Failure Island

"I've failed over and over again in life. And that is why I succeed." ~ Michael Jordan

Let's go back in time to our past that compelled us to control, to blame ourselves and our children for their plummet and seek out any fix to put an end to our shared dire circumstances.

There we stood, marooned on Failure Island. Our lives had become shipwrecked. Life's winds had taken us off course although we had tried our best to stem the swelling tides surging around us. We soon found the waves of anger, sadness, belligerence, depression and discouragement to be too much for our little ships we believed to be seaworthy. We trusted years of parenting to the best of our ability would prevent the disease of addiction from entering our households.

We were wrong. Our lives were scuttled. We went then into survival mode but on our little islands we were alone, isolated (from the Latin insulatus - made into an island). We became the island, the rock jutting above a vast expanse created not by our children or even The Addiction but by our own making.

We experienced the feelings of failure owned only by parents of children who have stumbled into addiction.  Until we owned our anger and disappointment, until we really felt it, we were unable to let it all go so we could again see our babies for the beautiful human beings they are. We remained marooned because that's exactly where we wanted to be at that time. It was an awful yet comfortable and painfully familiar place to exist.

Feelings are frightful. Escaping the tides and barriers of an island seems an impossibility. Until we allowed ourselves the revelation that our isolation was a losing proposition and a pathway to nowhere, to continuing rage, pathos and self destruction, we remained.

One day we saw a way off the island. We made the attempt. It may have required several efforts, the rip currents of our despondency pushing us back to the island again and again, and then perhaps, again.

But we eventually made it off Failure Island - exhausted.

Once we found the strength to breathe and reflect we made certain promises to ourselves. We vowed to never return to that island. We might visit via the Google Maps of our minds to reflect on where we had been and how damn far we'd come. It's ok, failures as parents are inevitable, but we can decide never again to distance ourselves from our children, family and friends by so immersing ourselves in our faults and foibles.

When we come to grips with our humanity, that we are REAL humans with real weaknesses and character flaws - remembering REAL is what we are striving for each day - we can shrug off the guilt and bitterness that kept us on that island for far too long.

Escaping Failure Island was an early first step on the pathway to loving our children and hating The Addiction - to live our lives to the fullest.

We can remember this when we feel ourselves drifting off course into melancholy and lose our bearing. Our true north is within us. Trust this and with our hands firmly on the helm our best adventures are just over that horizon.

Bon voyage!

... keep coming back

"The only true failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows." ~ Buddha

"And a rock feels no pain - and an island never cries." ~ Paul Simon, "I Am A Rock" 

Finding Peace in Upsetting Times

"All we are saying is give peace a chance." ~ John Lennon

These are difficult times. There is a catastrophic civil being waged in Syria, a land grab in Ukraine, global warming, world-wide privation, and in the U.S a failure to address chronic socioeconomic, judicial and educational disparities between the haves and the never hads.

Add to this a U.S. presidential election so crude, contentious, hateful, petty and stupid the entire world is wondering what the HELL is going on in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

No wonder we're all walking on eggshells. Once again, does any of this sound familiar?

We all experienced feelings of foreboding in our personal lives as we navigated through our journey while being constantly bombarded by the confrontations The Addiction would lay across our recovery pathways. Many of us are challenged even as our children triumphantly struggle through their own recoveries.

We have been threatened psychologically and physically. Now, a world in chaos only adds to our depletion, to our exhaustion.

So how do we find peace?

We don't want to start from the very beginning as sung in "Do Re Me" from The Sound of Music. That would be a disaster to go back to the cloud forest, the muck and the shit.

What we can do is to remember HOW we embarked upon our journey, how we took that first step or initial crawl out of our personal primordial soup of despair. We can be better than the world in chaos and the petty little politicians. We can remember our goal to somehow, eventually and on our own terms find our truest selves. We can look beyond the crap being spewed all around us to see the potential glories awaiting us on that next plateau.

We cannot succumb to the negativity that creates neither a benefit to our progress nor a loving or consciously kind state of mind for the children we cherish.  We can simply focus on our journey and by doing so, become beacons for The Good rather than additional catalysts for The Bad in the world.

