things that might feel good in the short run, but harm us or the ones we love in the long run. This part of the brain basically gets turned off by drugs and alcohol."

Once activated by drugs or alcohol, in an addict's brain the neocortex hands the reins over to the lizard/primitive brain, which is thinking:  alcohol first. drugs first.  The symptoms of addiction are behavioral, because the rational part of the brain isn't functioning.  This is why people around active alcoholics are astounded by the insane behavior we do when we're drinking. Because it is, quite literally, insane.  Our neocortex is out of the picture.

So, back to the original question:  how COULD Philip Seymour Hoffman relapse?  With all he had going for him?  With all that sobriety?

The same way I did.

There is no cure for addiction, but it can be treated; it can go into remission.  Treatment involves a daily regimented program of recovery of rigorous honesty, communicating with fellow addicts/alcoholics in recovery, self-care and - for many of us in recovery - spirituality.  It involves a daily surrender to the fact that we are powerless over our disease and all its manifestations.

Here's what I mean by that:  my relapse didn't start when I drank. It started about a year and a half before when, coming out of cancer treatments, I had drifted away from active recovery.  I stopped engaging in the daily self-care regime that treated my alcoholism on a daily basis:  meetings, yoga, exercise, asking for help, prayer.

I substituted my recovery for what looked and felt like healthy behavior -particularly in the crazy pace of today's world - workaholism.

Just like the ill-fated dieter in the example above, it was a long slow slide towards a drink.  Without my knowledge or permission, my disease was ramping up, because I wasn't tending to it on a daily basis.

I don't remember actually drinking.  I was in an emotional blackout, I guess.  I was so far away from the healthy behaviors that kept my recovery alive that my disease took over, and I was without a single tool to resist it.

So where does personal responsibility factor in?  Especially as it pertains to relapse?

This is a dicey subject, so I offer here only my personal thoughts on the matter.

I view my alcoholism like I do my cancer:  a chronic, life-long and potentially fatal condition.  I didn't choose to have either one.

Neither one is my fault, but my recovery in both is my responsibility.

In my mind, my relapse is as if I found something troubling- perhaps a lump in my neck (where I had cancer before) - and I decided (consciously or unconsciously) that it was probably nothing and didn't see a doctor. Then, months later, I find out my cancer is back and it has spread.

The moment of responsibility lies with my knowledge that I am a cancer patient in remission and I can't afford not to have something checked out.

But, particularly when dealing with hard or scary things - it's human nature to dumb it down, file it away somewhere convenient or easy, or simply procrastinate.  Like our dieter.

With addiction, just like with cancer, we can't afford to file it away, though.  Once we have surrendered and know we are an alcoholic/addict, it is our responsibility to maintain that recovery.

BUT. Relapse happens. It happens with cancer. It happens with diets. It happens with addiction.  For all the reasons I described, alcoholics find themselves with a drink in their hand and no tools to resist.  Knowing alcohol is bad for you, that it could kill you in the end, doesn't factor in.  That bus left the station ages ago, when the first of the thousand paper cuts slid across your skin, seemingly without much impact.

When I am not active in a program of recovery, my addiction is untreated.

It is my responsibility to stay active in recovery.  I drifted away from it. I relapsed.

It is not a moral failing. It is my disease coming out of remission.  But, unlike cancer, I can choose to treat it on a daily basis and stay in recovery.  Cancer treatments cannot promise such a hopeful outcome. Hopefully I will be able to treat my addiction, daily, for the rest of my life.  I know this is confusing to people not in the world of addiction:  if you can choose it every day .. why don't you DO that every day?  I will politely refer back to the dieter.

Because we're also human.  And brains - all brains - are adept at side-stepping scary or unpleasant things.

So let's not wring our hands and ask why. Or how could he?  Philip Seymour Hoffman died because of his disease, not because he was weak, or willfully self-destructive or morally unfit. The argument "well, one doesn't just find oneself with a needle in one's arm" infuriates me. Because addicts do. Addicts who are not working a program of recovery find themselves with a needle in their arm and are just as baffled and saddened about it as those who love them. And once the drug is in their system, the sober person is just gone. And they can't get back without help.

And far too many addicts/alcoholics don't ask for help, because of the damn stigma.  Far too many addicts/alcoholics don't reach for a chance at recovery because they are too afraid of society's reaction to what they, too, perceive as a personal weakness or failing.

Lets band together to beat down the stigma of addiction that keeps alcoholics and addicts stuck in their fear of being judged.

I long for the day when addiction is viewed like cancer - without stigma and with the urgency of all potentially fatal conditions.

RIP, Philip.  May your tragic death in the spotlight help to bring more understanding to the disease of addiction.

Just Because

My eleven year old daughter leans into me, out of the blue, and sighs happily.

I rest my chin on the top of her head (the top of her head? when did she get so tall?) and inhale her musky-strawberry scent.

"What's up?" I ask.

"Nothing, Momma," she mumbles.  "I just wanted you."

She wants me. 

Two months ago I lay face down on a rumpled, cramped twin bed at the treatment facility and sobbed until my eyes ran dry.  In my mind's eye I could only see the smoldering wreckage of my life.  I drank again, I thought, and the worst part is I don't even know why.

I rub her back, and we sway back and forth.  I love you, she says, simply.  Not in response to a gift she's been begging for, or as an apology for one of her mood swings.  Just because.

Love you too, I reply, afraid to say more, to overdo it, scare her off.

My mind pings back to her first visit to the treatment center; how she stayed at arm's length and only flicked her eyes in my direction twice.

