Navigating Your Growth Path

When I got to the end of my rope and let go, it did not mean I gave up. I continued to practice the things that I ask others to do in recovery - exercise, eat healthily, get sleep, phone a friend, ask for hugs, lean in. But I also knew that I needed MORE.

So I reassessed. I acknowledged how difficult things actually were for me. I told my friends. I spilled the beans to my husband. I even told my kids. This was not natural nor was it voluntary. It was my children who first called my attention to my despair, "Mom, you do not seem yourself." Over and over they said it until I could agree.

Next, I tried to apply what I would tell someone else in my situation. I spent one day in front of a roaring fire with an afghan and a bottomless up of coffee (decaf). I decided that I was standing at a crossroads and although I did not know which road to travel, I accepted that I was staring into the face of opportunity.

I also chose to study the masters, my friends who do hard things well. What I noticed is that the suffering ultimately can be beneficial and I couldn't help but notice that doing HARD things seems to build more muscles than doing EASY things. I want to be strong in a healthy way. I do. I do not want to live with a vague sense that I have somehow allowed myself to be a victim of my circumstances.

So what could I do? Stay tuned. But before you leave, think about who you want to be - do you want to be the person who would rather change their circumstances so that they feel more comfortable or do you want to be the kind of person who is willing to change yourself and shift your goals as needed to continue on a growth path?

A Mighty Good Start…

Yesterday I talked about my friend with the overbearing mom. Her mom, unwittingly perhaps, taught her daughter from a young age that she would never be competent or good enough or responsible enough to solve her own problems. Mom over-reached, over-corrected and over time, my friend developed this bad habit of not trusting herself. Who can blame her?

Recovery helped my friend regain her footing and find her adult self. She says it has been a huge blessing in her life. She tells me that recovery has taught her as much about healthy relationships as it has supported her recovery. Through therapy and 12-Step meetings and support groups, my friend has learned that healthy relationships are when two people solve their own problems while cheering each other on.

Her mom has it backwards. She tries to solve my friend's problem while tearing her daughter down.

Until recently, my friend believed that there was nothing she could do to solve this problem, but it was because she was worrying about solving the wrong problem - her mother. In a way, my friend was modeling what had been taught and modeled by her own mom - worry about other people's issues and ignore your own.

Today, my friend has chosen to assume that her mother is as unchanging as the taste of a Big Mac. But she can change, and she's figuring that out. She has some options, but all of them include absolutely refusing to change her own decisions, plans, and actionable items in pursuit of her own dreams and goals not matter what her mother says. That's a mighty good start if you ask me.

Do. Evaluate. Redo. Reevaluate.

I was not created to be a motivational speaker if by that we mean someone who motivates and inspires. I think this is because my core values and inspiring motivational moments are at odds. This has actually been hard for me to accept because I'm the sort who actually prefers success to failure. I like to win. Ask my husband, he will tell you. I care about winning whether we are playing cards or pickleball. When our son tells us that maybe at our advanced age we should transfer our considerable efforts to play tennis over to the pickle ball court, what did we do? We started taking tennis lessons. And, yes, we also play pickleball. Just not the day before a lesson - it totally does a number on your tennis form.

After decades in the recovery world, I have learned from my recovery heroes that success, inspiration, motivation - those things are all fleeting. They are not long haulers. And what I love about knowing this, is that I notice what is left behind. When all that runs out what's left?

Do the next right thing, no matter how small. Forget success, inspiration and motivation. It's fun when it's there - enjoy it while you've got it - but plan for when it leaves because they are all fickle.

To trick my brain that is hardwired for panting after success, I've chosen to embrace action as an indicator of success. My brain is learning to accept what I actually believe is true based on my experience - our whole life is one giant experiment. Progress is only made when we make choices, take action, notice what happens, refine the plan and do the next thing that makes the most sense.

I'm pretty energized with this way of living. My goal is do something and notice, not do something and achieve a particular outcome. The DOING is the winning.