There are enough souls out there fueling the fires of negativism, adversity, hostility and distrust.

Remember, The Addiction feeds on the negative. Our children can sense this when we exude defeatism, that pessimistic resignation to all that is hurtful and destructive to our recoveries. If we resign to the darkness we risk becoming dismissive to our sons and daughters and through our actions travel down pathways we've been before and don't really want to visit again. Feeling abandoned, our children will return to the only NORMAL they know - The Addiction.

By being true beacons of The Good rather than joining the chorus of discord we may find our own peace and perhaps, show the way for our children. We may feel we are in the minority, we're not. We are the quietly strong, not the bellicose insecure. We can't be shouted down forever. Hang in there. Give peace a chance!

It will find us. And it will find our children!

... keep coming back

"Take care of yourself. You never know when the world will need you." ~ Rabbi Hillel

Fable of the Robins

"Change your thoughts and change your world." ~ Norman Vincent Peale

A tormented man sat each day behind his home on a patio shielded from the weather by a shingled, wooden overhang supported by four large wooden columns of great strength. Nobody knew what had caused this man to be so bitter, so angry and so sad. All they knew is each day, there he sat, trying to enjoy Nature's bounty and the Great Creator's endless mysteries, yet with such a hard heart and tortured soul he could not.

So there he was, alone, with his thoughts and all his sadnesses his only companions.

The man had for so long lived with this company he imagined this would be the extent of his existence forever. He became enthralled by the melancholy, the constant din of the negative. Each day as he sat on that patio he would dive deeper and deeper into the vortex of his own abyss. He had almost forgotten what had brought him there, but not really, he would occasionally admit.

The man's torment had originated from outside the range of his little patio, something he had not created. Yet he was certain if he would sit in misery long enough the torture that followed him each day to the shelter of the overhang would simply go ... away.

There he would sit in rain, shine, cold or warm weather, snow, ice or searing heat, the man's shelter shielded him from any experience, joy or pain. It was as if someone had pulled a shade over each of the three open sides of the man's small world.

And so it was. And the man became comfortable with his nothingness.

One day as the Earth was preparing to tilt toward the Sun in its celestial dance and spring was readying to bring its warmth, wonder, and symphonies of life, an intruder appeared under the eaves of the man's sanctuary. A robin, a very busy robin gracefully landed atop one of the pillars.

Soon the busy robin began constructing a nest on the four-by-four inch square of the supporting wooden column, bringing wisps of straw and strings and things with him in a frenzy of activity. Being more concerned with readiness and haste than cleanliness, the trespasser would soon jeopardize the perfection, quiet and sanctity of the world the man had so carefully fashioned.

And the noise, the phttt-phttt-phttt of the bird's intricate weaving was a constant interruption to his previously enjoyed silence.

Soon, the bird was joined by another. They were starting a family.

The sanctuary would be ruined!

The man had no alternative but to knock down the nest, sweep away the wisps of straw and strings and things, hose the shit off the patio floor - oh, there was so much shit - to reclaim his space.

He looked around and thought, "I have my world back."

He was again at peace, or so he thought.

The next day the man returned to his refuge to resume his daily solitary sojourn in his torment. As he sat down he heard again the gleeful phttt-phttt-phttt of the industrious robin working tirelessly on top of the same pillar swept clean by the man the day before. As if mocking the man the bird would only interrupt his work with a celebratory song, so cheerful in its rhythmic, repeating simplicity.

The man listened and reflected, "I must stop this interruption to my quiet. Why won't these birds allow me my peace?"

Once again, he knocked the nest off the pillar, swept away the wisps of straw and strings and things, hosed off the shit from the patio floor - how could they shit so much in one night? - to reclaim his space.

This performance would be repeated day after day. The man even resorted to drilling screws into the top of the support as a deterrent to the robin's persistence. This only strengthened the robin's resolve by inadvertently providing a foundation onto which the nest could be anchored.

Still the dance of build, destroy, build, destroy continued.