With each visit she moved a little closer.  On the second visit she sat next to me while we ate lunch. The third?  She gave me a hug before she left.  By the final visit she chattered away about her life, and even smiled at me.

The card from her that greeted me as I walked in the door after a month away said:  I love you, and I am so proud of you Momma, but it will take time to build back trust. Just don't drink.  I know you can do it.

One thing about tossing a bomb into the middle of your life?  You get to pick through the ruins, hoping to find the things that truly matter to you, praying you can get them back.

Like the musky-strawberry scent of a pre-teen girl who hugs me, just because.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

This post is part of Heather of The Extraordinary Ordinary's free-writing link-up, Just Write.  Click HERE to join in!

On Motherhood and Alcohol

This week has been nothing short of miraculous.

Here's how that past five days have gone down:

• My husband is away on his annual fishing trip
• My son threw up all night on Sunday
• I got a bad chest cold with a hacking cough that robbed me of what little sleep I could have gotten.
• My daughter threw up all night on Tuesday night.
• The Sox won the ACLS, and played the first game of the World Series.

So why is this miraculous?  It sounds like a tough go of it, doesn't it?

Because any ONE of these things would have been something I drank over, in the past.  The biggie would have been my husband going away.  When he was gone, I could drink more than one or two glasses of wine without being sneaky about it, or making up excuses.  And heck, when he was gone life felt harder ... I deserved it.

Sick kids was another reason to drink.  Long nights, exhausted days. Having a child home all day for four consecutive days on little or no sleep.  Falling behind on work.  Also reasons to reward myself with a few glasses at night.

Even being sick myself was a reason to drink.  Wine is a great cough suppressant (or, at least it made me care less that I didn't feel well). 

And I used to love it when Boston teams made playoffs, not as a sports enthusiast but because then everyone pretty much drank like me.  It normalized my drinking. 

It is nothing short of a miracle that all these things happened in the span of five days and not once did it occur to me to drink. 

I thought wine made me more patient, more loving in the face of long days and hard nights.  I thought drinking both dulled down the tough stuff while enhancing the fun stuff, like playoff games.

I was wrong.

Caring for sick kids totally sober and present is so much better. I'm not itching to duck away and take a sip of wine. I'm not cranky and short, nursing a headache the next day.  My patience is - surprisingly - infinite.  I am calm, grounded, and collected.  

Instead of feeling sorry for myself that I have to go through all this without the help of my husband, I am totally focused on them and their care.

And who knew that watching playoff games was more fun sober? 

Sometimes I forget to remember that recovery is a miracle.  I forget to shout from the rooftops that recovery HAPPENS.  We do heal, and we can handle so much more sober than we ever could drinking, and it's better.  So, so much better.  

We live in a culture that tells women, and especially mothers, that drinking is their right, dammit, for all they do, all they juggle.  Moms talk all the time about deserving their wine at the end of a long day - whether they work outside of the home or not.  You don't have to look further than Facebook to see women talking up their hard earned glass of wine.

I am not saying that everyone is an alcoholic.  Indeed, for normal drinkers who actually can have a glass or two now and then, why not?

But with all the marketing and publicity about women and their wine, it has become almost the norm for women to use alcohol as a coping mechanism.

Before you shoot off that email to me saying you enjoy your wine and don't use it to cope, or leave a flaming comment that many people drink normally and I'm generalizing, think about how often you hear women talking about alcohol as a reward.  I know, I know - men have been doing this for years, so it's unfair to pin this on women just because they are also mothers.

But here is the reality: most women still have primary care giving responsibility for kids, even if they work outside the home.  The pressures and expectations put on women are different than men.  The marketing messages are different, too: you are supposed to do it all, and do it with a smile on your face. You deserve this.  Alcohol will help.  We live in a culture where alcohol is marketed to women as a way to cope and/or enhance.

Take the wine "Mommy Juice".  Here is their label:

A woman managing all her responsibilities: work, housework, cooking and kids, with a serene smile on her face.

Here is the first paragraph on the splash page of their website:

"Being a mom is a constant juggling act. Whether it’s play dates and homework, diapers and burp cloths, or finding that perfect balance between work and home, Moms everywhere deserve a break. So tuck your kids into bed, sit down and have a glass of MommyJuice — because you deserve it!"

The bold print is not mine; it's theirs.

And there is Girls' Night Out wines:

"When women get together, curious things happen. There are unwritten rules that we all follow. It’s a club that you can only be part of as a woman. And all are welcome. We talk, we laugh, we eat and we drink, but we also support, encourage, applaud and share. It is for this inclusive club for women that we created Girls’ Night Out wines.
 

Whether you’re going out to meet with your book club, having a pot luck dinner, getting ready for a night out on the town, or staying in to watch a DVD, Girls' Night Out goes with anything."

 

Hey - at least they are being up front about a phenomenon that is everywhere.

 

I am not naïve enough to believe this is going to change, even in the face of really alarming statistics about women and drinking, and the sharp increase in binge drinking among girls.  Whether we realize it or not, the message that wine is a coping mechanism -something to help us tolerate them - is reaching our children. 

 

I understand why women prickle when it is implied that their drinking may impair their parenting. After all, we don't hear that said about men, do we?  

Men have been marketed to all along that they deserve their cocktail for all their hard work.  It's just that parenting isn't thrown into the mix.  And certainly no company ever marketed to Dads that alcohol actually enhanced their parenting experience.

So why is this so dangerous for women?

 

The scary truth is that alcohol effects women's health far more than men's. We weigh less and have more body fat, which means we metabolize alcohol differently.  Hormones also impact how alcohol effects our bodies.  Simply put, we can't drink like men without suffering dire health consequences.  Alcohol is a carcinogen.  It is linked to breast cancer and heart disease (despite the campaign that moderate drinking of red wine is good for your heart .. that is only if you drink one glass every other day). 

