In exactly 17 days, I will celebrate that it has been 25 years since my last drink.
Twenty-five years since I lay on my bathroom floor, begging God for help me quit drinking. Just as I had innumerous times before January 3rd, 2001. It was certainly not the first time. Or the fiftieth.
But because alcoholism is cunning and baffling, I couldn’t get sobriety to “stick.” If you knew me then, you probably had no idea. Nobody knew how much I was drinking. Active alcoholism requires mad distraction skills, a Masters in deflecting, a passel of excuses, and a side of lies, in order to keep the scam going.
I can’t be an alcoholic! I am Room Mother in my daughter’s 2nd grade classroom.
I can’t be an alcoholic! I don’t drink until the late afternoon.
I can’t be an alcoholic! I’m a regular church-goer.
But it was a scam; one I perpetuated on myself. I scammed myself into thinking I could drink “normally,” that I was okay so long as nobody knew my secret. I had at least a bottle of chardonnay a night, all by myself. But GOD, wouldn’t YOU? Kids are fighting, marriage is failing, I am constantly sick. The government is corrupt. The stars aligned in an unfavorable configuration. Tuesday. Any excuse to justify it.
See, that kept me from getting well for a long time. The rationalization that life was just too intense to raw-dog sober. The mental gymnastics of raising kids without my “reward” – Mommy’s “glass” of wine. The prospect of never (NEVER??!) having another drink. Not at my kids’ weddings? N E V E R?
I feel everything. I am a Deep Feeler. Feelings never stop coming. As Cynthia Plath famously remarked, “Even when I feel nothing, I feel it completely.” It has always been that way, even in childhood. Maybe especially in childhood.
So, you can imagine my delight at finding out that the antidote to my Deep Feeling came conveniently in a Bartles & Jaymes bottle. There was little trauma that Zima couldn’t smooth over. Boxed wine was the Holy of Holies. You can drink and drink, and nobody sees the level of wine disappearing. You could even take the foil bag out when the box got low, and drink out of it like a dang Capri Sun.
My new medicine came in LOADS of iterations – sweet, savory, celebratory! Every flavor profile. Drinking is sophisticated. You can’t have a toast without alcohol, or take real communion, or ring in the new year. How convenient that my drug of choice was associated with merriment and milestones. Society doesn’t care if you drink to excess. But it would have a fascination with people NOT drinking. Why aren’t you drinking?
I have written my entire story before, but I think only on my prior blog, and I might share it here again. It’s long and intense, but no less dark than my life before I got sober. By the time I was willing to work hard enough for it to “stick,” I was depleted. Turning yellow. I was not the mother my beautiful daughters really deserved. On the surface, maybe, but not in reality.
The heartache, desperation, loneliness, shame? I had it in spades back then. I had become careless, obsessed, and resentful of the drug that had been my salvation. I was poisoning myself. Alcohol got between me and my kids, me and my God.
That was 25 years ago, and that BLOWS. MY. MIND. I can remember sitting in the Rooms, listening to “Oldtimers” talk about their sober time, and thinking, that will never be me. I am not made of stuff that strong. But I stayed and no matter what – I did not pick up a drink. NO MATTER WHAT. I worked the steps, started taking self-care, and talking to God in earnest. I felt ALL THE FEELS and let them land where they wanted.
I imagined Jesus crouched down with me in that bathroom on the sickest night of my life, and that was my proof that I wasn’t in it alone. I can’t scientifically prove to you that he was sitting with me in my pain, but I can spiritually prove it. The proof is my recovery – my janky, imperfect, solid, triumphant, well-worn recovery.
A lot of things came to an end when I quit drinking. Dysfunctional and toxic relationships, chiefly. I could keenly feel the losses, I wish I could have had hope for the gains. Because when I lost my relationship with drinking, I gained a whole entire new life.
I had to love myself and believe I was worth loving at all. But slowly, I regained my self-respect. Any dumbass mistakes I made fell squarely on me, not my “drinking.” And when I am the origin of my own chaos, I can then fix it. The responsibility is mine.
Don’t get it twisted – alcohol is still poison to me. I will have 25 years of recovery, but I could lose it all tomorrow, easy as pie. I respect the addiction. It is still – always – cunning and baffling. I will never “arrive.” Alcoholism has no remission. But so long as I practice what has worked for me this long, I shall hold the monster at bay. One day at a time.
And what transpired is a beautiful, full, rich life. It’s not a perfect life, mind you. But it’s mine, wholly mine. My efforts – along with God’s grace – enable it. My efforts. The thing that I was sure would be the end of me, turned out to be the beginning of me. The thing that was going to ruin all the fun in my life actually made me more fun. The thing that signaled an old way of being coming to end, became my salvation. And I am so flipping grateful.
After a grueling religious deconstruction, who is a girl to trust?
By: JANA GREENE
I’m trying this crazy new thing, and it’s called trusting my intuition. It’s crazy. My whole life I have been coached to never trust the human heart – especially your own – for it wants its own way. It is deceitful and full of the flesh, they said. It will steer you wrong, they said. But I am finding it an oracle itself, not separated from a loving God by sin, but part and parcel of the Spirit.
