The Power is Yours

“You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” Albert Einstein

A memory loop. 

A feeling of being “stuck”. 

You're struggling with an emotionally-charged issue and your own thoughts are screaming over any solution. 

Your mind pulses with old messages.

Thoughts run in circles. 

Insecurities scream. 

To avoid facing the pain your mind perceives, it moves into protection-mode. It tries to convince you the problem is unsolvable. It tells you you can't handle it. It says anything it can to get you to move away from the issue. If you believe these lies you bury your emotions under another layer of denial.

But the issue hasn't been solved. You become aware of your inability to take right action—or any action—and become frustrated. This added emotional charge convinces your mind that it was right. You can’t handle this, it says, and the cycle begins again. 

The rut becomes deeper.

It's time for a new perspective. Here it is:

You are so much more powerful than you've been led to believe.

You are so much more powerful than your mind can conceive. 

Like a computer, your physical brain follows preset patterns. It's working exactly as it's meant to. The problem isn’t your mind. 

It's what you're storing in it. 

Your brain is clogged with a plethora of emotionally-charged messages. You've been putting them in there your whole life. What you need is a good cleaning—a defrag and then a reboot.  

Don't forget:

You are so much more powerful than you've been led to believe.

You are so much more powerful than your mind can conceive. 

Your brain is cluttered with the refuse of your life—with every old message and emotion you haven't released. Like any good computer, your brain is equipped with a program to remove this clutter. You can run this program anytime you want. Yes, Dorothy, you've had the power all along. If you find yourself slogging along in slow circles, it's time. 

Oh, your mind may tell you it’s not possible. 

It may try to stop you. 

If you let it, your mind might self-protect you into permanent inaction. 

But, if you’re ready to go back to the kind of clarity you were born with—if you're tired of Oz and you want to go home, try this:

Close your eyes. 

Tell your mind to be quiet. 

Tell it again.
Keep telling it. 

Override the messages and images that blare forth until your mind finally gives in.

Now sit in stillness.  

And breathe.

That's it. 

Does a fish have awareness of the water it lives in? 

You live in an energy field. Light waves… sound waves… millions of bombarding bits of energy constantly envelop you. You're just so used to it you don't notice it anymore. But here, behind your closed eyes, in the stillness, you can become aware of that energy. 

Open to it. 

Feel it tingling on your skin. 

Pull it in with each breath. 

If your fear comes up again, let it. Give it a color. Step inside the fear and allow it engulf you. Notice the thoughts that feed it. Notice the thoughts that try to keep you from it. That's just your brain trying to protect you from your feelings. It doesn't understand that your feelings are normal—that you can handle it. 

Comfort your mind. 

Let it know that you have feelings—they don’t have you. 

Study your fear. 

Discover your rage. 

Let the tears come. 

There’s nothing else you have to do. 

Just breathe and let it happen. 

It really is that easy.

How long have you carried these feelings and thoughts? 

Years? 

Decades? 

Lifetimes?

It may take that long again to remove it all from your system. 

Don't let that discourage you. 

With each little bit you release, your mind becomes clearer. As you gradually come to trust the process, it will get easier. You will come to know that you are safe even in your strongest emotional state. 

You are always safe. 

Then, as new emotional issues arise, you can walk right through them instead of storing them away. You can take them in stride without judging them. They are not good or bad, they just are and you don't have to carry them around with you. 

Your mind is amazing. It can do so many things but it isn't completely aware of it's abilities or it's limitations. It is a wonderful tool but it isn't you. 

You can take charge.

You can handle it. 

You can use your breath and the calm voice of your own inner wisdom to guide you through the painful parts of life. 

The power has always been yours. 

Lessons in Powerlessness

This has been a week of releasing control. Multiple lessons, each bringing up their own flavor of discomfort, have presented themselves relentlessly. Lessons in letting go. Lessons in powerlessness.

Some were minor irritations.

Meetup.com was attacked by hackers. It was down on-and-off for a couple of days this week, making it very difficult to download the files I needed for my writer’s group. I knew I had a busy weekend, but I couldn’t do the editing without the files, so instead of getting to it on Thursday or Friday, I was up late very late Saturday night, getting it done just barely in time for our Sunday morning meeting. 

Another huge snow-storm followed by yet another blast of below-zero arctic air roared in for this first weekend of March. This has been a winter for the records in every category – snow, cold and duration. I love the changing seasons here in the Midwest, but this year has worn me down. 

So this weekend, each time I donned my parka, scarf, gloves and  snow boots, I took a breath and let it go. For me, that's easier when the upset is just about my own discomfort or aggravation. 

When it comes to those I love, it’s much harder.