I have a friend who has needed to reset herself this summer and she is doing a bang up job. It started with cleaning her room. She bucked and resisted and planned and procrastinated until one day, we decided: she was going to clean her room starting right....now. And she would not stop until it was done. If she didn't know where to put something, unless it was a live human or beloved pet or a family heirloom - just throw it away. This certainly was incentive enough to find a place for everything she loves! I could gush on and on about how her life is morphing right before my eyes since she cleaned her room but I will wait to post about her when she runs for President in a decade or so.

Do. Evaluate. Redo. Reevaluate. Keep going. What dream do you have that needs to start with a thorough room cleaning? Let's go and get it done!

Virtue Sets the Coordinates

I am not going to try to find the perfect scripture for what I am about to say because I believe it would require cutting and pasting the entire bible. So allow me to summarize. You carry within you the capacity for virtuosity. Now, I know, this word is rarely used to describe a person but hang with me. Technically, this word means "great skill in music oranother artistic pursuit" (Oxford Languages).

And that is exactly what I intend to convey about you and all humans. When we bear the image of God, it is not a replica, it's a tiny piece. You are not THE God or even A God, but you bear his image by holding within your spirit a virtue that is attributable to God. You arrived with it and I assume we take it back with us when we return to our heavenly home.

This virtue is what needs to be mirrored to us and rarely is. This virtue, once identified, sets the coordinates for the rest of our work as long as we live. This virtue, when combined with the virtues carried in the bodies of all the other humans on earth will change the world.

It will be virtue that will bring heaven to earth.

And we will have to release our habitual ways of being in the world to allow it to rise up and take hold of your choices.

If you do not know what your virtue is, do not give up the hunt. For you life will not longer be about what you lack, get wrong, or have been hurt by. Your life will be one big adventure of ridding yourself of any of the ties that bind you to your small way of seeing yourself, your false beliefs and limited thoughts, your mis-guided albeit sincere emotions and your unproductive way of doing things.

Keep looking. You are in there. You are worth the fight.

Responsibility vs Fault

My mom's death was...complicated and it left me completely bereft. I desperately wanted to understand the circumstances surrounding it. But there was no way that would ever happen because the parties involved all had their own experiences that colored their interpretation of said events...including me. But it was a great lesson in learning that problems can be powerful, and less painful, when we take full responsibility for the issue at hand. Problems can be powerful in that they provide us an opportunity to self-examine, reflect, and notice our failures, blindspots and even innocent-ish mistakes.

One of the issues that slowed my own recovery from this traumatic event was my confusion over responsibility versus fault. My therapist kept telling me, "This is not your fault" and she was right but it was hard for me to agree with her.

Over time, I came to realize that I resisted her determined attempts to draw a distinction between responsibility and fault because if I could find a way I was at fault, I unconsciously believed I could find a way to control and change the outcome. Which, when I think about it, is really silly. But it is true. I also had the opposite problem. There were parts of this family drama that I absolutely did not want to claim any fault for - no way! I did not know how to believe that I could be responsible without being at fault. And, I struggled to think about how to be responsible in areas where I was at fault.

Here is what was helpful for me. Fault is past tense. We find someone at "fault" as a result of the decisions they already made. Responsibility is what we choose to do in the present moment. Responsibility is claimed as we make choices in the here and now.

There are people whose decisions and their outcomes can result in fault being found and named. But no one is responsible for my situation because my situation is always my responsibility. The guy who hit us head on was at fault for speeding, driving on worn out tires and trying to change his radio while smoking a cigarette and navigating a turn on a rainy day. But only I am be responsible for how I follow up after the accident. I had to choose how to treat my medical conditions; our family had to choose the next vehicle. He is not responsible for that even though his faulty driving resulted in us needing to take on some additional responsibilities.

If you were able to separate fault from responsibility, would any of your nagging problems become more clear? Would solutions present themselves? Would life feel a bit more free from the burden of complicated grief?