God himself (or herself?) put it in me – intuition. Why would we be sent into the wilderness with sub-par equipment? Is he like the producers of “Naked and Afraid,” letting us choose our one, inadequate tool for the whole journey – and SUPRISE! It’s shitty intuition! Here you go, here’s a stick, when you could have used a pocketknife or a can of “Off” spray!
Godspeed, Kiddo. It’s a jungle out there. Whatever you do, lean NOT on your understanding!
I can no longer fathom that our consciousness is separate in any meaningful way from the Source. So, intuition – while not perfect – is trustworthy, in that it has much to teach us. In the realization that it’s not a sin to consult our intuition is a game-changer.
Most of my life, I have shushed my intuition in an un-valiant effort to prove to God that I had a faith bigger than my understanding.
But the gut is a quiet thing if you’re not used to listening to it. It politely tugs at your hem, whispering “excuse me, please, but I have a feeling about this.” Listen to her until her voice steadies. Listen to her until she is heard and BOLD. But for God’s literal sake, LISTEN TO HER. Say “yes” to the copious heaps of lavish grace and decide to stop eschewing it for distrust of self.
We are so afraid to honor ourselves; we forget God is not the kindly warden overseeing us while we do time in our flesh prisons, but the living breath in us – part and parcel. Holiness is our DNA, and all the self-flagellation in the world cannot whip it out of us.
My gut tells me that it’s true.
Can I get an AMEN?
(Part II to come: Trusting the intuition of others)
The birds are singing outside my window. The audacity of them, having joy, when the whole world seems to be on fire.
When I was a little girl, living with my grandparents, the windows were never open. I loved them very much, but it was a depressing place. The drapes were always drawn. My grandparents watched the 6 o’clock news when my grandfather would come home from work and then watch an entire lineup of shows until it was bedtime. My grandmother would watch her “stories” all day – the holy trinity of 70’s melodrama – The Young and the Restless, General Hospital, and Days of Our Lives.
In the evenings was The Rockford Files. Little House on the Prairie. Quincey. And to wrap it up, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. But it was always dark in the house, save for the glow of the television. There was a myriad of dysfunctional happenstance in that home, but one thing that stands out – the darkness. The isolation. What I now know to be severe depression and agoraphobia, but at the time seemed a willful boycott of fresh air and light.
The only time I knew my grandmother – whom I called “Gaga” – to voluntarily leave the house was for one of three things: Church, twice a week. The grocery store. And Foley’s department store salon, so she could get her bouffant hair-do done. She took me with her for those appointments, proud that I was her granddaughter. “Look at that auburn hair!” she would tell her hairdresser. And I would beam, because there was something unique about me that she was proud of.
The odd thing is that she collected bird figurines. She loved birds but could not tell you why. But later – much later – she and my grandfather changed. They didn’t just wake up one day and felt the sun on their faces by chance. They changed deliberately.
Seemingly blue, they became mall walkers. They got out every day to walk the Sharpstown Mall, wearing coordinating outfits (they went through a cowboy phase – it was Texas after all, which mortified me then, but seems adorable now,) holding hands the whole time. They started visiting interesting places, some of them outdoors. They took to eating healthy. And my grandmother’s favorite thing about being outdoors? Birdsong.
When I had my first daughter, they came to visit me. Gaga accompanied me on a diaper run. Just a casual jaunt to the store, so we could spend all the time together we could before her return to Texas. She gave me one of her ceramic birds on that visit. I’m so glad she did.
Out of the blue, she said, “You know, for most of my life, I didn’t hear the birds sing. I was too depressed to even hear it. Now I sing alongside them!”
And then she proceeded to sing a hymn, as if birds sang hymns. I guess to her, they did.
I miss my grandparents. And I also miss hearing the birds. Because recently – even when I hear them – the birdsong is muted with anxiety and worry. Yeah, yeah, yeah…it’s Spring. The birds are tweeting away. But did you know everything is messed up right now beyond repair? I have leukemia, and our country is being hijacked, and our environment is poison, and my pain level from EDS is BONKERS, and….
And, and, and.
We cling to our anxiety; at least I do. Without realizing it, I snuggle up to the Worst-Case Scenario, who – like a toxic ex – is unhelpful and mentally abusive. I know better, but I can’t help entertaining ideas of doom, doom, DOOOOOOM.
Funny, how we think sitting in the proverbial dark will hasten the light.
I’ve been doing a little isolating myself. And although the drapes are not drawn, they may as well be. The world seems so dark, so broken beyond repair. I leave the house to go to the grocery store, medical appointments, and the occasional dinner date with my husband.
But today, I sipped my coffee and deliberately listened to the birds sing, thinking of my dear grandmother and her curious collection in her China cabinet.
The bird she gave me is one of the only physical things I have to remember her by. It is chipped and the paint is faded, but it is perched on a stand that plays “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” when you wind it up. And that’s the song she used to sing to me when I was very little. It was released by B.J. Thomas the year I was born.
“Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head. But that doesn’t mean My eyes will soon be turnin’ red, Cryin’s not for me ’cause I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’, Because I’m free, nothin’s worryin’ me.”
May we not lose our humanity because the world is on fire. May we deliberately seek out sunshine and mall walks and the outdoors. Out of the house, yes. But also out of the gloomy inner”indoors” cling to.
