Let It Go, Let It Happen

"You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope. ~ Thomas Merton

The following was written in stream of consciousness - sort of - one draft, no edit ... 

Today we buried my mother in law which elicited a whole slew of feelings and reminiscences not the least of which is the memory of hearing my mom had died by a phone call from the bank. You might say this explains a lot if you knew me better than you do. You all know me from these pages and that is all. I am happy to say I am a bit deeper than what you witness here, the sum of my parts do not begin and end with the My Parent Depot postings but a lot here points you to how I got to where I am today. 

But this is and should never be about me it is about us and if it ever does become solely about me  - which would make for some terribly boring and tiresome reflections - you have my permission to contact the blog police to put all of us out of our collective misery.

My mother-in-law's funeral and my subsequent same-day decision to write my stream of consciousness blog is not a coincidence. As we all know there are no coincidences in life, simply the Universe' way of directing us to where we should be or who we should be with or avoiding. But this serendipity of my wife's mother's funeral and some time on my hands to begin writing again has a celestial purpose. 

What I learned during the week leading up to the funeral and the two days spent in desperate mourning by the family, my wife, her brother and sister during the visitation and internment was that I have changed

OK, something about ME again, but hang in there - there's a point to this.

My relationship with my mother in law was not necessarily contentious but because I met her only during the last 28 of her 91-1/2 years of life I was a bit less accustomed to her negativity, quirks and tendency to disparage her children especially my wife so I didn't have the history and hence the tools to fight off a personality fashioned by a great depression a world war and a husband who came back from that war with a nasty case of WWII PTSD (read shell shock). 

Funerals are terrible things that families can make even more terrible but not in this case. The three siblings  - all fifteen feet of them ... they're a very short family - took the opportunity provided by the death of their mother to amplify the love they have for each other. The visitation was a time for sharing, our two boys, the son that brought me to this journey and the son who drove both his parents crazy during the three last years of high school were able also to re-establish bonds they had lost when pot and pills took our older boy away to the addiction. Friends and extended family were able to see this love, and the re-bonding it was a beautiful thing to see.

I was told not once but at least three times how I had changed I knew I had but it took more than one person to tell me this truth in the captive setting for me to hear it. The funeral ended with a prayer requested from the three, the sister and sister and brother. They not being particularly religious but very spiritual I was not sure what was coming. This is what followed - the Al-Anon Serenity Prayer:

"God, grant me the Serenity | To accept the things I cannot change | The Courage to change the things I can | And the Wisdom to know the difference | Living one day at a time | Enjoying one moment in time | Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace | Taking as He did | This sinful world as it is, not as I would have it | Trusting that He will make things right if I surrender to His will | That I may be reasonably happy in this life | And supremely happy with Him in the next."

This is the first moment I allowed myself to cry. I cried tears of happiness for years ago finding the courage to lay prostrate on the ground, beaten and begging for someone or some THING to take the burden of my son's addiction from me I cried tears of sadness that my wife had lost her mother after five years of Alzheimer's and a mercifully quick death due to sepsis and other complications I cried for our children and the other grandkids who had lost their last grandparent I cried for the family that had taken me in after not knowing family fully and lovingly in my former life.

We were all reminded by my wife's big sister that grandma had at one point turned to Al-Anon to turn her life around - I had forgotten this. The message was clear from the Universe, God, god, the Great Creator, the universe or whatever power by which we can explain away the unexplainable, the coincidences and the synchronicities of life that can guide and propel us along our journeys to our truest selves if we allow it.

This had all happened for me and can happen for us all if we simply let go and trust, trust that there is something out there that can take our struggles off our shoulders and disperse them across the stars to the heavens and above and beyond throughout the universe to let The Addiction know we will no longer be a hand puppet to its master plan of keeping our children mired and stuck in its stench and stink.

Our lives may not be perfect but we can be happy and grow each and every day to become as close to who we are meant to be as we possibly can and I am certain that our children will see this and want a part of the victories, the struggles, the failures and exuberant finish-line crosses that they see us experience. There are millions of souls along the journey to buoy us along as we let loose of the addiction tether mid flight. Trust we may falter but we will not fail, stumble but not fall, but if we fall we WILL get up.