Both of my sons came home this weekend, arriving Friday night before the most recent snow began. They came home to see their younger sister in her final high school play. My sons have busy twenty-something lives, so the fact that they made this effort made their homecoming all-the-more sweet to me.

The show went perfectly, but brought tears for both my daughter and me. This whole school year has been a time of “lasts”. All four of our kids went to this high school, and we’ve been through the letting-go process three times already, so I know what each senior-year milestone is leading up to. I can hardly look at my youngest daughter without remembering that she will be walking out the door and into her own life in just a matter of months.

Breathe… breathe

We drove home from the show at a snail’s pace in near white-out conditions. Almost as soon as we were in the door, my older son started packing up for a sixty mile drive in the height of the storm. He's twenty-four years old. I have to admit that I wouldn’t have let a snowstorm get in my way at his age. Still, looking at it from the wisdom of almost fifty-five, it was very hard to let him walk out that door.

The thing is, hard or not, I didn’t have a choice. He’s an adult. 

I took a breath. And another. And another.

No matter how old my kids get, they still look like children to me. My husband seems to have the same affliction. He was running through his own repertoire of tactics to try and get our son to change his mind and wait until morning to leave, voicing futile arguments and sometimes going beyond the scope of reason (in my opinion). Frustration radiated off of both of them as our son packed up his stuff and his dog and headed out into the night.

Even my husband’s reaction was outside my control. Another lesson in letting go.

Breathe… Just breathe…

As frustrating as this was, it was much easier than the lesson in powerlessness my husband and I shared two days earlier.

On Thursday morning, my husband was peeing blood. Not a dot on one occasion, but a steady stream, repeatedly.

He’s a doctor. He knows what blood in the urine can mean, and so do I. He called his doctor and they scheduled the necessary tests for that day. The word cancer was not spoken that morning, but it loomed huge in both our minds. 

You want to talk letting-go? You want to talk powerlessness? 

Many people have gone through this process, waiting for the doctor to give them the thumbs up or thumbs down while the specter of the Big C haunts their thoughts. That period of time between the first inkling that something is wrong and the final word may be the biggest lesson in powerlessness I’ve ever dealt with.

I held his hand. I looked into his eyes—eyes I’ve looked into for thirty-seven years—and saw a kind of fear I’d never seen before.

Breathe. Breathe.

And then, the tests were back and they showed nothing. Not a single unusual thing. This doesn’t tell us what the problem is. All they can do is rule things out, and thankfully cancer was one of those things. Cancer advanced enough to produce his symptoms would have shown up on the CAT scan, and it wasn’t there. Suddenly breathing was a lot easier again.

We still don’t know what caused my husband's symptoms but he seems to have returned to normal.  I hope he’ll follow up on this with the rest of the work-up his doctor suggested, but I have no control over that either. My husband has an amazing ability to compartmentalize his thoughts—to put those things he doesn’t want to see in a closed box until needed—and by the time he was chastising our son for wanting to leave in the middle of a blizzard on Saturday night, the mortal terror from a few days before seemed to be completely forgotten. He'd moved right back into a much-more familiar feeling of frustration.

We were powerless to change the behavior of our adult son.
There is no rational thing anyone can do to prevent another adult from moving along the path of their own free will.

Later, after my son had texted us that he’d arrived safely at his destination, I broached the subject of powerlessness with my husband. He’s a pretty amazing guy in a lot of ways. For all his old-fashioned bravado, I’ve found that even when it seems he hasn’t been listening it often turns out that later—usually much later—I find out he’s not only heard me but taken my words to heart. 

So, for now, I will breathe in the calm of this quiet moment and I will find some peace in my own belief that there is a time for everything, that all things are possible, and that the universe will continue on its path with or without my input. It’s a funny thing that seeing how small I am in that big picture can be so much more comforting than believing I am big and powerful myself. I don’t have to work that hard. I don’t have to force my own beliefs on others even when I’m certain I’m right. 

I don’t have to worry about everyone and everything.

I can step back.

Let go.

And just breathe. 

Always

He first came to me during meditation about two years ago.

Alone, in the silence of my room, I'd been posing one of life's questions to the great beyond without any expectation of an answer. Suddenly this being seemed to just be there. He was right beside me. His presence was profoundly real.

My first thought was not, how is this possible? It was, why is he male? For a very long time I'd proclaimed to anyone who seemed willing to listen that God - however one defines God - was certainly around before genders. I could see no reason an infinite entity would feel the need to be limited to one gender or another. Yet, here before me was a being that seemed to exist beyond the physical world and I couldn't deny that he was a he.

The question--the all consuming life-journey question I'd been posing to the Universe--was an ussue I'd been struggling with for years. I felt desperate and pushed resistance aside. 

"Are you really there?"

"I am here."

And right then and there, this being showed me the way through. A new understanding unfolded around me and my issue resolved.