May we hear the hymns of birdsong and not count it as noise, but as a harbinger for HOPE.
It is Spring, after all, which “springs eternal,” even when we are hiding in the dark.
That is what I believed about myself, as an unplanned child. I carried the message that I was an “oopsie” for as long as I can remember. Nobody in my family outright said it, but I carried the shame as if it were by my own doing.
Once upon a time, I was s a very religious teenager, I carried my Bible to high school each day, hoping it would let everyone else know who I was – a Christian. I would not realize until much later, that Bible was a talisman to keep me safe from my peers, because I was scared of the world.
Once I was a young mother, absolutely certain that this – THIS! – was my true identity. All other things I had identified as melted away. This is it. I was a mother. I threw myself into raising my daughters with my whole heart. So, this is who I am, I thought. But I was a mother with a secret.
In a land far, far away, I had somehow also become an alcoholic. I could go through a box of wine (classy, eh?) in two days. Chardonnay was my savior, I could not function without either the promise of, or imbibing in, alcohol. I was not the mother I wanted to be for my kids, so when they were 5 and 8, I decided to get sober.
Then I came to identify as an alcoholic, albeit one in recovery. In each of the hundreds of AA meetings I attended, I would introduce myself to the group with, “Hi, my name is Jana and I’m an alcoholic.” So that was my identity too, in the early years of my recovery.
The next twenty years were a blur of trying on identities, macro and micro. I strove to be a career woman, which was a terrible fit for a person who would rather daydream and create art than push for corporate success.
I buried myself in church activates, becoming a prayer leader, a recovery coach, and a door greeter.
I was playing Identity Whack-a-Mole. Just keep moving and hitting on various things, until I hear DING DING DING! We have a winner! I’m a __________ after all!
Now, once upon a time – in a place not at all far away – I have become angry. Not angry as in a passing mood. Angry as in a whole-ass personality. I am mad all the time, since November 4th.
Every day, I worry and fret about what all of this means for the futures of my three daughters and granddaughter. Every day, I have flashbacks of being obsessed with the Book of Revelation, which I furiously studied way back in high school. Doom. Doom. DOOOOM. Anger is my least favorite emotion and the one I am poorest at.
Hi. My name is Jana, and I’m an angry woman, trying desperately to not become bitter.
And I hate that journey for me. I truly don’t want to be mad. The anger comes from a place of fear for the country I love. But even so, it is transformative in the worst of ways.
I will not get stuck here. I will one day move past anger, and I’m giving myself grace until then.
I now understand that we are all an amalgam of every experience we live. Every “identity” that makes us feel temporarily “special”, just a lily pad jump away from the next thing that will also reveal who we are. Not for us to cling to, but to learn from.
It made me feel special to be a teenaged evangelist, a mom, and even an alcoholic. Looking for ways to prove to myself that I alone – on my own merit – have worth.
And I guess I’m writing this to remind you that if you feel like a mistake; if your hardest struggles cause you to slap a label on yourself, you don’t have to cleave to it.
We are wondrously complex visitors in a place that is equal parts amazing and terrifying. A place that – as you enter and leave – erroneously insists you be labeled for safe consumption.
A society obsessed with asking “how do you identify?” lest your mark on the world be for naught, and your search for identity be rudderless.
Dear Reader, I’m glad we are on the planet at the same time, so that we can remind each other that we are not a fleeting identity, but a PERSON. A messy, floundering one, perhaps. But all the same…
Hi. My name is Jana, and I am not a mistake. I am a life-long learner, a grateful mother. I am indeed an alcoholic. I am a writer who doesn’t get paid a lick for her craft but does it anyway so the feels have somewhere to go. I’m a wife, a partner to the dearest of all to me – my husband.
I will hold doors open for people, even though I’m not a greeter at church. I will be a shoulder for the addict and alcoholic. And I will – heaven help me – learn how to manage anger in healthier ways, so I do not identify as such.
One of my first memories as a child is trying to squeeze into my toy box. I couldn’t have been quite two years old. My parents were teenagers and were fighting in the living room. I know they did the best they could, as they were kids themselves, and I always sensed that I was kind of a mistake everyone in the family was just trying to make the best of.
I cut my teeth on fear and took my first steps on eggshells. None of the adults in my sphere was stable. None modeled emotional regulation. Nobody provided safety.
The world was a crueler place still by the time I was five. The father of the kid I played with next door molested me. It happened again by a female babysitter when I was six, and by three other men before I was 12. But when I was nine, a family member in an authority role molested me, and after that incident, I was a different kid. A different person. Although everyone in the family knew about the violation, it just wasn’t talked about. I was told when it happened, “he was just on drugs, he didn’t “mean” to.” He didn’t mean to? Even as a nine-year-old, I remember wondering, what are ‘drugs,’ and why does that make it ok?
In the violation, the chaos, and the violence, I shrunk from the abuse. I would tell people that I was the happiest little girl in the world, because it made my mother happy when I’d say it. I would have told everyone we were the got-damn Cleavers, if it made her happy. Eventually, there would be siblings, significantly younger than me, and they never suffered any form of abuse, I am happy to say. I was quite literally, the redheaded stepchild.