We can change if we want it. In the words of Elsa In Frozen:

"Let it go, Let it go! | And I'll rise like the break of dawn | Let it go, Let it go | That perfect girl is gone | Here I stand in the light of day | Let the storm RAGE on | The cold never bothered me anyway.

I love that last line  - very deep - think about it. 

It is our liberation we are talking about it is our emancipation and our lives and the lives of our children we are talking about here and I saw it these few days at work as the spirit of a family matriarch rose up to inspire each and everyone of us - and now YOU! - to the greatness we can achieve if we, maybe, just don't try so damn hard.

Keep letting go and ...

... keep coming back 

"Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do." ~ Benjamin Spock

Seven Spring Haiku - For You

"Dare to love yourself  | As if you were a rainbow | With gold at both ends" ~  Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

Again Spring teaches

Black skies will turn to azure

We’re not in control

Nature’s class lessons

Fruitless to force the beauty

See it and Be it

Smile at the sunrise

Again as the moon rises

And the in betweens

The moon’s reminder

The NEW moon hiding, present

Mysteries await 

Great Creator’s sounds

Symphony of life living

Take out those ear buds 

Spring’s more gentle side

Example of calm and growth

Do we aspire?

Don’t know everything.

Life is a Great Adventure

Never to be spoiled

... keep coming back

"Make money and the | whole world will conspire to call | you a gentleman" ~ Mark Twain quotation haiku'd by @Warrior_Prophet

Doses of Positivity

"We don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is in itself a marvelous victory." ~ Howard Zinn

One recently bitterly cold early morning as I was stumbling into my chosen coffee shop of the day I happened to see a woman I had noticed there on previous mornings. On this day she was addressing in full vigor, a group of women sitting at a large table.

This woman, an educator, was outlining her classroom philosophy. Ebullient doesn't even come close to describing her.

I had to break in: "Are you enrolling? I'd like to be in your class!"

She laughed. The women too. I told her from what I had heard she gives her students the opportunity to learn in a healthy and inclusive atmosphere. She responded by mentioning each day before class she reminds herself that she knows nothing, so each day might progress and emerge as it should.

Sound familiar?

Stunned, I left her with a quote I had picked up years before.

"People who think they know everything are missing the Great Adventure," I said.

We smiled and parted company yet her energy and positivity remain with me.

Sometimes we need doses of positivity as parents of addicts. No matter where we are on our lifelong journey, wherever our children are along their recovery pathways, we need these regular inoculations against The Negative.

Our lives depend on it. Positivity is one of many preventative and proactive measures we can employ to avoid tumbles back to the vortex The Addiction is constantly inviting us to rejoin. Think of Positivity as a vaccine we would no more avoid than the Inactivated Poliovirus schedule administered to our children in the first year and a half of their lives. Positivity is a well-established pathway to fulfillment and self actualization.

Years ago I had asked my doctor if he thought I should get a flu shot.

"You want to get the flu?" he asked.

"No," I responded.

"Then get the flu shot," he counseled, with a smile.

It's that simple, right?

Unfortunately for parents of addicts it's not always so. We are challenged, daily, by the hooks The Addiction employs to drag us back into our children's spiral. We all have the little bastard projectionist in our heads, playing those awful dystopian newsreels portending certain futures that may or may not transpire.

We can learn to SEEK out Positivity so we may SEE The Good The Universe has in play for us. We do not simply avoid the negative. Actively looking for the positive in life, seeking FUN (there's that "F" word again), allows less time for negative thoughts, internalized film festivals and self-defeating actions to creep into our lives.

We don't lead lives as the village idiot, ignoring all of life's travails at the expense of our own well being. This is more a quest for the best in human nature, in society, in friends and family and ourselves as we stay true to our recovery journey pathways. There is a benefit, a logic, in surrounding ourselves with joyfulness, what is life affirming and not soul damaging.

I have become convinced that TV newsrooms have relegated the duties of the assignment desk to the police scanner. It's is easier to cover fires, murders and automobile accidents than to dig deep into the soul of a community to find The Good percolating in spite of The Bad we are exposed to hourly. Television dramas and reality shows have become celebrations of the worst of human nature.

We can pick our media wisely. We can choose our mindset carefully as well. We can even choose our conversations carefully including our self talk. Most of us have more than once, I'm sure, meandered down pathways of negativity. It may be part of our DNA or perhaps a defaulting human genome that tends to move us to a complaining voice. When this occurs we can catch ourselves and imagine ourselves turning around to retrace our steps back to our chosen pathway.