And through all this the man's heart continued to harden.

One day, despite the man's best efforts, the two robins presented to the world three hatchlings.

The wisps of straw and strings and things increased three-fold.

Nature had found a way.

One sunny spring morning as the man emerged onto the patio he thought he might take a quick glance at how the hatchlings were progressing. You see, even he in his darkness and despair could not sweep the new life from the pillar.

Perhaps the robins were affecting him.

This morning as he approached the nest he looked down to see one of the three crumpled on the ground, pushed out, abandoned.

"How could they do this?" the man pondered.

And whatever light that had seeped into his heart and soul left as quickly as it had entered.

Spring approached its concession to summer. The family, the four, moved on.

The nest came down.

Once again the man sat alone. Spring passed into summer, summer to fall into winter. Through the passing of the seasons the man had a lot of time to reflect upon what had transpired those spring mornings.

Why did that robin keep coming back? My resistance had no effect on him. He just kept coming and coming and coming. 

Why did the little one have to die?

The man had no answers. He felt helpless and hopeless. He looked around and observed time had passed him by once again. Winter would soon be relinquishing its hold on his surroundings to the spring.

"I am done!" he cried aloud. "I cannot continue in this way. I had hoped for life but what I got was death. What is the point! Why even try, or hope, or ... ."

The man broke down and wept in his shrinking world.

That year winter held on longer than usual. Snow was followed by some of the bitterest cold on record, then winds with blistering, stinging rains. The blooms did not bloom, trees tried their best to courageously hold onto their buds, mostly unsuccessfully. The harbingers of spring, the willows, crocuses and forsythia stood silent, waiting, absent.

The man sat in the bitter cold and once again became embittered by his life, his surroundings, all the contributors to his ever darkening existence. Exhausted, this time, he quietly whispered, "I am done."

Weeks past and winter refused to relinquish its place to its successor season. Darkness turned darker. Winter's pulsing silences began to take the man under to anguish even he had never experienced.

"I want my robins back!" he seemed to hear himself say. Then, finally, the winter engulfed him. And he was gone.

Days turned to nights and the man sat silently unaware of his surroundings, his feelings, his breathing, thoughts or dreams. Finally the Earth once again began its tilt toward the Sun in its celestial dance. Spring was ready, ready to take its rightful place in the succession of seasons to bring its warmth, wonder and symphonies of life to the world.

The man felt the warmth of spring upon his face. He opened his eyes yet could see nothing.

Then he heard it, he heard the phttt-phttt-phttt, followed by the rhythmic, simple celebratory song.

And the man swears to this day, if you were to ask him, on that morning, he heard the shit hitting the floor of his patio. He will tell you for the first time in years, he smiled.

"I cannot continue in the way I have been living for so long," the man cried out in his own celebratory song.

"I am NOT done!"

The man looked up toward the four-by-four inch square of the supporting wooden column where for so many days he had swept away the little nests of the robin. And ever so slowly he could see, he could see the robin looking at him, taking a break from his intricate weaving, his phttt-phttt-phttt, his celebratory song, as if to say, "Oh, there you are."

From that time forward the man's heart softened and his soul opened. Each year, he would cherish his time with the robins, the phttt-phttt-phttt, the celebratory songs, even the shit, and of course, the little ones. He would bemoan the occasional sacrifice of the one so the others could thrive.

He began to understand the joys of life are often accompanied by occasional sorrows. He began to laugh again, and cry again.

He became a part of his world, not a refugee within it.

Each year when he would enter his patio and realize the robins had moved on, he would as well. He began to live his life fully inside his little patio, embracing all of Nature's bounties and the Great Creator's endless mysteries. He would soon emerge from his sanctuary to experience the multitudes of adventures life has to offer.

And the man would smile, each day. He would be forever grateful for the despair that brought him to his knees and for the robins that would not give up on him.

He found his true peace.

And nature found a way!