Throughout high school, I managed to make good grades. I carried a Bible to school with me each day. I was the quintessential ‘good girl,’ on the outside, but that darkness that permeated my environment. The only environment I’d ever known.
After high school, I was waiting tables and started tailgating late after each shift, and at 19 I took my first drink. I was just physically, emotionally, spiritually toast by that point. To hell with the ‘good girl,’ I thought.
I just wanted to stop feeling.
From the very first sip, I felt another compilation of emotions. I believe I had eight Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers that night. I remember thinking “If this is what it feels like to be drunk, why isn’t everyone drinking all the time?”
Alcohol was like ‘other than’ potion. Magic!
If things were bad at home, I could feel other than afraid. If I was feeling compulsive and self-destructive.
I could feel other than anxious.
I could feel like other than a mistake.
I could turn down the noise.
It helped blot out the bad memories, and after that, I drank every day, and to excess. I regularly drove impaired. I am not sure how I never hurt myself or anyone else. I was in destruction mode. And as an “old soul,” I knew I didn’t want to live that way anymore.
At 20, I first darkened the door of an AA meeting, and it was like I’d arrived on the planet I was meant to have been born on. Other people understood the powerlessness against alcohol! That group loved me when I could not love myself. I attended every day, got a sponsor, and stayed sober three glorious months.
Then I went on a date with a man and he ordered me wine with dinner. I bravely told him that I didn’t drink, and he assured me that there was no way I was an alcoholic and that he was SURE I could moderate. Ah, a challenge! I do love a challenge. And I really wanted to impress him.
So I allowed a man I’d known for a week take my inventory. Consequently, I drank so much that night that I threw up in his car, passed out, and woke up somewhere unfamiliar. That began another downward spiral.
I soon found myself pregnant and was devastated. I’d always wanted to be a mom, but not like this. This staunchly pro-life girl felt pressure to have an abortion, and I was scared. I had nowhere to go. But by the time I got to the doctor’s office, the baby had no heartbeat, and after the D & C, I felt like a shell.
I drank constantly after that. I hated myself with a fervor. I lost touch with God again.
Within a year, I got married. I was 21 and thought I knew what I was doing.
In two years’, time – in which I drank every day and usually to excess (and often alone) – I started to desperately want a baby.
So, the most amazing thing happened – I stopped smoking and drinking cold turkey and it was not that difficult because all of my energies went into creating and nurturing a new life, and not my own. I didn’t think my own life was worth nurturing, but that epiphany wouldn’t surface until much later.
When my daughter was born, I fell so in love with her that drinking was the last thing on my mind. The motherhood high had cured me! Three years later, I had another daughter – every bit as beautiful and amazing as the first, and the motherhood high doubled that day.
For around six years, I didn’t have a single drink, as I was pregnant or nursing. But around 1997, I decided that when my kids were tucked into bed at night, I would simply have a glass of wine. I had matured now, right?
Instantly, I fell right back into six or seven per evening, picking up right where I’d left off. Wine is the socially acceptable beverage of moms everywhere, I rationalized. (What IS it with moms and WINE? It’s a whole vibe, and one so prevalent it’s like a subculture.)
Soon after, we moved to the coast and became immersed in the drinking culture of beach living. By 1999, I was drinking heavily every afternoon and evening, and during the day on weekends. I tried moderating over and over, only to wake up angrier and angrier with myself for not managing it better. I sometimes polished of a box of wine every night or two.
The whites of my eyes were yellowing, I began getting sicker. Nobody – including my husband at the time – knew how much I was drinking. Nobody needed to know. But I was not the mother my girls deserved, and that clawed at my soul with every empty box of wine.
I begged God to help me moderate.
By 2000, I was becoming very sick. It was no longer any fun to drink. It no longer made me feel ‘other than’ the bad things and instead amplified them. I started putting alcohol above all else. I wanted to stop, yet ironically, I found I could not. I required it to stop the shaking.
My body knew when to expect it and demanded it on time, yet revolted it when I drank and I was vomiting every day.
The drinking life I’d romanticized turned on me.
A couple of years ago, I came across an old journal from the time. I’d titled the entry “I can touch bottom now.” I had written it about the night I was at the Christmas party for the teachers and staff at my kids’ school, as I worked in the library.
Please Jesus, please. That was my prayer last night. Crouched down against an unfamiliar toilet in the home of the hostess of the company Christmas party. How did I let this happen AGAIN?
I tried to pace myself, but by the sixth or seventh drink, I casually wove to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I told myself to vomit quietly, but I kept forgetting where I was and who was with me in the bathroom. I could FEEL someone in the room but it was hard to focus. I wished they’d leave, seeing me at my worst like this. After a while of retching, I noticed that I’d lost my shoes. Where were they?
GET UP, I told myself. GET UP AND FAKE SOBER….but when I looked in the mirror my eyes held the long, strange gaze. My dead eyes, rimmed in crimson and makeup sloughed off with sweat. Since I work at the school, my coworkers are the teachers and staff at my children’s elementary. They couldn’t know my secret!
After a while, I feel the first twinges of becoming more a tiny bit sober and it is immediately uncomfortable.
When I can stand up without weaving, my thought process is simple:
I am thinking, “I just need one drink, that’s all. That will steady me out.”