When we find ourselves diverted to The Negative we can feel it. It is a different sensation for everyone whether it's the blood rushing to our heads or the knot forming in our neck muscles (that's mine). Whatever predictor of the foreboding we own it is important to recognize it and know when we have entered a dark pathway. If we allow ourselves to continue down the path paved by negativity we risk becoming lost, again, in the blackness.

Seeking out and finding The Positive is the thing wherein we can keep our journeys true and safe.

Surrounding ourselves with positive people is one sure way to stay focused on our pathways. A quick shot of optimism from one of those infectiously happy souls is an inoculation against Gloom.

And GLOOM, in just a single syllable is such a descriptively negative word. Lugubrious is another. We may not know its meaning, we just know by its sound we don't want to go there. Lu-gu-bri-ous is what we were before we began our journey. 

We can't go back there.

We can catch ourselves when we find we have entered into a negative conversation or when our our thoughts revert to our more negative tendencies.

We can leave those conversations, external and internal. We can stop ourselves when we begin to ramble down the easy pathway to The Gloom. When we do, when we stop, we know we've grown.

Remember also The Addiction is all about maintaining our children in its cocoon of negativity. Their conversation will trend to what sucks, what is wrong with EVERYTHING. Do not engage, do not return the volleys. But when our children do emerge, when they speak of anything that smacks of what is right, good or optimistic with their world, jump on the opportunity.

It is at this moment we must allow our children to catch a glimpse of what we have found. We must allow them to have a Goodness sighting, a view of a vista awaiting them in the light outside the darkness. It may be hard for them to see. The light can be blinding for those who have been in the dark so long.

Eventually they may become accustomed to our Positivity. Eventually they may long for it.

For now the doses of Positivity can be our little secret, our gift to ourselves.

Just take at least two daily, PRN.

... keep coming back

"We can complain because rosebushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses." ~ Abraham Lincoln

"When things go wrong, don't go with them." ~ Elvis Presley 

The Stillness of the Quiet

"In the stillness of the quiet , if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair." ~ Howard Thurman

Stillness can be disconcerting. We can be left to our own thoughts if we abandon civilization's constant din of activity.

The good news is our own thoughts are healthier, happier, more honest and true than before we set out upon our recovery journeys.

Still, the stillness, the quiet, the absence of the white noise of constant conversation and busy-ness can be a condition to be feared.

We've even been programmed for this through media - movies, television, radio ...

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what? I didn't hear anything?"

"Exactly."

Even in our pursuit of our personal parental recovery as we strive to SEEK and SEE what the Universe has awaiting us, as we endeavor to move forward, we can be caught up in the joyous uproar of our own activity.

This is not a call to regroup or take Five, to postpone our journey to rejuvenate and recharge. This is an invitation to awareness.

During the course of navigating through the cloud forest of our early recovery or even in our triumphant first emergence from despair and darkness we were perhaps too focused on the escape to take note of the silences surrounding us. These quiets as we can call them were largely ignored as we persevered to accept the abundance of The Universe.

We had a purpose in those early stages to escape the vortex of our children's disease. What we did not realize at the time was those quiets, seemingly as dark as the mire from which we were endeavoring to escape could have served us well. We realize this now - or soon will -  yet embracing the quiets of our lives may take some getting used to. Allowing ourselves to accept the stillnesses, the breaks in the clamor of everyday life may either seem impossible or something to be avoided.

For years I would jog or take long walks through our Great Creator's abundance with my ear buds firmly in place. I listened to my playlists to take my mind to another plane of existence as if the park or nature preserve I had chosen didn't provide enough inspiration.

One day a friend (read angel) mentioned she never listens to anything, music or podcasts, when she takes walks.

"Why miss out on the sounds and beauty all around," she said.

Now when I take long walks or training runs through any of our area county parks or wildlife sanctuaries I treat myself to the stillnesses of each moment. The stillnesses, the quiets, are now only interrupted by the rustling sound of deer deep in the woods or the calls of orioles and meadowlarks previously hidden from view by the clatter of my meticulously chosen playlists.

I allow the stillnesses to surround me, to quiet my soul, to allow me to BREATHE.

