I share my experience, strength and hope with family members all of the time. I don’t give advice. I am not a professional. And I am not the god of anyone else’s understanding. I have no business telling you what to do.
How does it help to share my experience, strength and hope? That is a good question and one that is important to raise. Our work, as family members is passive. It’s not a recipe that involves gathering ingredients and mixing them in just the right order.
Our work involves looking within when our loved ones are seemingly the ones who are out of control. But are they the only ones? If I constantly look at other human beings to determine my happiness and peace of mind, am I sane? If try to force other people to do what I want is that realistic?
We have to do our own work. Don’t be looking over your shoulder to see how your loved one is behaving. How are you behaving? Are you living into all of the things that your heart desires? Do you have good boundaries in place to keep you safe–physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually? Are you actively working on your buttons (as in he knows how to ‘push my buttons’)?
These days I get a lot of requests from organizations asking me to help their volunteers, spiritual directors, folks working in pastoral care, family members and everyday parishioners. They want to know how to accompany families affected by the addictions of others.
Do you know what I tell them? Do your own work. We learn in Al-Anon that we are powerless over our loved ones. We are powerless over their alcoholism or addiction. There is no action–not one, that will change another human being.
We can change ourselves. If we work to heal ourselves, those changes have the power to change others. If I’m relating to my loved ones from a place of love instead of from a place of fear, then that is where the power lies.
Now, don’t mistake the word love for hearts and rainbows. Sometimes love looks like saying ‘no.’ Other times love looks like stepping away from the chaos or saying, ‘not in my home.’ Love requires courage. I love you enough to do the hard things.
I’ve been a little AWOL from posting lately. A big part of the problem involved website issues. Now that I’ve finally gotten that straightened out, I’m hoping to start posting with a little more regularity. I’m going to focus on individual segments that show you how I learned to do my own work. I believe that the Holy Spirit uses my story and yours to help others. I don’t know what you need but maybe something will speak to your current need.
If you have something in particular that you’d like for me to address, leave it in the comments.
I would like to explore the anger that I feel rather than grief at the passing of a loved one with addiction issues. The guilt I feel about not doing the right things for that person is also overwhelming.
Marg these are important issues. It is important to understand anger. I promise to write about it next week.
Guilt is another common feeling that families experience. I tend to believe that we do the best that we can and when we know better, we do better. We are human beings.
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Thank you for the reminder I need to keep the focus on myself, stick to the boundaries I’ve set, detach with love and I also like to add be kind to myself when I make mistakes,
Glad to have you back blogging!
Could you address the issue of guilt and how we can work through it on our journey? I am so grateful for your posts, which have been a source of support on my path to recovery.