Saddest of all, I think, is that alcohol disappears us.  Instead of making us more present for our children, or more patient, or more loving, it is doing the opposite. You don't have to be an alcoholic to have this happen.  The message by marketers tells us that it's making us better Moms, when in fact it's doing the opposite. 

And our kids are watching.  You don't have to be an alcoholic, or even close to it, to be less present for your kids through drinking.

Mainly I just want to add my voice as a counter-balancing point to all the marketing about how alcohol makes our lives better. 

As a woman and mother in recovery, I am here to say it doesn't.  It temporarily alters our reality, which isn't inherently a bad thing.  But the message that somehow our lives are better with a glass of wine is just wrong.

~~~~

 

Most of these thoughts are sparked by Ann Dowsett Johnston's new book, Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol..   She is an incredible writer, and her book is a terrific combination of story-telling and facts.  She writes about The MommyJuice and Girls' Night Out marketing campaigns in her book - I would never have known about these (because I don't buy wine anymore) otherwise.  I highly recommend her book - whether you are in recovery or not.  Every woman, every Mom, needs to hear what Ann has to say.  I was not compensated in any way to say this - she did send me a copy of her book to read but this is not a sponsored post.  And the prologue to this book is, quite simply, the best description of addiction I have ever read. 

I am excited and honored that Ann will be a guest on The Bubble Hour on November 10th, so please tune in!

Pride Is Not A Dirty Word

shame (SHām) noun

1.

  a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.

~~~~

Probably the number one topic that comes up when I'm talking with my recovery friends is shame.

We all know what shame feels like; I feel it physically, in my gut, like a stone in my belly.

I carried that stone with me for years, both while I was drinking and after.   Even years into my recovery journey, I feel its weight sometimes, dragging me down.

Who do you think you are, is the most common theme shame whispers to me, now.  

I looked up synonyms for shame, and this is what I found:  abashment, dishonor, self-disgust, disrepute, self-reproach. 

It's easy, when I think about my drinking self, to feel these emotions.  How could you, I ask myself when my disease is speaking to me. 

In early recovery I learned that I needed to reconcile the things that made me feel shame in order to heal.  Memories, feelings, actions, behaviors that made me feel shameful led me right back to a drink as I struggled to get sober.  Lean into them, I was taught.  Feelings aren't facts. 

I learned about the difference between shame and guilt.  Guilt is feeling badly about something you did, shame is feeling badly about who you are.  I did a bad thing versus I am a bad person.  

The antonyms to shame are these:  esteem, honor, respect, pride.

That last one hits me hard.  Isn't pride bad?  Doesn't it smack of ego? 

Back to Google, The Oracle of all Things, and it tells me these are synonyms for pride:  self-confidence, self-respect, dignity, delight, joy, satisfaction. 

I feel all of those things today, and I felt exactly none of them when I was drinking.   

For years I wrote in excruciating detail about my addiction; I painted a colorful picture of what it felt like to be an active alcoholic.  But I didn't write much about what it is like to be a recovering person, because that felt prideful, and I assumed that was inherently bad.

Lately I have felt frozen when it comes to writing about addiction, and it took me a while to figure out why.... and the answer makes me twitch a little.  I don't want to write about alcoholism anymore.  I want to write about recovery.  It makes me twitch because I am afraid of pride.  I was taught pride = ego, and ego will lead me back to a drink.

I have learned that pride and ego are not synonymous, and feeling proud of my recovery is a better antidote to wanting to drink than anything else I have found. 

My life today surpasses my wildest dreams, but I don't know how to write about that.

So let me show you a picture instead:

 

This is me, with my best friend of 35 years, Amanda.  Drinking was all fun and games back then, but seeing this picture makes me want to scream at them to STOP.   But we didn't stop.  We kept right on going until alcohol brought us both to our knees, twenty plus years later.

I found this picture recently, as I was clearing out my digital photo file. Immediately, I felt that stone in my belly.  Oh God, I thought.  We could have avoided so much pain, if only we knew then what we know now.

But, of course, life doesn't work that way.  We rarely learn the hard life lessons the easy way.  Every moment - every shameful moment, every regrettable decision, every bit of denial and secrecy, led me to where I am today.  

I stared at this picture and told those girls that I loved them.  My shame voice lost confidence, and another voice took its place:  who would have thought, it said, that you are looking at women who would grow up to be sober women of dignity and honor (both synonyms for pride).  Who would have thought we'd run a non-profit together, and make it our life's mission to break the stigma of addiction and celebrate recovery from the rooftops. 

I am proud of my recovery. Not in the I'm-better-than-you sense, but in the I-overcame sense.  I don't feel shame about being in recovery from cancer.  And I don't feel shame for being in recovery from alcoholism, either. 

For years, when I said I was an alcoholic in recovery, the subtitles in my head thought: I'm admitting to a weakness, I'm revealing that I used to drink a shameful amount.   But recovery is all about moving forward. Now, when I say I'm in recovery, there are no subtitles.  There is no shame.  

Here we are today; this picture was taken at Amanda's three year recovery anniversary:

The antidote to shame is pride. It is action, involvement in your recovery.  We found honor, self-confidence, joy and delight in being women in recovery.