Since then, he's come to me again and again. I came to think of him as my guide, and whenever I sought him out, 

"Are you there?"

He'd appear.

"I am here."

Sometimes I'd forget. I'd struggle on my own until I couldn't stand it anymore and then suddenly I'd remember and ask, "Are you there?"

"I'm here." 

As trust grew between me and this seemingly all-knowing one, I called on him more and more. 

"Are you there?" 

He began to answer, "Always." 

And recently, I've come to call him with a single questioning word. 

"Always?"

"Always."

I've just returned from a women's retreat. We shared songs and strength,  deep connection and gentleness. The experience filled me up with love as I bonded with fifty spirit-filled women. On the last night, I had the opportunity to read something I'd written to the whole group. 

But I didn't. 
Out of nowhere, I suddenly found myself filled with fear. This was much more than stage-fright. I was in a full-blown panic and this brought such anger--anger at myself--that it brought me to tears.As far as I've come, despite all my hard work, I was so full of fear that I could not even speak.

I was crying from anger at my fear and embarrassed that I was crying. It was all so confusing! I ran outside and found a dark place to hide my tears far from the rest of the group.  

I walked aimlessly until I saw the labyrinth. I'd walked it the night before with several others, but it was empty this time. I paused at the entrance and wiped my face on the backs of my hands. 

"Always?" 

"Always."

I stepped onto the path. My guide matched my pace around the curves and bends while I gathered my thoughts. Through gritted teeth I finally called into the night, "Am I ever going to be rid of this fear?"

"Yes."

The word was so clear and true in my mind, but my anger wasn't finished. It bubbled up and I spat out, "I've worked so hard! It isn't fair! I could have read to the whole group and I wanted to. I wanted to share with them, and it was safe to share with them and I've worked so hard! But this fear... this fear! Why haven't you taken it away?"

He smiled as I seethed, exuding a gentleness that seemed to stroke my hair. He said, "You've never asked."

I stopped still, gasping at that truth. 
A breath. 
Another breath. 

I started forward again, my pace slower as I ran over all the things I'd tried to rid myself of fear. Doctors and therapists, massage and reiki, meditations and medications... I've struggled through so much of my past but the one thing I'd never done was ask to have my fear taken away. 

It had never occurred to me.

And so, through a fresh layer of tears and in a much softer voice, I asked, "Can you take this fear away? Because I am 
so 
tired 
of living with it...
in it... 
through it...
Will you please please take it away?" 

"I will."

We walked into the center of the labyrinth where I paused, eyes closed, to reflect on the simplicity of asking. In time, I began the journey back through the labyrinth's tracks and turns. Since another question was right inside me and my ever-present guide seemed also ever-willing, I asked, "When?"

And the answer, of course, was, "Always."

Grace in My Garden

From people in the meetings, and in books on Co-Dependency, three terms seemed to be used as synonyms:
Acceptance,
Letting go,
and
Forgiveness.
When I first came to CoDA, I heard people speak these words and my heart would immediately close. I would hear that these things were things we needed to do.
It was explained that forgiveness was not for the person who had committed the offense.
Forgiveness was for the victim.
I’d think, “How is that possible? It makes no sense!”

Over time, I began to object to the way people used these terms interchangably.
Acceptance seemed like something I might be able to achieve. Letting go was still out of reach, but the idea that I could accept that my life was how it was and move forward from there was very different from forgiving those who I blamed for putting me on the course I'd been following. To me, it felt like forgiving was the same as saying what had happened to me was okay. It was like saying, “I’m not that important. It’s okay if you hurt me.”

I told my sponsor, last summer, that I would never forgive my father. A defiant child inside me screamed, “You can’t make me!”

In the garden of our lives, the wounds of the past are barren places. Many of us avoid looking into these dark deserts of despair. Fear of these bleak, infertile spaces haunts our thoughts, dreams, actions and aspirations. No one showed us how to care for our garden. We allow ourselves to be victimized and avoid the things we need most. As the sterile darkness spreads, we find ourselves in smaller and smaller cages of denial, but still we refuse to face that which is preventing us from becoming what we can be - what we are meant to be.
It feels hopeless.

In our hands, we hold the seeds to Acceptance, Letting Go, and Forgiveness, but until we take the time to step into the barren places, push the dirt aside, and place the seeds in the ground, there is no hope for them to grow.

For me, I believe I began to bury those seeds in March of last year.
If I had a bottom, that was it.

I recently heard this question asked at a CoDA meeting:
When does one hit bottom?
The answer: When one stops digging.

I looked at the holes I’d been burying myself in and decided, instead, to plant those seeds I’d been hanging onto. Continuing my Inner Child work in therapy has let sunlight in my garden. Working the steps in CoDA has been the much needed rain. In the last year, I believe the seeds have grown into something tangible, something I can almost taste, but still there is something missing.