... keep coming back

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs." ~ Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Healthy Discomfort

"Healthy discomfort is the prelude to progress." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

All parents' lives at certain times seem like a series of alerts. These alerts may manifest as positive or negative although by strict definition and connotation the word alert brings to mind the dire, dreaded and undesirable. Whether our child is an addict, recovering addict or a budding Fulbright scholar, alerts, good and bad, are a part of life for all parents.

As parents of addicts and even recovering addicts we can fall into the trap of fixating on the negative alerts that can monopolize our lives.

If we separate the spurious alerts from those sent by the Universe as signposts on our journey life can become more manageable and complete. When we become mired with The Addiction and our children in the Theater of Certain Future Events, or find ourselves sitting in the boardroom of the Committee of Gloom we can fire the little bastard projectionist and dismiss the Board.

We can choose to ignore the fraudulent and concentrate on the Real, what is truly happening with ourselves, our children and our forever-joined lives.

Life's real discomforts are not meant to be ignored. Just as a muscle pull may prompt us to take time away from exercise to heal and recover we cannot ignore the discomforts sent our way by The Addiction and our children's ongoing hand-in-hand stroll with their counterpart. All discomforts, some more painful than others - some excruciatingly so - become doorways to new horizons for parents of children who have succumbed to the disease of addiction.

We can be doubled over, even felled - seemingly cut off at the knees. Then we realize we're still here, alive. The Addiction no longer has the power to to permanently take us down.

We're still standing. And we're stronger.

These discomforts, the authentic alerts manifesting through the Real, our children's negativity, the pills and paraphernalia left out in plain sight signal that things aren't going quite right - a deeper dive, a relapse out of recovery. The Real discomforts no longer originate in our deepest imaginations. These are our children we are witnessing as they stumble down diversionary pathways.

No longer inclined to follow them through the hedgerows, we have no other option but to look beyond to learn and see the next horizon the Universe has presented for us to explore. We feel a change, we grow and move on. We progress along our journey.

There is no predetermined outcome from any discomfort we feel, no correlative cause and effect from any particular set of observations. And that is the beauty of our journey. Each discomfort, every alert brings with it infinite possibilities for parents of addicts and the recovering.

The formula remains the same however.

The alert comes, we feel the love we have for our children and the pain of their stumble, then look for the possibilities:

FEEL + LOVE = LEARN

The temptation is to become comfortable with the discomfort, to live with it, to believe remaining mired in the discomfort is what we are to expect for our lives.

This is old thinking.

When we realize this we know we are becoming self aware and actualized. We are now listening to our truest selves. It is a voice worth listening to.

Healthy discomforts are portals to possibilities of new venues and adventures our Great Creator wanted all along for us to witness.

And we can take comfort in this.

... keep coming back

"Life does not accommodate you. It shatters you. Every seed destroys its container, or else there would be no fruition." ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

Have Faith - It IS Always Darkest Before The Dawn

"Remember that the darkest hour of all is the hour before the day." ~ Irish Proverb, Songs and Ballads, Samuel Lover, 1858

It's one of those maddeningly counterintuitive aspects of our recovery. When we feel uncomfortable, when our lives seem to be unravelling as a result of something our children's disease has brought them to, something GOOD is looming just over the horizon.

The GOOD is there if we are willing to SEEK out joy, beauty, happiness and sunshine in the midst of seemingly insurmountable roadblocks and detours placed in our pathways by The Addiction.

How do we carry on? Why do we persevere as our children slide deeper into addiction's mire? We do this because we have learned, and have begun to TRUST this journey we have embarked upon is ours, not our children's. We understand that there are aspects of our lives that are a mystery because they are evolving each day. Events take place around us, the BAD and the GOOD, beyond our control. There is a force at work here bigger than any and all of us.

This is pretty heady stuff!

This stuff, is the Universe' plans for us. This is why we continue on. We know the dark clouds do not follow us forever. There are blue skies beyond that hill or hedgerow, the seemingly impenetrable mangrove or never-ending cloud forest. We have faith. We must. There is something at play here, a Power able to work miracles in our lives.

miracle (n): 1) an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs; 2) an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing or accomplishment ~ Merriam Webster 

Outstanding!