Before the night is over, the Art teacher will try to wrestle my keys from my hand, so that I cannot drive home, but I do it anyway.
That’s the crazy thing. I keep doing it anyway.
I’m so tired.
So, that is my ‘bottom story’. I know enough about recovery to know it doesn’t have to STAY my ‘bottom story.’ If I pick up again, I risk a more tragic ending. The good news is that getting into recovery is not the end of the story, but the beginning.
My date of sobriety is January 3, 2001.
On that day, two weeks after that party, God again met me on the bathroom floor. This time, my own. As I lay on the cold tile, I asked God to help me and surrendered my will entirely.
And in this full surrender mode, I asked Jesus to please save my life. And in one crystal clear moment, I knew he was with me, scrunched down on the floor, holding me. Not only with me, but in me.
In this broken vessel.
“Just as you are, remember?” I could feel him say.
I knew without a doubt that it had been he who was with me in the bathroom at the party, and as a child hiding in my toy box, and a million other times of peril.
To be honest, I didn’t expect sobriety to ‘stick.’ I didn’t think I deserved it to.
The first few weeks of sobriety were almost unbearable. God and I had” words on many occasions. I was sick, inside and out. My body screamed for alcohol. I informed Jesus that I COULD NOT DO THIS, and yet I relied on him solely and he carried me through. My detox included hallucinations. The devil constantly reminded me that ONE drink would make them all go away. “You’re a liar,” I told him. “I’ve never had just one drink.”
So, I made sure I never had another. It is poison to me, plain and simple. And it was both excruciatingly difficult and euphorically rewarding.
All of my energies now went into creating and nurturing a new life – mine.
I did meetings and got online support from other women alcoholics. That’s where the healing started. I asked God to restore my children and help me be the mother they deserved. Eventually, my eyes and skin lost the yellow tint.
I have had to erect boundaries with people I loved in order to maintain sobriety, and knock down other walls to make room for healthy trust to sprout. I’m still always learning. I had to leave my husband at the time, put space between myself and my dysfunctional family. I didn’t know how to take care of my own soul, but I tried very hard to take care of my daughters’.
To this day, I take it one single day at a time.
I would love to say that I’ve been completely delivered – and I know addicts who received instant healing – but my recovery is daily. My default setting is often to want to numb out. Food tends to be my drug of choice these days. That’s a slippery slope for me because I’ve resorted to bulimic behaviors in the past. My program helps me apply the 12 Steps to many areas.
I also struggle with major co-dependency issues. Recovery is truly like peeling an onion; one layer is exposed at a time. But you can deal with one layer at a time with God’s help. I get by with a LOT of help from my friends, too. Getting sober meant changing people, places, and things. I did a lot of that, and it hurt like Hell. But things shifted, slowly at first. IJ was very open with my two little girls about Mommy’s recovery. I wanted them to know – should they ever face similar – they too are strong and able to change their lives.
Although God can heal us by any mode, I’m grateful that my recovery requires me to willfully surrender to God each and every day. That’s a sheer gift, because it keeps me humble, having to stay in constant contact with Holy Spirit, in and around me.
In 2007, I married the love of my entire life after meeting him in church. He is my best friend and biggest supporter. I told him I was an alcoholic with five years sobriety, and expected him to turn on his heels. He did not. We have been together 19 years now, and are still deeply in love.
My precious daughters are 29 and 32now, and we are very close. God blessed me with a bonus daughter as well, who I love as much as my own. They are very proud of their mama’s recovery. They call me a good mom. They call me a strong woman. And you know what? I think I am, too.
That’s not getting what I deserve. That’s grace.
We are very open about our struggles. Stigma has no place in our family.
I attended meetings regularly for many years. If 12 Step groups are a “cult,” that cult saved my life. I surrounded myself with people who struggled similarly and found a true family. People who were looking for sane ways out of the chaos, not the stoking of it. People who loved me exactly the way I was.
Life, as they say, marches on. It is not always easy.
In the past several years, I have had to contend with an incurable and painful chronic disease. The journey through this illness has resurrected that urge to default by numbing. The 12 Steps apply to so many situations. The pain has somewhere to go. Very recently, I have been diagnosed with a form of Leukemia. I considered letting it level me. I considered drinking. Because who would blame me? This is TOO MUCH! I shook my fist again at the sky, asked God WTF!? But I didn’t drink.
I’ve accepted that I don’t ‘do’ moderation, in any way, shape, or form, but I’m learning. The upside to an addictive personality is that I don’t love with moderation. There is nothing moderate about my love of Jesus. I just have to tell you about it because it saved my life. I love my friends as hard as I can, without an ounce of restraint, and my family with fervor. I’m obsessed with my husband, and he seems to be with me. Go figure.
And I don’t want anything to do with anyone who wants nothing to do with me, which is a switch. I used to low-key beg people – family especially – to be in my life. It was exhausting and confusing and desperate. And there’s no need for desperation. I get to choose who has access to my peace, and I’m very protective of it these days.
God has fulfilled a lifelong goal, in that I have become a writer and penned two books on recovery. Sharing my story is part of what keeps me clean and emotionally healthy. I wrote a blog for years about recovery, and now I write my blog about a plethora of issues – mental health, chronic pain and illness, marriage, and of course, recovery. I write poetry too, because I have found that creativity truly enables a healthy recovery. It is taking care of self, which we so often forget to do.
