Living in a new place.....

This post has been a long time coming. So many years in the making.

Recently I was invited to fly to L.A. to a parent coaching training but this time, after 4 years coaching,  I would be the veteran coach. The mentor coach. I was flattered and had that feeling of being needed and important. My HP and I had a conversation that went something like this:

HP: What is your motive in attending this training?

Me: Its a chance for all of our hard stuff to be used for something good. To help others. (Doesn't that sound so humble and selfless? lol)  It gives me a place to belong. To be needed.

HP: What are the affects on your girl who is working each day to heal and regenerate all that has been lost?

Me: Welllllll, I don't think she minds.....but the seed was planted. What about her?

HP: Maybe its time to lay this down. Maybe its time to cultivate a new identity for yourself, and as you do, she can too.

So I have been thinking about all of this and in some ways its been earth shattering. Maybe its time to lay down my identity as "the mom of an addict." Of course I am so much more than just that, but my girl is also so much more than just someone who is recovering and healing from a long term addiction. Maybe its time I let her be all that she was meant to be, without always having a mission of "helping" and furthering an agenda to abolish the stigma and shame of this disease. Maybe its time we just live.

A friend put it perfectly...she will always help when approached, but she won't seek it out anymore. I am thinking that is the place I too have arrived. I will never not be available to a parent or child who is suffering, I will continue in my Alanon program and working with my sponsees, I will continue my own personal spiritual work toward healing and health, but its time I let this part of our journey go.

My girl is doing well....for those who have read here and been with us during the hardest years. She is safe, she is healing, she is nourishing herself spiritually, physically, emotionally and mentally. She is self taught on so many varied topics and really interesting to talk to.

The message I would want to leave you all with, would be that healing happens in so many different ways. Healing, recovering, takes time.... so so much time. It is often fraught with mistakes, relapses, flaring tempers, days of paralysis, it can be uncomfortably messy, there is not a recipe with a guaranteed outcome, it can feel hopeless at times....but if you can just keep your eye on the goal, and extend grace to each other for not being whole yet, for not being able to do it all well and good, but know that everyone who is standing there in that circle is still present, they are still showing up, they are doing the best they can at any given moment, and that can be enough for right then. This has been my experience. Any one of us could have walked away and said we were done. My girl could have bolted at any time....but she didn't. She stayed. Today she is progressing, she is healing, she is a beautiful work in progress....as we all are.

I had stopped blogging awhile back, because I simply didn't have anything left to say. It bothered me that I had just walked away though. My loose ends weren't tied up, my blog was just left hanging out there in bloggerland, unfinished it felt. This is me closing the door on this chapter and opening a new one.

I will keep my blog up, and my plan is to give it a new look and begin to blog more about my work with the dying. I know that sounds morbid...but I have so many beautiful stories, and dying is kind of an off-limits topic. No one wants to think about the end of their life.....but I believe with planning, and awareness, we can create a lovely dying experience for when our time does come. Dying is our last act of living... we are allowed to have a say and create the experience that we want for ourselves and our families.  I miss writing...so I will be back.

Let me add, that my readers here.....all of you who stopped by to read my thoughts during some of the hardest times of my life, were such gifts to me. Your comments, the camaraderie, the support, the wisdom, the prayers, the gifts I would receive in the mail, the phone conversations....you all gave me so much just by being here. I wasn't alone. I had other parents to walk with, we often figured things out together....you each were the most unexpected blessing in doing this. So I thank you, from deep inside my soul, I thank you for reading my life and for being kind and for saying, "Yep, us too."

More to come......

Signing off with much much love, and so much gratitude. Blessings to all.
Annette