I walk my dogs almost every morning. I take a shorter loop than I’d like, but the standard poodle overheats quickly, so I don’t go much further than a mile. Most days, I will bring them home and wait till the end of the day and go on a longer walk for me. I wait […]
One of the most frightening things that I’ve ever had to do is hold a sedated horse for my husband. I don’t do it often. And, when I do, it is because I am his very last resort to be a vet assistant. Just imagine holding 800-1200 pounds of wobbling beast. My husband becomes so […]
If you ever wanted to make me cry, forget about being mean. That won’t work. My hillbilly ire may be raised a bit, but I will not cry. But, if you are kind, it gets me, every time. It touches the soft part of my heart that spills over like an April shower that […]
It was hard to walk through the door of my first twelve-step meeting. It was even harder to whisper to God asking Him to show me what the problem was. Somehow, it felt like if I didn’t ask the question, it wouldn’t be true. And, while I remember my own fear, I forget that others […]
I remember my first twelve-step meeting so well. It was my intention to go into the Church’s little basement room and take thorough notes on how to fix my addicted loved ones. Then, I’d go home and take care of business–as usual. Hopefully, I thought, it won’t take too long. So, you can imagine my […]
I remember the early days of my son’s addiction. I felt paralyzed. I sat with this new information alone. Would I be able to tell anyone? What would they think of him? What would they think of me? I looked around with new eyes. I saw families–they all seemed so normal compared to how I […]
In this family disease, we often have to watch as our loved ones harm themselves. It is the most difficult part. Imagine that you had a two year old that you could not stop from wandering into traffic to retrieve a ball on the other side. Loving someone who is in active addiction to […]
I am not alone when I mention that I love the show “This is Us.” There are too many good qualities to list. But, my favorite thing is that they scoot around in time, giving us insight into the depth of each character. It satisfies a curiosity that I have always held about how our […]
My children were young in the nineties. The wisdom of the day on parenting, via the latest headline, newspaper or magazine article or television talk show suggested that we keep our kids busy. The thought being: “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” There were other nuggets of wisdom: put them in sports, keep them active […]
In my first twelve-step meeting, everyone kept telling me that addiction is a family disease. I had no idea what they meant. Eight years later, as I sat in another meeting that I had volunteered to chair, several people arrived that I did not know from our usual group. That either means that they are a […]