And we aren't going to keep it to ourselves.

~~~~~~~~

Shining Strong is proud to announce the opening of our new Shopify store!   Amanda and I have both been wearing our "I Am Not An Anonymous Person" T-shirts, and have been asked again and again, "how can I get one?"   We are so proud to be part of recovery advocacy with The Anonymous People and are excited to offer the official Anonymous People T-shirt in our new store!  All proceeds go to help Shining Strong and our advocacy and outreach in the recovery community, including our websites The Bubble Hour and Crying Out Now.  If you want to join us in breaking down the stigma of recovery and proudly wear one of these T-shirts, head on over and purchase one for $15!  Click HERE to go directly to the listing in our shop.

You can find other Shining Strong goodies there, too - a tote bag and coffee mug for starters (more to come), and you can purchase a copy of my book Let Me Get This Straight there, too. Again, all proceeds go directly to Shining Strong.

We appreciate your help, your advocacy and your support.  Thank you.

  

To Those Who Love An Alcoholic

Addiction is an insidious disease, and it destroys lives.

It doesn't simply effect the life of the addict/alcoholic, it seeps into the lives of everyone who cares about them.  It makes everyone feels helpless.  People search madly for a reason why - why is this person destroying their life?  Why do they continue to drink/use when nothing but misery follows?

This isn't a post about the disease of addiction and the myriad of reasons someone continues on a path of self-destruction when all the evidence points to an obvious solution ... just stop.  It boils down to the frustrating fact that an addict in the throes of their addiction can no more stop on their own than a diabetic can force their body to produce insulin, or a cancer patient can will rogue cells to stop multiplying.

This is a post for those who love an addict/alcoholic.

It's not your fault.

Addiction can hit anyone; it doesn't matter what your ethnic, economic or educational background is .. addiction doesn't discriminate.  Some environmental factors do come into play, of course. If you grow up surrounded by drugs and/or drinking, the chance that you will use yourself increase dramatically.

But you can grow up comfortably, in a loving and supportive family, and addiction can still find you.

I am a case in point.  I was raised by loving and supportive parents in a very stable home environment, financially comfortable, ivy-league educated and not surrounded by drugs or drinking at all when I grew up, and alcoholism got me anyway.

It's the way we're hardwired.  My last post about fear and how it fueled my addiction elicited some interesting responses.  My inbox filled with messages from people struggling with this disease, who said: me too. I don't know why I have always had this hole in the middle of me. I don't know why I try to hide from myself.

I also got emails from people who love an alcoholic, saying: I don't understand. What made you so afraid, why did you want to hide?

The answer is frustrating:  I don't know.   

What I know for sure is that I speak to thousands of alcoholics and addicts every year, and we're all programmed the same way.  A sixty year old male cocaine addict feels the same on the inside as I do.

We're hardwired differently, us addicts.  Life seems pointier, louder, brighter to us.  We suffer from an odd combination of competence and profound insecurity.  We seek validation from the outside in when we're actively drinking/using. We don't understand how to love ourselves.

If you love an addict, this is confounding. Most addicts/alcoholics are intelligent, compassionate and loving people. We have supportive family and friends. We are successful in our jobs. We're creative, innovative and outgoing.  We look fine on the outside.  We are teachers, physicians, pilots, parents, CEOs, pastors.

Recovery isn't just about stopping drinking or using.  Recovery is about digging deep, staring at the insides we've spent a lifetime avoiding.  Recovery teaches us to find acceptance, to love ourselves as we are.  And as long as we don't ignite our disease by drinking or using, we heal.  We recover.  We find peace of mind and learn to face the hard stuff like fear.

But if you love an active alcoholic or addict, what do you do?

The first thing to know is you can't fix them. They have to fix themselves.

They have to admit that they are powerless against drugs/alcohol and that their life is unmanageable.  This can be astonishingly hard for an addict to do. We can lose jobs, our license, the love of our family and friends, and we still refuse to see that it is alcohol that is at the root of it all.  We search madly for any other reason - ANY other reason - than stopping drinking.  We point madly about, blaming our job (or lack thereof), money (or lack thereof), heartbreak, grief, depression, anxiety.  ANYTHING but alcohol.  We'd rather be called crazy than alcoholic.  Why?  Because we think the thing that is actually destroying us is holding us together.  This is the illogical thought pattern of an active alcoholic.

And so we lie. We exaggerate or minimize. We steal. We take advantage of love and support, turning into evidence that we can't be that bad.  We break hearts.  We behave in ways the sober us would never, ever behave.

All too often, the only way to help an alcoholic is to start shutting doors.  This doesn't mean you don't love and care about someone; in fact, it means the opposite. You can love an alcoholic to death. Give an alcoholic a place to live, or money, or even love, and they will stay stuck in their disease.  Very often the only thing that gets an alcoholic to get help is for them to have a moment of lucidity and realize that everyone is gone, and that they are the common denominator of their own misery.

I heard a line on the show Intervention, and it has stuck with me.  The interventionist was coaching a family on what to say to a woman who was a mother, sister, daughter and friend, and she wouldn't stop drinking despite some dire consequences in her life.  The interventionist told the family to say to her:  "I will do anything to help you stop, but I will no longer participate in your self-destruction".   I've heard it said another way:  "I love you unconditionally, but I don't have to have unconditional acceptance of your actions".

It's hard, loving an alcoholic. Just like the alcoholic is searching desperately for something they can do to get out of their spiral (other than surrender), loved ones are searching just as desperately for something they can do to help.  Get them into rehab?  Give them money so they can afford gas in order to find a job?  Send them to a counselor?

The sad truth is that if the alcoholic doesn't admit they have a problem and ask for the help, these things don't work.  Recovery is an inside job.