I am even training myself to experience the stillnesses within conversations instead of formulating what I will say in response before the speaker has completed his or her thoughts. These stillnesses represent the whole of what is being said, the words, the inflections, the body language - the entire package. I no longer respond to a snippet of my choosing from the conversation.

My recovery is leaching ever so slowly into my life, not always successfully. I allow that recovery is a work in progress.

The quiets are our opportunity to experience the whole of what our Great Creator has made ready for us. Allowing ourselves the gift of complete encounters with our world as we continue along our recovery pathways is our next small step in becoming our true real selves.

Find a quiet place, yet experience the sounds all around. Take time to find the beauty in the smallest minutiae each moment offers. Focus on the quiet of the NOW without permitting the mind to race to the myriad of the NEXTS that may never materialize. Take that pause after a friend has spoken to take in what has been said and only then, decide if any response is warranted.

Discovering our quiets, our stillnesses amid the din of media, schedule, society, family and our substance-burdened children allows us to step back, move aside and focus on the important. We are able to reject the distractions, seeing them for what they are, dangerous diversions from our pathways. The quiets whisper to us to slow down even as we energetically travel ahead on our recovery journeys. The stillnesses remind us that while we remain clueless about so many things there is an entire Universe guiding us, cheering, encouraging us to be our best selves.

Did you hear that?

I hope so!

... keep coming back

"Happiness is a butterfly which when pursued is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

When Addiction Strikes - Our Time to Shine as Parents ... Or, The Meaning of SHOWING UP

"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Life is full of cruel opportunities. We felt the full effect of this when our children succumbed to the disease of addiction. Many of us saw only one pathway and took it.

We accepted blame for our children's tumble. We controlled. We fixed - or thought we did. We handed our lives over to The Addiction. In essence we disappeared. We became the automaton of The Addiction, perpetuating our daughter's and son's subservience to the substance. We continuously insulted and downgraded our children's spirit as it slowly disappeared into the chasm of whatever drug or behavior had them hooked. We did for our children what they could and should have done for themselves. We stole their victories, failures and consequences. And as we watched our babies lose themselves in addiction's black hole we were right there with them, hopeless, invisible, dying.

Many of us accomplished this in cycles, disappearing and reappearing with a seeming purpose. We can remember also pulling our children from the brink. We got them clean in wilderness camps, therapeutic boarding schools, and inpatient and outpatient treatment. We saved our children's lives, a noble act for which many of them have yet to forgive us. No matter where our son's and daughter's journeys have taken them at this present crossroads in their journeys, this ingratitude is The Addiction speaking, hanging on, grappling for our babies' essences.

"... that stupid boot camp in the desert!"

Ultimately our paths diverged. It was inevitable, or must be. It is either this divergence occurs or we die, both parent and child. Living with our children in the muck, entangled within the thick hedgerow of addiction benefits neither of us.

One of us had to escape for both of us to have a chance of survival. It may as well have been us. It had to be us. Addiction's hold on our children is like a siren call forever luring them into a living nightmare of shipwreck after shipwreck.

Living for The Addiction with our children relegates our lives to an existence based on bitterness, anger and despair. There is no room in our hearts to love our addicts - ever. We can find no reason to separate him from The Addiction, her from the life she has fallen into. Showing up for ourselves makes us stronger, better than we have been for years.

As we emerged from our self-imposed dead zone we fought our tendencies to fix, control, cure and thus insult our children's intellect and ability to figure it out for themselves, whatever their it is. This would be the first of many counter intuitive awarenesses, a beam of sunshine breaking through the dense canopy of our personal cloud forest.

This might just be our opportunity to show up as parents. This might be our time to shine.

As parents of addicts SHOWING UP means living OUR lives to our fullest potential. Showing up in its truest sense is being as true to ourselves as we possibly can at this moment in time. Showing up allows us to be there for our children by being a beacon to a fulfilled existence, an example of what can be if our children would only accept the Universe' pathway to their best selves.

Showing up is one of those cruel opportunities. We are constantly fighting our reflexive proclivity to insert ourselves where we're not needed or wanted, to come charging in like a one-man, one-woman cavalry to free a soul unaware that any liberation is necessary - or worse, one that is just fine with the occupation.