For someone who never expected her sobriety to ‘stick,’ God has opened so many doors.
These days, I rarely crave the feeling of ‘other than,” because I’m more comfortable in my own skin. But when it does happen, I’m equipped with my tools to get through it and the support of friends who GET it, and a God who will meet me wherever I am at any given moment.
Whether you are bruised and beaten by your own compulsions or a victim of somebody else’s, the answer is the same: Love. Love yourself enough to get well.
God was working in my favor all along. He wanted to clean out all of the childhood trauma and life crud and hurt that has built up. It’s kind of his specialty. (And it’s an ongoing process.)
I just celebrated 24 years of alcohol-free living, and its equal parts beautiful and messy. What a long, strange trip it’s been – and a wonderful one. I would not be alive had I not surrendered my will to God on that bathroom floor all those years ago. I would not be alive without the support of others.
I still have to stay on my toes. Life is often so difficult, and our disease will not be taken for granted. It’s been a lot of hard work. I remember when 24 hours seemed impossible. It was done one single day at a time, and still is.
If you cannot relate to any other aspect of my story, that’s ok.
Just know this: YOU are designed for the good life, full of magic, radical silliness, and deep abiding love.
Every year, I am apt to say “well, that was a hard year to stay sober!” Some years I’d say it almost flippantly, because drinking didn’t seriously enter my mind.
Most times, I meant it though, because life is effing hard. Battling chronic pain and illness – all of it really difficult to raw-dog. But raw dog it I did and got to pick up a shiny token for my labors at the end of each year. Wheeee!
This year, staying sober has felt like having your bratty cousin hold your arm behind your back until you scream “UNCLE!” Now obviously, God is not a bratty cousin. But there have been days I’d have sworn he was just as bad.
How else to explain adding a cancer diagnosis to my already ridiculous list of health woes? How else to explain allowing the election results to carry consequences of harm to the most vulnerable among us? How else to explain THIS (*gestures wildly*.)
Even the” good” days felt like wearing wet socks with the seam all wonky, (emotionally.) Something was so off, all year.
On some of the bad days, I felt like drinking. And I thought about it way more than the usual amount, which is none.
“Humph,” said my internal narration.”Who in the heckin’ world would even blame me, if I were to pick up?”
“Nobody! Nobody would blame me! “I concluded, fist raised to the sky. “It’s TOO MUCH!”
I imagined people saying, “Bless her, it was the cancer that was the final straw.” Or “No wonder she fell off the wagon.” Or “At least it’s not hard drugs.” Or some such self-pitified bullshittery.
And then I laughed because silly alcoholic; mind games are for addicts! Of course, I recognized that voice from days of yore! It’s the one that kept me sick.
I’ve decided – for the sake of argument and a slightly fragmented faith – that God is not a fraud.
He is only love, and love has not failed me this year.
Love has shown up, hat-in-hand, smiling gently.
Love was with me during the bone biopsy, while they punctured my hip and sucked out the marrow, and hot, sad tears ran down my face, alone.
Love was with me when the biopsy confirmed that I have a form of leukemia, by lending me a calming essence not organic to my own understanding for comfort.
Love sat and listened to me primal scream in my car, when I’ve had unbearably painful days from Ehlers Danlos syndrome. When I couldn’t walk without agony or stay awake due to fatigue.
Love rocked out with me when I listened to purging metal music at full volume by myself, as if the genre could wick the anger out of me. (Thanks, AC/DC.)
Love was with me, rifling through my recovery toolbox, passing me whichever tool was the right one for the job. And I – much like the father in A Christmas Story trying to change a tire – cussing the whole way. “Again?!! Aw, blast it! Poop flirt rattletrap camel flirt! YOU BLONKER! Rattle feet sturcklefrat!” (Only not quite that wholesome. FUUUUDDDGGGGE.)
Love was with me when darkness enveloped me and hope was a little wisp in the ethers, so faint it barely had form.
Love manifested through my friends and family, who doggedly refuse to give up on me.
Love peeled off my wet, wonky socks, and then proceeded to wash my feet.
Love did all of those things, in the form of a God most compassionate.
My Higher Power provided everything alcohol would have withheld from me.
So this year, as I order a 24 Year sobriety chip, I say UNCLE, UNCLE, UNCLE!
I still say it’s TOO MUCH.
But I also say thank you, thank you, thank you. Because after the shitshow that was 2024, I will treasure that shiny 24 year chip. I earned it this year, homies. It was hard to stay sober.
But not impossible, you see. Because who in the heckin’ world would I be able to help, should I fall back into the drink? Surely not my family. Surely not myself. Surely not Love.
Bloodied and bruised, wild-minded and obstinate, and leaning into the Divine Love, I will pick up that shiny 24 Year chip and dance around with it on Friday.