So please, stop thinking you have done something (or not done something) to create an alcoholic.  We aren't created, we're made this way.  We are the only ones who can fix ourselves.  We have to ask for help.  We have to throw our hands up and surrender and say we'll do anything - ANYTHING - to stop.  If you tell an alcoholic they need to go to rehab and you hear things like:  "But my kids need me" or "But I have to work" -- they aren't ready.   If you tell an alcoholic to get help and they tell you "I know I have a problem, I'm working on it.  I'm only drinking on (insert futile attempt to control here)"... they aren't ready.

The best thing you can do, as someone who loves an addict, is face some hard truths of your own, and plan for the worst.   Don't lose yourself to blame or guilt, because you could no more make someone an alcoholic than you can get them to stop. Put boundaries around yourself, keep yourself emotionally and physically safe. Cut them out of your life until they ask for help and are ready to do anything to stop.  If that means they have no place to live, no money, no friends -- so be it.

Trying to save an alcoholic from consequences keeps them sick.  I know it's heartbreaking.  It's like watching a train racing 100 mph towards a brick wall and the engineer is stepping on the gas instead of the brakes. But if you saw a train about to hit a wall, you wouldn't get between the train and the wall.  You'd pray like mad and hope there were pieces left to pick up, that the engineer survives and finally realizes he needs help.

Be ready to get that phone call, the one that says your loved one is in jail, or the hospital. Or, God forbid, dead.  Make peace with the fact that you can't do anything to prevent someone's rock bottom until that person asks for help.

We hit bottom when we stop digging, not when someone yanks the shovel out of our hand.

I wish I had better news. I wish there was a magical cure for addiction.

Lastly - find your own support system. Al-Anon, or online forums, or trusted friends, or others who have lived through loving an addict.  So much love, energy and time is poured into an active alcoholic.  Loved ones need the same kind of support.  They suffer from the same stigma - nobody wants their wife/daughter/sister/friend to be an alcoholic.

Loved ones are NOT alone.  65% of American adults are impacted by addiction either directly or indirectly.

Find the help you deserve, and don't try to do this alone.

Through The Looking Glass

I have always loved the number four.  I'm not sure why - my own little touch of OCD, I guess.

Any time I'm picking a number - for anything - I choose four, a number that ends in four or a multiple of four.  A seat number in an airplane or setting my alarm clock (7:04am), for example.  It simply HAS to involve the number four. 

It's been going on since I was a kid - as young as nine or ten - my own little attempt at feeling some semblance of control over my increasingly complicated world.

Tomorrow I turn 44 on the 4th.  That's a lot of fours.

Last night the kids broke out our home movie collection and we sat on the couch and watched our lives from when the kids were babies, toddlers and into their preschool years.

I watched with a mixture of joy and sadness - wistful for their chubby-cheeked youth, for what looks on the screen as a simpler time, but I know differently.

There is Finn in the tub when he was just learning to talk - I'm holding the camera in one hand and bantering with him about his rubber ducky.  He laughs, flashing his two little bottom teeth, just poking through.  "UH-OH," he says, as he plunges the yellow duck under water. "Ducky needs HEWLP"  It looks for all the world like an ideal scene of mother and child bonding. 

But I know that perched behind me on the edge of the sink is a wine glass.  Bath time back then was never done without my liquid assistant.  The days felt interminably long, boring. 

My gut churns as I watch Greta, pigtailed and adorable, coloring and chattering on about her picture.  I'm laughing behind the camera, egging her on, zooming in on her brow knit together in concentration.  I remember what I was thinking, back then - that I was recording for posterity that I was a good mother, not a drunk.  Not an alcoholic.  I was desperate to prove to myself and anyone watching that I was loving, engaged.

I watch the images flickering on the screen and my heart aches.  Shame burns somewhere deep inside, at the very root of me.

How could I not see, I wonder, how blessed I was.

Another disc, fast forward about a year.  Finn is almost two and Greta is almost five.  It's April of 2007.  Steve is filming what looks like an adorable family breakfast scene; Finn happily smearing oatmeal in his hair, perched in his high chair, Greta next to him, prattling on as usual.  Then Steve swings the camera my way, and I'm leaning on the counter, looking weary and bloated. 

"There's Momma," he says.  "She was partying last night, weren't you Momma?"

I cast the camera an irritated, sheepish look.  "Yes," I whisper.  "Stop filming me, you're making me uncomfortable."

I look into my own eyes and want to scream at my visage STOP.  Stop what you're doing, stop sliding down into your own destruction!!!
A mere two months later and I'm conspicuously missing from the videos.  It's summer of 2007, and the kids are at the zoo, the Museum of Science.  My sister-in-law balances Finn on her hip and laughs as the cousins squeal in delight at otters rollicking in their tank. 

I'm not there.  I am in rehab.

A little later, and there we are again, happy kids with a sober Mom.  Finn is closer to four now, Greta is almost seven.  I no longer need the camera lens to prove that I'm present in my life and theirs.  I am slender again, bright eyed and happy. 

But that knot in my stomach as I watch doesn't loosen, and I still want to scream at my image:  be grateful for all you have - ahead of you are some rough waters.  You are going to lose your Dad. You are going to get cancer. 

PAY ATTENTION, DAMMIT.

But that's the thing, isn't it?  Paying attention?  Recognizing how fleeting moments are, even the ones that feel like they last forever?  The long, ordinary days that feel like duplicates of yesterday?  The constant-ness of parenting, laundry, cooking meals, all the mundane rituals that wear you down?

I'm not particularly afraid of getting older, even though the idea of being forty-four seems incredible to me; I feel about twenty eight mentally. 

What jerks me to attention is the idea that life zips by, right under my nose.  The days roll into one another, virtually indistinguishable.  Every now and then something jars me out of my day-to-day existence - something wonderful or something scary - but for the most part forty-four years flew by. 

Why is it so much easier to lose myself to fear of what may be lurking around the corner?  It is far easier to have faith in fear, instead of just plain faith.

