Releasing the Chains that Bind You

The Journey from Resentment to Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the greatest gift you can give yourself- Maya Angelou

For the addict and alcoholic, resentment is one of the biggest offenders which can lead the addict and the alcoholic straight to the drink or drug. Instead of processing the anger healthily, the alcoholic drinks at the person with whom they are angry.  Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the person you are mad at to die.

Forgiveness does not excuse the behavior of someone who may have harmed or hurt you. Forgiving is really about our own well- being and peace of mind. Forgiveness means you have decided to free the other person and yourself from the prison of resentment. I once heard someone say, “When you choose to forgive those who have hurt...

Our mind is one of the most powerful tools we have been given, and its power is often underestimated and misused. As humans, we can use our brains for good or for evil. Being conscious of our thoughts and choosing a positive perspective is where mastering the art of positive thinking begins.

My favorite story which demonstrates how our perspective plays a vital key in our happiness is about two five-year-old twin boys whose parents took to see a psychiatrist. The boys were polar opposites. The psychiatrist took one boy into to a room piled high with new toys, expecting the boy to be thrilled. But instead, he burst into tears.

Puzzled, the psychiatrist asked, "Don't you want to play with these toys?”

"Yes,” the little boy bawled, "but if I did I'd only break them.”

Next the psychiatrist the put the other boy into a room piled high with horse manure. The boy yelped with delight, clambered to the top of the pile, and joyfully dug out scoop after scoop, tossing the...

Recovering from an addiction is tough enough, but when you throw in the tremendous responsibilities of motherhood, resisting cravings and remaining abstinent—much less enjoying the rewards of the holidays—can seem like an impossible challenge.

The holidays can bring up many uncomfortable feelings of stress, loneliness, financial fear and overwhelm which can often trigger a relapse. For the alcoholic or addicted mom trying to get sober or stay sober, it’s vital we know what our triggers are and step-up our recovery plan to avoid a relapse. I heard someone once say, “we are either working on our recovery or working on a relapse.”

Once we know what our danger signs are, we can watch out for them. So when we identify the triggers, we can see them as highway signs that say Danger Ahead with flashing red lights.

For many, one of the most challenging places during the holidays can be at home. I once saw a bumper sticker which read, “Good news: The...

Intuition 

 Finding Your Answers Within

Never apologize for trusting your intuition. Your brain can play tricks,
your heart can blind, but your gut is always right.
Rachel Wolchin

Some call intuition an inner guide, gut feeling, internal authority. Wikipedia defines the word intuition as ‘a phenomenon of the mind, describes the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason.’

For me, intuition is like coming home and listening to that small voice within.

As children, most of us had a strong sense of intuition, yet we seem to lose it as we get older. Most children have a strong feeling of people who feel safe and situations which don’t feel right.   We stop listening to our inner voice because we begin to reason with it, argue with it, and our rational linear minds want concrete proof.

In recovery, it seemed as though my intuition started to wake back up after the fog began to clear in my mind. There was a small faint voice...

I loved margaritas, martinis, and being a mother. I’m not sure what I liked most about the margarita.  Was it was the salt, the sweet slushiness, the colossal glass, the tequila or the tequila chaser? Well let's get serious, it was the tequila I loved.  How do I know this? Well, all I had to do to was to try the ‘virgin margarita,’ and that did it for me. Yuck! Add the word ‘virgin’ to anything, and I’m already turned off (pun definitely intended!)

I loved margaritas so much, that  right after my first child was born, when a friend called me in the hospital and asked me if I wanted her to bring me anything, I replied, “Yes, bring me a pitcher of margaritas.” What I loved about the margarita was this: I thought it made me appear ‘lady-like’ instead of a barfly shooting shots.

I also loved martinis! I had the illusion martinis made me look classy and sophisticated. Somehow purchasing fancy expensive...