When we TRUST in a benevolent Universe, Great Spirit, God or god, who, which can take our burdens from our shoulders and allow us to continue on our journeys we can again find that pathway to the light. We can begin to live our lives to the fullest even when our children are stumbling over disease-induced roadblocks. We cannot remove the barriers to our children's recovery. We are no longer immersed in their dramas. We no longer travel with them, we have our own marvelous and often perilous expeditions to navigate. Still, they see us striving as we also bear witness to their victories and failures.

Remember, we are two souls, travelers side by side yet on different pathways, theirs no less heroic than ours.

We must truly believe this. Our sons and daughters can be witness to our metamorphosis. The change is so dramatic one would have to be blind not to see it, yet while The Addiction is there it casts an opaque veil of distrust and anger upon our children. They become sightless to anything beyond the next high.

But this veil won't remain forever. This we must also believe.

It's through our example, not our admonitions or attempts to control this veil can be lifted. And it is often when we least expect the change when our sons and daughters might just emerge. By soldiering along our journey pathways our hearts might have softened enough to see a glimmer of our children's souls peeking through the mist. If we have seen our share of the magnificence the world offers us, if we have begun to live the lives our Great Creator meant for for us to live, no matter what has transpired to sidetrack us or cause us to incorrectly blame ourselves or our children for the disease that afflicts them, we WILL see at some point our babies reaching out for their chance at change and recovery!

We will be ready for this emergence if we simply continue the journey even when all seems lost and hopeless. We never know when we will be called upon to embrace our children even if just for a moment. Every moment is precious. Every moment is a celestial gift.

To paraphrase Tom Hanks' Chuck Noland character in Castaway, "So now, we know what we have to do. We need to keep breathing, seeking, striving and thriving. Because tomorrow the sun WILL rise. Who knows what (or who) The Universe will bring our way?"

... keep coming back

"Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again." ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

Listen - The Addiction May Be Telling Us Something We Need To Hear

"The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent' " ~ Alfred Brendel

Let's face it. The Addiction just can't keep quiet and is an unwitting carrier of messages we can use to carry us along our recovery pathways.

I can remember before the start of my recovery, one afternoon after I had thrown away my son's stash of pot I had found not so well hidden in the back yard, The Addiction shouted, "I'm gonna FUCK YOU UP!"

I didn't hear the message. At the time I couldn't have. I only felt the anger The Addiction was spewing in my direction and continued the confrontation. I was too caught up and enveloped in the crap of my son's dive into his disease to really hear and grasp what I was being told:

The Addiction was going to destroy me, if I allowed this to happen.

And for years that is exactly what transpired. The Addiction "fucked me up" for a long time all right.

It requires a change of heart, soul, attitude and behavior to separate our children from their dependencies, to be able to listen to the siren call of The Addiction without being lured into its various traps. It becomes too easy to steer toward the challenges and beckonings Addiction's anger spews at us. We're the PARENT after all! How dare my son, my daughter speak to me this way.

We have to remember it is The Addiction talking, discharging its bile and bitterness. There is no need to revisit the effects of drugs and alcohol on the adolescent AND developed brain. We must be mindful our dependent one did not choose this life. He didn't wake up one morning to proclaim, "I'm going to trade in my life for pot," she did not inexplicably arrive at the conclusion one evening after dinner with the family to dive headlong into heroin dependency.

Our children are not living the lives they wish in their dreams and hopes to live. You'd be disappointed and bitter too. You'd feel isolated, ashamed. caught - all of these. You would allow The Addiction to ambush your interactions with the ones you love, who love you.

Imagine for just a moment what that life must be like.

The Addiction has so much to tell us about our children, about ourselves. To achieve its ultimate goal of permanently separating us from our children The Addiction becomes a manifestation of evil. But we can learn from this constant babble if we hang in there, remain as silent as we can be, and just listen.

This may be a poor analogy but it took me a while to realize that when my children were very young and I was transporting them and their friends to various events, games and outings, if I just shut my mouth and let them jibber jabber I learned much more about their world than when I would attempt to insert myself into the conversation.