Back when I was a drinking Mom, I felt like I was watching my world through dirty glass - there, but not there.  I felt one click removed from everything - my family, myself.  I numbed out the uncertainty with one more glass of chardonnay.  And then one more.

Being sober is scarier - the uncertainty is pointier, right up in my face.  I don't hide behind liquid anesthesia anymore, and I feel scared more than I ever did when I was drinking.

But here's the thing:  the dirty glass is gone, too.  Even fear is a real emotion.   I am present in my life.

Looking at the un-sober me on the screen, faking normalcy, wishing with all my heart I was someone else - anyone else - because I didn't know how to be, I feel sorry for her, but I realize she is a necessary part of who I will become.  I mentally wrap my arms around her and forgive her. 

Maybe that's the trick to paying attention.  Constantly loving who we are today, forgiving the person we were yesterday - the one that didn't know what was coming down the road, or who made poor choices. 

Or maybe now we're struggling, and we look back at our former selves and think: man, she had it all together. What happened to me?

Life happened.  Life happens.  The only moment we have is this one, the one right under our noses.

This person right now, today, on this last day of being a forty-three year old wife and mother of two -  she only knows what she knows right now, in this moment.  Regretting the past, or worrying about the future brings back the dirty glass, the one that prevents her from Paying Attention.

It would be nice to believe all those fours - 44 on the 4th - will keep me safe, make for a great year.  But the thing is?  It's a great year already. 

No matter what.

Alcoholism's Sister Addiction - FOOD

Last night we did a Bubble Hour episode about denial, and it got me thinking.

We all experience denial in one form or another - arguably on a daily basis. The show talked about how denial is at the root of alcoholism and drug addiction.

But alcohol and drugs are not the only substances that are addictive.

Alcholism's sister addiction is FOOD.

I've been (am) addicted to both.  It took me a long time to get my mind around my food addiction; I didn't consider it an addiction.  We all have to eat, after all, and if I made a poor food choice here and there, so what? It's not like I'm going to crash my car into a tree after too many brownies.

The feelings are the same, though, with both addictions.  When you reach for something outside yourself for comfort, when you have the who-gives-a-damn-anyway attitude about doing something that you know is harming yourself but you just don't care. When you're faced with feelings of self-loathing or remorse after a binge.  When you tell yourself that it's not that bad... that's addiction.

Food addiction is another silent epidemic, and people who struggle with it also struggle with stigma.  Obese people, or overweight people, are met with the same disdainful attitudes, the questions of "well, why don't you just stop?" that alcoholics face.  Have you ever eyed an overweight person in line at McDonald's (the same line you're standing in, by the way) and thought: thank God I'm not her.

I have. Even as my mouth watered in anticipation of a greasy, carb riddled meal. I wasn't that overweight, after all. My denial allowed me to ignore my emotional addiction.  A healthy meal would have sufficed if I was simply hungry.  That McDonald's meal was aimed at something deeper, more insidious, that aching black hole of want.

Three years ago I lost 65 lbs, and got down to a healthy weight for the first time since I gave birth to my daughter.  Then I got cancer and got scary-skinny, and once I was in remission and the feeding tube was removed I had to gain weight.

The party was on.

I ate whatever I wanted to, telling myself that it was important to have that chocolate cake, those Tootsie Rolls, because I needed the calories. I did this until I was over my healthy weight - just how over I chose to ignore.  I denied it away into the corner of my brain where I tuck unwanted truths.

When I couldn't button the pants that had slid on easily for months, I knew I couldn't keep going, that I had to eat better and exercise.

Knowing this was easy; doing something about it wasn't.

I found myself in the throes of a food addiction.  That may seem dramatic, but it's not. Because of my experience getting sober, I recognized the symptoms: obsession, inability to stop myself, rationalizing poor choices.  Physical symptoms when I cut out things like processed sugar.  I would beat myself up, wondering why I wasn't strong enough to just stop.  I'd last a few days, and then have a hard day - or go to a fun event - and the food would just speak to me.  Just like alcohol used to (and still does, sometimes).

I thought I was about 10 lbs over my healthy weight.  When I finally screwed up the courage to step on the scale, I was 20 lbs overweight.  I was crushed, but my brain said "screw it, food is the last treat you have left - you deserve to eat what you want. You had cancer. You can't drink.  Eat whatever you want."

I wasn't ready.

Then the weather got warmer and I pulled out shorts that fit just fine last year.  I couldn't get them over my hips.  I was done.

I realized I couldn't change my eating habits alone.  Just like when I got sober, I needed help.  The first time I lost weight I did it through Jenny Craig, but I couldn't afford that now.  Cancer is expensive.

You may be tired of hearing me talk about Arbonne's fitness program.  I feel like apologizing for talking about it here, like I'm pouring my heart out just to sell something.

But I'm not.  Doing Arbonne's 30 day fitness program, and then getting on a maintenance program, changed my life.  And now I'm seeing it change the life of my clients, my friends, and so I'm not going to apologize for talking about it here.

Because it's not simply a weight loss program.  It's a I-don't-care-enough-to-try fixer.  It helped me flip my self-destructive switch from "who cares" over to "I care".

The first week of this program was hard.  It's as much about what I eliminated from my diet as it is about the healthy things I'm putting in my body, and what I discovered in the first seven days was that I was addicted - and I don't use that word lightly - to sugar and carbs. I had a headache, I was cranky, irritable.  My body screamed for sugar.

That's what I was doing to my body? I marveled.  Consuming sugar and carbs to the point that my body needed them?

That is not an exaggeration.  I know the symptoms of withdrawal, and I had them.  Both physically and emotionally.