Showing up as parents in this out-of-the-box way really does give us a chance to shine. No longer angry at everything we react less and are able to more often find love in our hearts for our children. We have more energy for ourselves and the slings and arrows The Addiction may throw our way. It is our time to rise above The Addiction and its hooks and barbs and become better than the embittered human beings we once were. It is our time to grow, to glow, to become who we were meant to be.

If we respect our right to live a fulfilled and rewarding life, to explore the pathways The Universe has prepared for all of us we also honor and acknowledge our children's capacity for change. They may see our new calm, our renewed lust for living and like that light we saw through the dark forest canopy they may reach out through the haze of The Addiction for some of what we've found.

When we show up and shine on for ourselves we become better parents for it. And brightening our lives just may become the sunrise to our children's new dawn.

Rise and shine parents!

... keep coming back

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." ~ United States of America Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

We Really ARE Interesting People

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

We've all felt this. We're different, we parents of children who have succumbed to the disease of addiction. We have a different perspective on life, on living, on making that commitment each day to crawl out of bed and show up for life.

Some things are more important to us than they seem to other people, some less so. We've learned to ignore A LOT that might lead us on meaningless diversions away from our recovery pathways. We're focused on living. We no longer obsess over the argument, the negative, the sad, the pathetic. We have begun to pull away from the black-hole vortex of our children's addiction.

In the midst of it all we have come to appreciate our new and elevated role in the world, in the universe. We have lives to lead, passions to nourish and new friends to embrace. We do this even as our babies struggle.

We do all this because we feel we must. We feel compelled to strive, to seek out our individualities, our greatnesses.

Live or die. To be or not to be in its fullest sense, becomes the question.

And one day as we became more self aware we began to separate our children from The Addiction that had taken them from us. We chose a life separate from the controlling, fixing and curing parents we had become. In the process we began to discover our uniqueness stepping outside of what had been ourselves to discover who we really are, not what society had pigeonholed us into.

As this transition occurs we begin to feel, strange. It's OK. Different can feel strange at first. Our family, friends, coworkers and even our children who brought us to our journeys  - alright, especially these children - see the change in us and perceive the change as strange, foreign and threatening. We are shattering the status quo, the expected, the safe, the known.

Strange is not really the word, We can refer to our new outlook on life, our prospects and future as ... Interesting.

Interesting | adj. | attracting your attention and making you want to learn more about something or to be involved in something; not dull or boring

- Merriam-Webster On-Line Dictionary

We are definitely not dull or boring. Human beings who have suffered, then prevailed as thrivers from our children's dive into addiction are never boring. We've emerged. No longer hiding we're striving, seeking and seeing our possibilities.

Interesting people are attractive in a true, real sense, an attraction not based on physicality but on that something difficult to define. We are deeply involved with life, and with our lives, yet we are not self absorbed.

There is something then, different about us. In transcending our struggles and recent battles which have moved us along our recovery pathways we are a force to be noticed. Those who know of our struggles may see these changes as odd, selfish or inspiring. Those we meet, unaware of our history, may be attracted to our nuanced differentness. Our families watch, learn (hopefully - this is up to them), and find comfort in our changed demeanor, outlook on life and lust for life's experiences. We are becoming who we are meant to be.

Imagine that.

NO, REALLY! Imagine that, and it might just come true.

Our children who brought us to this journey, our Great Creator's great gift, see us too, changed, metamorphosed, alive.

Oh they'll be pissed at first to be sure as they witness their former rag-doll parents embracing a fulfilled existence. The anger we sense is The Addiction's rebellion, negativity and bitterness spewed through our children's mind, body and spirit. The Addiction will fight this, our truth, our REAL.

This can be exhausting for us and our children. One day they may see the folly of the vortex into which they have plunged. One day, as we once declared, they may say, "Enough!"

"I can't live like this anymore!"

Or perhaps they won't. We must remember it is their journey.

Through it all what we CAN do is remain steadfast. Through it all we must trust the pathway we have chosen and the spectacular journey we have been blessed with.

Through it all we must love our children as we follow the many possibilities the Universe has laid out for us.  All we need do is simply allow ourselves the courage to reach out and embrace the moments.

And, through it all, we must always remain ... interesting.