Acceptance.
In my garden, acceptance is a tangy, not quite ripe orange. It is hard to peal, but I have been working at it for some time. The sections I have free are not as sweet as I would like, but I can get them down without too much discomfort.

Letting go.
With the first sections of orange inside me, the green limes of letting go have become thin-skinned and ripe. I can open them up and breathe in the citrus smell, but the tartness puckers my mouth before I can swallow a mouthful.

Forgiveness.
Yellow lemons grow in my garden. They are forgiveness; beautiful to look at, but impossible to digest. Just opening them makes my eyes water.

I am writing out my eighth step, this weekend. This step is:
“Made a list of all persons we have harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.”

The timing on this seems perfect. My “Acceptance Ceremony” is only ten days away. What better time to begin to take responsibility for my part in it all?

I have not been perfect. As Melody Beattie says in “Codependents’ Guide to the Twelve Steps”:

“It is hard to be nurturing, loving nonshaming and present to...if we have never been nurtured or if all we know is control and shame, and if we ourselves are doubled over in pain. Being without boundaries, not being able to set appropriate limits… is doing harm.”

I could continue to play the victim and relieve myself of all responsibility because of what has happened to me in the past, but does that really serve me? Even if it did, wouldn’t this kind of attitude mean that I also have to relieve those who have harmed me of responsibility? Surely their behavior has stemmed from unmet needs and abuse in their own lives….

As suggested in the Beattie book, I am taking breaks to “find peace” when it feels overwhelming. I wrote the first part of this blog post during the first break, and now I am coming back to finish it.

I think I understand what was once missing in my garden.

I believe there is more to creating life than sunlight, water and earth. For my seeds to grow into something I can ingest, something nourishing and sweet, I need divine intervention.

As I said, I have not been perfect. How unbelievably lucky I am that there is a thing called “unconditional love”. If there is anyone who can love unconditionally, it would have to be God. Since I feel the presence of God in my life anytime I sincerely look for it, and since I believe in unconditional love, I know that God loves me unconditionally.
I am not meant to live in shame, anger and fear.
I am not alone.
I have been forgiven.
This kind of presence, forgiveness and unconditional love has a name.
It’s called Grace.

Grace is the final ingredient I need to make my garden flourish. Grace is like sugar, sprinkled generously on the tart and tangy fruit I am finally harvesting. Sweetened, watered and warmed by the sun, what was once impossible to swallow is becoming something too sweet to resist.

What Motivates You?

At my CoDA meeting tonight, someone said something that really stood out to me.

That’s not a surprise. I figure I’ve been to almost 200 meetings at this point, and I don’t believe there has been one that didn’t give me something to think about.

Tonight, a woman said that the opposite of love is fear, not hate. She said that one could love and hate the same person, but that it was very hard to both love and fear someone. Once fear enters the picture, it becomes everything. All your motives become about that fear – whether it is fear of abuse or the fear of losing the person or the fear of losing a financial situation you need, or even the fear of letting someone else find out who you really are – fear becomes the driving force and love goes out the window.

The reading that led to her saying this was in the CoDA blue book. It was a story about denial. The woman who wrote the story (I believe her name was Annie) talked about owning your motives.

I had actually read this story once before, when I had only been in CoDA for a couple of months. I know I read it because I had things underlined, but I don’t remember reading it, probably because what I got out of it now was completely different from what I saw a year-and-a-half ago.

Owning my motives feels like a new and important piece of the codependent puzzle. It means that even when we are doing what we think we are supposed to do, we need to see what is really motivating us.
 Am I doing something because I hope to gain something in return?
Because I am afraid of someone else’s anger?
Because I think someone else is not capable of doing it?
Am I saying yes to sex because I feel it is an obligation?
Am I sitting here writing this article because I want to write it or because I am avoiding something else?

So, first I need to identify my motives.

I do not do this so I can judge myself for my motives. I am supposed to OWN it, not beat myself up with it.
It's a matter of being honest with myself.I am supposed to admit to myself why I'm really doing what I'm doing , let that knowledge settle inside me and- the hope is - eventually I will begin to see the motives BEFORE I act.

If I am aware of my motives I wiill be able to make a conscious decision about what I want to do - living actively instead of reactively.

It really all comes down to one word –

CHOICE

We always have a choice.
Sometimes it feels like we have to do something, but in reality we choose to do it.

My therapist is always telling me I have a choice. She has said almost this exact thing to me numerous times... but it never seemed to mean this, before.

Everything I do is a choice I make... and every choice has a driving force of some kind and wouldn't it be great if the driving force was my sincere understanding of the situation instead of a motive I'm not even aware of?