The plan put some of the power back in my hands, though, by giving me instructions of what to do (and equally importantly what not to do).  Just like with getting sober, all I had to do was NOT do something (not drink in the case of getting sober, and not eat crap in the case of getting healthy) and follow instructions from people who had walked this path before me.

That first week was tough, but by day 8 the rewards I got from making better choices for seven whole days were enough to keep me going: increased energy, looser clothing, inches starting to come off my waist.   I felt good about myself, my choices.

The feeling of making healthy choices became the reward.  Just like when I got sober. It takes time, and patience, and help, but it's so worth it.

My best friend Amanda just finished the Arbonne 30 day fit program. She did not need to lose a lot of weight (she never has, that skinny little minx) - but she wanted to eat healthier, wean herself off her own sugar (read: ice cream) habit and feel and look like the best version of herself.

She did it. She looks and feels great.  I marvel at how I get to be sober with my best friend - we've known each other for over thirty years - and now we get excited about our new eating habits together, too.  We feel like we're back - as close to those young girls full of hope and energy that we can get for women in our forties.

The irony, too, is that we tried to eat healthier when we were drinking.  We did the Weight Watchers Point system and allotted all our points to wine.  We would never, ever have been able to make a life change like this - for ourselves - when we were drinking.  Back then it wasn't just about the drinking, it was about our ability to hide from ourselves, to simply Not Care.

Caring feels a whole lot better.

Amanda's Results:

The 30 day fitness kit comes with a membership to a wonderful (and private) Facebook community, where we prop each other up, share recipes, tips and advice and share successes.  Because if there is one thing I know for sure it's this:  major life changes are a lot more fun (and successful) when you don't do them alone.

My Results:

If you feel like maybe you're ready to make a change - a real, meaningful lifestyle change for you - whether it's weight loss, detoxing your system, losing (or rearranging) inches, a system for healthier eating or all three - please email me at onecraftyellie@gmail.com. 

You don't have to do this alone.

For those of you who know what I'm talking about with food addiction - who know it's a real thing - I understand.

I'm not trying to be a super model. I just want to be the healthiest me.  One day at a time.

I'm Going There - On Breaking Anonymity

I am so moved by what I'm going to show you below, about this movement, that I can stay silent no longer.

I have tiptoed around this for years, now, about how to reach out and tell truths about alcoholism, drug addiction and recovery without stepping on the toes of recovery programs that have anonymity as a cornerstone to their program?

For five years now, many people have encouraged and supported what I do here, what we do at Crying Out Now and The Bubble Hour and Shining Strong. We don't preach about how to recover. We don't advocate for any one program.  We don't ask anyone to break their own anonymity who doesn't want to, or who can't for personal or professional reasons.

But do you know where I get the most criticism?  From the recovery community itself.

Breaking my own anonymity is a personal decision.  I have felt for a long time that staying silent is dangerous for the movement of recovery.   Not everyone needs to be - or should be - open.  BUT.  Those of us who can?  Or who want to?  We face a backlash from other recovering people.  I won't get into all the reasons why - I don't want anything I say here to be Google-able, which would put me in the cross hairs of violating one Anonymous organization's eleventh and twelfth traditions:  "our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films" (11th tradition) AND "we are to place principles before personalities; that we are actually to practice a genuine humility" (12th tradition).

There is also the 12th step:  "we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

I have spent years trying to reconcile these concepts.  How to carry the message to help suffering alcoholics while maintaining the anonymity requirements of the 11th tradition?  How to be out there telling my story - or the stories found on Crying Out Now and The Bubble Hour?

There is a reason the Anonymous organization is not mentioned on my blog.  We advise all guests on The Bubble Hour to not mention any specific program, if they can help it.  We tell everyone - and hold ourselves to the same standard - that we share OUR OWN experiences ONLY.  We do not tell anyone how to recover, or where to recover.  We share our own experience, strength and hope as persons in recovery.

I feel this mission falls squarely within the intent of the 11th tradition:  "our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion".  Where it gets iffy is the second half of this tradition: "we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films."

But if Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob- co-founders of the Anonymous program - could have envisioned the internet, how would they have felt about it?  Nobody really has the answer to this.  All we have is our perception of the intent behind these traditions. 

How are the stories told on our websites different from speaking from the podium at an open twelve step meeting where anyone - even non alcoholics - are welcome to attend?  At those meetings I'm sharing my name.  I'm showing my face.  I'm breaking my anonymity to people who aren't admitted members of the twelve step program.   And the only requirement for membership in the Anonymous program?  A desire to stop drinking.  Anyone who googles "do I have a problem with alcohol" is taking the first tentative step towards cultivating a desire to stop drinking.

Do you know the number one search phrase used when people find my blog?  "Help me, I can't stop drinking."

If some of us aren't able to tell our stories to offer hope to those still suffering - those who are searching online for help but who aren't ready or willing to go to a meeting - how on earth are we going to offer HOPE.  Because that's what this is all about.  HOPE.

If you're angry about this post, or the work we do, or puzzled, or confused about what this breaking anonymity thing is all about, PLEASE watch this video below (it's a Kickstarter campaign, but they have FAR exceeded their goal so I'm not asking for donations - unless you want to).  If you are a person struggling with shame or fear or doubt - PLEASE watch this.

Because this movement?  This is where I'm going.  I know not everyone will approve.  I'm not looking for approval. I'm looking for open, honest and non-personal discourse.

Will you comment with your thoughts?  This is not a mutual admiration society. I am not going to delete comments that don't go lock-step with my beliefs.  As long as it isn't insulting or personal against me or another commenter, it will stay up.