 Fear is the great enemy of intimacy.  Fear makes us run away from each other or
cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.
Henri Nouwen 

Intimacy is one of the greatest human needs — those longing for someone to truly deeply know and accept us for who we truly are. We all have a primal human desire to connect with another person on a deep spiritual and emotional level, a yearning to be known and understood. We want to know we matter, that our presence on this planet has a purpose.

Before I got sober, I had the false expectation that this yearning for intimacy was fulfilled through having sex. As my friend Diane said, “We go to bed with a man, and the next morning he’s planning golf while we’re shopping for the wedding dress.”

Another fallacy I believed was that if I had a man in my life, it would mean I did matter; I would never feel afraid, lost, or unsettled. I knew nothing about healthy emotional closeness. I was afraid...

LOVE ADDICTION – A MOTHER REVEALS HER SHOCKING STORY

My fear of abandonment is exceeded only by my terror of intimacy.  

Ethlie Ann Vare

When I got sober in 1999 – I put down the alcohol and picked up another addiction – Men!

I was a serial dater. I don’t know how many men I dated nor do I remember many of their names. I would spot a man, beeline to him, flirt up a storm, and if he gave me even the slightest bit of attention I was hooked. The shelf lives of these relationships were one to three months. One day I’d be saying, “I love you,” and the next day, out of the blue, I was saying goodbye. I was going from man to man with an empty, bottomless cup, begging for love and attention. It was never enough because I didn’t feel enough.

What makes me cringe the most is how my serial dating affected my children. They witnessed the revolving door. I’d spend hours on the phone with the man of the moment. My five-year-old...

5 Tips to Overcome Loneliness

An excerpt from my book “A Sober Mom’s Guide to Recovery” (Hazelden Publishing, 2015)

"When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death—ourselves."— EDA LESHAN

Loneliness is one of the most difficult human emotions. It can feel like a hole in the bottom of your gut, or a deep, aching longing in the heart, or both. The addict runs from loneliness in many ways: through drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, bingeing, purging, overeating, gambling, busyness, and overworking. These quick fixes do the trick at first, but as with all addictive behaviors, the high or distraction quickly wears off, and we’re back to feeling lonely and isolated. We pick it up “just one more time”—the drug, the alcohol, the lover, the credit card, the carton of ice cream— and then we’re left with that deeper hole of self-loathing and demoralization.

...

(An excerpt from my book, A Sober Mom's Guide to Recovery (Hazelden 2015)

HAVE YOU EVER REACHED THE POINT OF COMPLETE EXHAUSTION?
Of course you have—you’re a woman.  And as a mother you are an expert in the exhaustion department.  Add to that being a mother trying to recover from addiction, and exhaustion becomes a way of life.

One day when I was newly sober and working full time, going through a divorce, and raising three kids, I was complaining to my therapist about how tired I was.  He suggested I take a twenty-minute nap in the afternoon, between work and picking up the kids.  I truly thought this man was from Mars: he might as well suggest I fly to the moon.

I rarely took time to go to the doctor because I always said I didn’t have enough time.  I had been feeling ill for about two weeks but I had promised my boys I’d take them to the Giants game that night.  I told myself I’d go to the doctor tomorrow; tonight...

Money Money Money

By Rosemary O’Connor

Edited excerpt from A Sober Mom’s Guide to Recovery (Hazelden 2015)

A woman’s best protection is a little money of her own.

—  CLARE BOOTHE LCCE

Two of the most prominent relapse triggers I see with my clients are romance and finance. As addicts and alcoholics, most of us have money issues. Just as we learn to have healthy relationships with people, we also need to learn to have a healthy relationship with money. Most people would rather tell you their deepest, darkest secrets or about their sex life than tell you about their dysfunctional relationship with money. 

My relationship with money was definitely dysfunctional! I went mindlessly shopping for clothes, shoes, cars; you name it. I often padded the grocery bill, and I even stole money from the kids’ piggy banks.

When I was about five years sober, I hit my bottom with money. I was $60,000 in debt, and I could hardly breathe. I was a single mom trying...