Who else wakes up and for a few precious seconds, thinks you must have had the most terrible nightmare, only to realize no, it’s not a horrible dream. It’s happening. And you simply cannot believe with your own brain cells that it’s actually happening, but here we are? I am using every tool in my mental health coping skills. I’m digging through my rusty 12 step recovery toolbox, flinging tools hither and yon, saying no, THAT won’t fix this….dammit this won’t either! Tools flying everywhere, all of them sort of useless but also not. It feels like needing a certain screwdriver but not having it and needing a hammer and not having that either. So, you just use the handle of the wrong screwdriver to hammer that nail in the wall to hang a picture, which isn’t even what you set out to do, but oh well! It’s a tool that did a job! It’s like that. If you got anxiety problems, I feel bad for you, son. We got 99 problems and the president-elect is definitely one. I don’t know what to do with my mind, my face, my hands. I am either doom-scrolling whilst sobbing or disassociating with cat videos – tinny laughter hanging in the air like an insult to The Cause. Disassociating with dumb TikToks of people dancing. Comedian schtick. But it’s the only way, Obi Wan. I’m throwing everything at this – faith, videos of kittens, the seeking out of comraderie with my fellow sisters. Absolute outrage. Profound sadness. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then faith again, which I always seem to land on, which pisses me off, really. How dare I have hope at a time like this? The nerve of me! But I cannot fathom that this waking nightmare has no purpose. Maybe it’s the catalyst for the groundswell that needs to happen. It needs to happen. But did it have to happen this way? See, that’s what I don’t understand. But maybe it’s bigger than our lil’ supposedly puny girl-minds can fathom. Maybe it’s too big for us to understand just yet. And If you’re reading these brain droppings here on my blog, you are probably in an unfathomable place too. If you follow me for recovery content, or homespun stories of faith, or because I am a proponent for plant medicine, or write about mental health (or lack thereof.) We may never get back to our regularly scheduled programming. This has opened chasm, fundamentally changing all of us. And it needs to. It should. We wake, and shake, and think this simulation totally sucks! But it’s not one, of course. So welcome to the resistance, which sounds melodramatic but sadly is really not. It’s just regular reality now. The Sisterhood of the Hornet’s Nest, kicking at the hive of patriarchy, since it’s been laid at our feet. You done did it now. We are all in a kerfuffle! Women all across the world are rallying behind us – a testament to the sisterhood. Blessed be, friends. May the odds be ever in our favor.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but please don’t pick up a drink because of all this. Statistics show that the need for liver transplants has risen by 300% since the beginning of Covid – as the stress of the pandemic has pushed so many into alcoholism. This gestures wildly is every bit as terrifying; don’t allow it to push you. I know you are hurting, freaked out, panicked. For an alcoholic, that’s very scary territory. Our own minds tell us unwinding with a drink will chill us out. We fight the urges to drink, yes. But we are also fighting our own brains. Our own bodies. Our disease. I know it’s easy to say … who cares anyway, as mad as the world has gone!? ME. I CARE. So many people care, sweet friend. You are loved, and we need to be of soundest mind to figure out where we can serve next, how we can be the antidote to the hate. Hating is easy, and any old addiction will fall right in line. But loving is hard. Fighting is hard. And requires soberness of mind, and fire of belly. Listen, Beloveds: There is absolutely nothing that using won’t make worse, I promise. Nothing. And the good people of America need you – your love, your example, your strength for whatever crazy is ahead. Use your tools. Call your people. Plunk your ass in a seat at a meeting. Lean into your spirituality. Ask God for help. Practice self care. Just don’t pick up a drink. Please. You’ve worked so hard. I SEE YOU. Stay strong.
Not long ago, I was having a conversation with my husband, and he used ‘FOMO’ in a sentence about a concert we were hoping to attend. He said something to the effect of, “I know having chronic illnesses gives you FOMO at times.”
“I’m sorry, gives me what now?” I said, completely unfamiliar with the term.
“Fear of missing out,” he replied. And shitfire I was not aware there was a formal acrostic for the phenomenon, but I’ve been having FOMO for years now. Because when you struggle with debilitating health issues, the only way to not live in FOMO-mode is to not make any plans at all. Nary a one. And it’s not that bleak yet. Yet.
We are going to see The Black Crowes tonight in concert, a surprise from said husband, because they are one of my favorites. But we have missed three out of five shows we’ve bought tickets so far this year, because while it’s not that bleak yet, it’s also not that great. I get sick frequently, and the pain and fatigue are out to get me, I tell you. Of all the conspiracies floating around right now, this one has the most solid evidence. My medical team can attest to it. I fight my own body harder than anything else, at present. (What I fight – like what you fight – is subject to change, right?)
Still, my husband bought the tickets because he is hopelessly bad at giving up on me, or the things we would like to do. He is also never disappointed in me when things don’t pan out. And that’s key, because disappointing people is definitely a huge issue of FOLPILD for me – Fear of Letting People I Love Down. Also, FOBAB – Fear of Being a Burden. FOMAC – Fear of Missing a Concert. The list is endless, really.
What do all of these things have in common? Fear.
Fear is the opposite of a lot of things, not just the opposite of faith. That’s too simplistic. It stands in the way of hope, makes letting go impossible. It blocks positive energy, causes despair, and chips away at our dreams. Fear itself is a very useful tool to keep us safe – as an impetus to head for higher ground when a hurricane, for instance. But as Western North Carolina grieves and toils in the aftermath of Helene, we are in collective awareness that even the highest ground can be devastated.