We can't cure something we can't even talk about.   So let's TALK.

Take THAT, Stigma

Something happened this past weekend that would have been utterly unimaginable when I was drinking.

I got together with a group of women (with an awesome visit from a couple of men, too!) who are all members of a fantastic online group called the "BFB" - it stands for the Booze Free Brigade.

I love that it's called a Brigade, because that's what we are - we're warriors.  Some people in this group are still drinking, or struggling to put more than a few days together, but that doesn't matter.  What matters is that we're all in this together - rooting each other on through our triumphs and tribulations with compassion, love and support.

When I was drinking my life got progressively smaller and darker.  By the end, I was so utterly lost and alone and full of shame, that the notion that a group of women could get together without alcohol and laugh until we were holding our sides and tears streamed down our faces was incomprehensible.  The idea that we could cry freely and without shame, that we could pour out our fears and vulnerabilities and fall back into such loving, compassionate arms, would have sent me running in the other direction.

When I was drinking, I lost the ability to feel, to show up in my own life.  I handled all emotions by going around them, losing myself in what I thought were the soothing effects of alcohol.  All I was doing was numbing out, hiding from playing the starring role in my own existence.

It's hard to find words to describe how this past weekend felt.  Every conversation was soulful, real.  We connected on a visceral level, these women who I had mostly previously only known through the pixelated world of my computer screen. 

As I drove to our rented house outside of Boston, I prayed that these people would be who I thought they were... it's the internet, after all.  Even though I felt such a strong connection to them, there is always the underlying fear that maybe I'm reading more into it than I should.  You can present any version of yourself you want over the internet, after all.   Going to spend three days and two nights with them felt exciting and a little risky.

But, when it comes down to it, we can present any version of ourselves we want to in real life, too, can't we?  In fact, we frequently do.  Don't you have several versions of yourself?  We are very, very rarely able to be completely ourselves.  Part of this is out of necessity, of course.  You aren't going to present the vulnerable, fearful version of yourself at work.  Or at a PTA meeting, or on the sidelines of a soccer game. Even among good friends, I know that I hold back often - although in sobriety I don't really shape shift much, anymore - but it's still rare that I can be my wholehearted self in my day-to-day life.

We went into Fanueil Hall, a huge marketplace in the heart of Boston.  Trying to get 16 women to come up with a plan of action - even to walk from one side of the marketplace to the other - was next to impossible.  Why?  Because we were lost in conversations with each other, one-on-one or in smaller groups, basking in simply being around each other.   It was like a drug, really, the feeling of connectedness I felt.

When I was drinking I was so careful to look put together.  I never showed my vulnerabilities, for fear you'd know that I was deeply flawed in some fundamental way.   I didn't understand the disease of alcoholism, I thought it was all about drinking.  I didn't realize the other aspects - how the chasm between our insides and how our outsides look gets wider and wider until our self-esteem, confidence and love for ourselves falls right in, deep down to the bottom of a bottle.

The idea that I could be so open, so trusting, so real - without a drop of alcohol in my system - was totally incomprehensible when I was drinking.  With recovering women I simply am.   We are drawn together because of our vulnerabilities, not in spite of them.  There isn't any one-upping each other.  This group represents all ages and stages of life. Recovery time ranges from days to years - and who knows?  Maybe even hours.  We are all alcoholics, after all.  It's possible there could have been people still struggling.  But it doesn't matter.

The important thing is that we're there for each other, because we're all the same.  Our adversities bind us together in ways that I just don't find in my day-to-day life.

That's what I didn't understand, before I got sober.  How grateful I'd be that I'm an alcoholic in recovery, because I would get the gift of me. 

We recorded a Bubble Hour episode Friday night, about negative self-talk, thinking patterns, and the tools we use to break self-destructive thought patterns.   There we were, a group of women, talking openly and without fear about our innermost thoughts.  We come together to share our experience, strength and hope to help ourselves first, and to help anyone else out there still struggling understand just how rich life can be on the other side of drinking.  Not perfect. Not easy. But oh so very rich.

I got to wrap my arms around these women who support me in more ways than I can articulate. I can't count how many times I said "I love you", without embarrassment and straight from my heart.  It doesn't matter that I'd never met them in person before.  They are woven into my life, into my spirit, in ways that defy explanation.

And one of the biggest gifts?  Meeting Lisa - one of the three Bubble Hour co-hosts (and co-moderator of Crying Out Now, too).

Ellie, Lisa and Amanda

Lisa, Amanda and I had never met - all three of us - in person before.  It felt like we had known each our whole lives (in Amanda's case, I have known her almost all my life, over 30 years, and what a blessing to share the gift of sobriety with my best friend - and former drinking buddy).

Now? It's hard to imagine my life without these women.

We recorded a video while we were there - our version of the Harlem Shake.  I won't share it in order to protect the anonymity of the women there, but I had a moment while we were filming it.  Dancing around with stuff on our heads (bowls, hats, magazines, towels - you name it) to the Harlem Shake... stone cold sober.  I thought to myself:  take that, stigma.   When people picture alcoholics, I don't think we're quite at the place where they see vibrant, funny, intelligent and compassionate women dancing and enjoying life to its fullest.  But we're working on that.  Together.

If you're still struggling, take heart.  Keep talking.  Keep showing up.  Get honest with yourself first, and please know that there are SO many people out there who understand, who know exactly how you feel.

You are NOT alone.

We're here.  And we will welcome you with open arms.