It's not always the words we need to notice, the details can be in the delivery, the previously unimaginable obscenities, the constant unspoken volleys of hatred shown through body language, negativity and disappearances. Negativity is the go-to fortress of The Addiction within our children.

I bore witness to my son's masked presence very early on in my recovery.

We were at lunch during a Parents Weekend at his therapeutic boarding school. I had chosen a little diner outside the town where the retreat was being held. It seemed like a safe place. He ordered nothing and The Addiction hit me with its best shot - or shit. One of the event's moderators had prepared us parents for this. As I sat listening to the "F" them and "F" this, and they don't "F-ing" know what they are talking about, and you're such a "F-ing" tool for buying into this shit, I remained silent. I took it.

It was the longest lunch hour of my lifetime and all I had ordered was a sandwich and chips. I tasted nothing.

As we piled back into my rental for the drive back to the retreat, my son emerged.

"I was really good at baseball, wasn't I dad," he asked out of nowhere, his eyes wide as if he was about to cry.

"You were better at baseball than football or soccer," is all I said.

(He was REALLY good at baseball.)

We returned to the weekend in silence. My son had emerged. Through my determination not to engage I had exhausted The Addiction long enough for my son to break through, if just for a moment.

The Addiction's message is clear. It wants to divert us from our lives while maintaining its hold on our son's and daughter's lives and their preoccupation with lifestyles they never wished for.

Hear the call of The Addiction, listen to its desperate demands for us to engage. Begin to recognize the malevolence of the disease to which our children have succumbed. Then refuse to steer into the rocks, refuse to play its pathetic game. Exhaust The Addiction!

Our kids are in there. They'll emerge when they're ready.

... keep coming back

"We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say." ~ Zeno of Citium

The Wild Ride

"When we talk of tomorrow, the gods laugh." ~ Chinese Proverb

Parents of children who have fallen to the disease of addiction often refer to our journey as an adventure. This occurs when we have begun to distance ourselves from The Addiction while pulling closer the souls and hearts of our children who have unwillingly succumbed. We use phrases like letting go, the wild ride and who knows where our pathway will lead us.

It can sound, sometimes, as if we are living mindless directionless lives, throwing caution to the wind as if our collective family crest is emblazoned with a bear shrugging its shoulders with the word for Whatever etched in Latin beneath.

Not so fast!

While our journey may seem random and at times deliberately so, it is the pathway we choose on a daily basis that can determine where we will emerge at the end of that particular day, in a month or year from that day. This is the mystery, the thrill of the unexplored that makes our daily expeditions so magical. Each day as we embark in any particular direction we make choices to be grateful or resentful, happy or forever disappointed, to persevere or stagnate, to approach our true REAL or to allow The Addiction to sidetrack us.

Sometimes the burdens we have not yet released are too much to bear. Sometimes it may be difficult or impossible to see any light through the limitless dark canopy of the cloud forest into which we may have stumbled.

We will emerge. We will find a way out of the morass.

Then what?

It's the call of the WILD RIDE that beckons us to take that first step, to be grateful for how far we have travelled, to shake off the cobwebs and muck of the darkness and look beyond to the unknown, the possible. We may not know at the instant of that first reluctant stride toward our newest pathway where our steps may lead. This is when we must TRUST that by doing our best to strive for our truest REAL the rest will follow. There are rainbows ahead, challenges and victories to be met and achieved.

There is unimaginable beauty and satisfaction just over that next horizon. We can become better than we thought we could be. We will see the futility in remaining bitter about our children and learn again to love them, separating them from whatever addiction has taken them from us. We will be astonished at the gifts the Universe bestows on those who accept that each of us deserves a life of happiness, abundance and community.

Go ahead, take it. Take the gifts of friendship, the opportunity to grow, prosper, LIVE, LAUGH AND LOVE. Don't worry about what is just over that horizon. Each progression we make that is true to our truest selves brings us closer to whatever joy and jubilation await us.

The plan is for today.

Our future is blissfully uncertain.

Bon voyage!

... keep coming back

"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip, the trip takes us." ~ John Steinbeck