"Alas for those who never sing, But die with all their music in them," ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Everyone has a secret achievement inside. Happy are those who have the audacity to pull it off. " ~ Patrick Benjamin 

 ... keep coming back

Disquietude

"Forgiving is not forgetting, it's letting go of the hurt." ~ Mary McLeod Bethune

Disquietude is one of those multi-layered words seldom utilized in our increasingly complex world. Dumbed down by email and social media our lexicon can't seem to keep up with the times. Disquietude harks back to the Civil War era when words were grand and descriptive, a Ken Burnsesque time when language blossomed.

"In Richmond, where intelligence of battles was received with comparative promptness, the frequent soundings of the tocsin, indicating the proximity of danger, increased the general disquietude, while those who lived in the country where newspapers were infrequent and mail irregular felt they would have preferred living in the midst of alarms to having their anxious uncertainty thus prolonged."

Disquietude, a word not so much utilized in the present day is certainly felt by parents of children who have succumbed to addiction to substances, certain behaviors or whatever negative influences impact their lives. Disquietude may be chronic or acute, a constant foreboding or that occasional twinge of pain precipitated by a late-night phone call, an item thought hidden from parental view or even a scent or visual supplying unsubstantiated proof of future, certain calamity.

We're either residents of Richmond receiving constant communiques of our sons' or daughters' real or imagined further plunges into addiction, or in the seeming insulation of the countryside where we may feel isolated, emotionally detached perhaps, yet still wondering, "When will the next alarm bell toll?"

It is useless to consider which is more distressing, the persistent barrage of intelligence or infrequent reports on how our sons and daughters are faring along their personal recovery journeys. This life of constant or intermittent notifications can be maddening, diverting us from our journey pathways. We risk a return to the brush, the dark rain forest, the mire and muck. We feel compelled to once again resort to enabling, controlling and living our lives for The Addiction. So we make the call:

OK, it's time you get your act together. You're not doing anything you said you would. Here's what WE'RE going to do.

Or ... 

Hey I haven't heard from you in a while. Is everything OK?

Our motivations are unimportant. Whether we've been receiving regular dispatches of our children's struggles or seem constantly in the dark, once again, we've been sidetracked from our pathway by The Addiction.

This sounds tough and heartless doesn't it? Perhaps it is a necessary message for us to survive the siege.

The disquietude is natural. We love our sons and daughters. This state of unease and anxiety may be with us always or for a long time.

So what are we supposed to do with it?

We can live our lives fully as a constant reminder of how much we love our children and so allow them their victories, and their failures. We can lower expectations thus protecting ourselves from the downside of Addiction-driven manipulative behaviors while allowing us to truly recognize and revel in our addicts' upside wins. We can live our lives as a beacon, a lighthouse of the possibilities of life lived to its absolute fullest each day. As we progress along our journey we will see those niches in time when The Addiction takes a hiatus from its hold on our children, providing those opportunities to be a parent without getting in the way.

This is when, "I love you" is the only thing we need to say to our babies.

When we let go of this disquietude, even occasionally, we can actually laugh, yes laugh at the absurdity of some of the behaviors our children are led to by The Addiction. We've all witnessed the sulking, the everything sucks and it's YOUR FAULT mentality of our children struck down by The Addiction. When we allow the disquietude to leave us or even temporarily subside and realize our children are IN THERE, we can ignore the hooks, the Addiction-driven enticements, and smile.

We'll not play this game - no, not anymore. This is what loving our children while we hate The Addiction that has brought them to the dark place is all about. We're not giving up on them any more than a parent of a child with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Our children's disease is not curable through our interference. They hold the cure. We provide the lifeline through our unconditional love and belief in our children that they will figure this out.

We must never give up, never surrender to The Addiction's calls to divert us away from our lives.

Acknowledging our disquietude is the first step. We have tools. Whether we are in persistent contact with our children and their struggles along their pathways or receiving long-distance and sporadic notifications of victories and defeats, we must continue.  Our journey is our lifeline. Our children's disease of addiction is out of our control to cure but we can remain strong for ourselves and for them, for those moments of clarity where they might just bare witness to some of the views and vistas we enjoy.

We may not be certain of our sons' and daughters' immediate prospects but we can make certain as we can of ours. There was trepidation and hesitation when we began our journey. We can remember how in those first few steps we were able to confront our disquietude and move on.

Perhaps soon, it will be their turn.

... keep coming back

"I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it." ~ Groucho Marx

Bibliography

Rhodes, James Ford, History of the Civil War 1861-1865, New York, The MacMillan Company (1917), pp. 389-390