Fear is a warning device, but a shitty insurance policy. It doesn’t keep anything bad from actually happening. It just trains our systems to react to opening a dreaded email like we are being chased by a bear.
So, what the do we do? Live in the confines of fear? After all, it’s there for a reason. Whether we fear or not, we are going to miss out at times. Especially as a Chronic illness patient, for whom FOMO is a constant bedfellow.
And all fear is not the same. Missing out is a first-world problem, in a world full of devastation and disaster. I know that, and have experienced the hollow, dark fear of a terminal diagnosis. The constellation of deep worries that we have for our children. I get that fear, too, and that’s a whole different animal, but just as destructive.
If we are chronically ill, we are going to let people down when we make plans we cannot keep. We will try not to be a burden, but we must cultivate a circle of safe people who understand when we have to reschedule things. I am so fortunate in this regard. My friends understand that most of the plans I make are tentative. I am not flaky, but my health is.
Of course, I cannot tweak the entire tour schedule of The Black Crowes, so today, I rest. Resting is how train for events, like in the Olympics. Okay, its nothing like the Olympics. But it might as well be. People assume resting is fun. Because most people don’t get enough of it – they are forever buzzing around and getting things done (what is that like?) so resting is their side-gig. They do it as a luxury, whereas my body completely stops functioning if I don’t spend half of my damn life in bed. It’s not fun at all. It’s not always relaxing, because the fear of missing out is legit.
And the truth is that we do miss out. On a lot. But let me tell you about a side-effect of this phenomenon. I am abundantly thankful for the occasions I make a concert or party or get to run to the grocery store and run errands like a normalsauce person. Because I GET TO, you see. Oh the glee!
The sweet victory of making it to a concert. The appreciation for running boring errands. I brag to my husband about getting errands done like some women probably brag about their career milestones. Doing physical therapy at the pool, picking up a few things from Trader Joes, AND going to the bank?? Taking a walk AND getting a haircut? *Cue theme song from “Rocky.”*
Tonight, I will fight the urge to stand on my chair and scream “HEY. EVERYBODY! I. AM. NOT. MISSING. OUT RIGHT NOW!” (I will not do that, because I cannot even stand on solid ground without injuring myself, but inwardly, I will be yelling it.)
And that’s a part of me that punches FOMO in the throat. I would not be as filled with gratitude, if I didn’t have this particular set of challenges. I am not just happy when I don’t have to miss out, I am ECSTATIC.
How ecstatic, you ask? Tent Revival ecstatic. Golden-Retriever-with-her-head-out-the-window-of-a-moving-car ecstatic. And grateful? When I can experience activity in life, I am as grateful as a Norman Rockwellian family around a Thanksgiving table. As grateful as a mid-life white woman who missed her calling as a groupie, who gets to rock out to her favorite bands and yell “WOOOOOOO!” – even if she has to sit while doing it.
Blessed be, my friends/readers. (I’m grateful for each of you, too.)
When we are young, we grasp at labels in the striving to know who the heck we are. Our identity is in finding out identity. And we glom on to our role in each life stage until it describes us to a T; until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. And when the wind changes, we are lost.
When I was a victim, I thought of myself as a victim. And the more trauma I experienced only convinced me that victimhood was my identity. Shitty things had happened to me, stacked-up evidence that I have every reason to be depressed and anxious. Who wouldn’t feel justified, coming out from under that abuse? I’m a victim here. That’s who I am.
Then, I became an alcoholic, and in recovery rooms they tell you “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic,” which is no lie. So, I said, “Oh! That’s who I am. An alcoholic.” And while there was certainly no joy about that revelation, it was better than just being a victim, at least. I did the programs, worked the steps. Really dug into recovery, because I am an alcoholic, you see. That’s who I am.
Then I became a mother, and then EUREKA! I found my identity for real! I even had a new name – “Mom.” I was obsessed with being good at it, and so my whole identity became hinged on being their Mama. Then Mommy. Then Mom. Each one of their life stages determined who I was, by virtue of who they were growing up to be. Until they were teenagers, carving out their identities, I was starting to lose my own. Children grow up, and you are left wondering, Gee…who exactly am I, apart from a mother? I’m a mother. that’s who I am.
Eventually I became a fundamentalist Christian. I would tell people that their identities are found only in God. I told people who were full of self-hatred to strive to be “less of you, and more of God.” It’s another confirmation to a hurting person that they themselves are of such little importance, God demands they become even smaller. And if they are like me, they have been trying to be empty of themselves all their lives, not realizing that the God is within them. So, for most of my adult life, being a Christian was my identity. I was on the Greeting Team, for crying out loud – me, an introvert. Being a Christian is who I am.
My husband jokes that I only like to watch TV shows with “complex” characters. Characters who don’t respond how you expected, and perhaps have a dark side. When the bottom fell out of my faith and I went through a deconstruction, I realize you don’t have to die to yourself and your human desires and interests to please God. He doesn’t turn away from our humanity.
Today, I am still those things, but the influence they have over my primary identity is nullified. The way we see ourselves is not static but flowing. I’m a survivor, rather than a victim. I’m still an alcoholic, but the stigma behind it has morphed into acceptance. I’m still a mom but relate to my children as adults now. I am still a follower of Christ but have a different relationship to him than I ever had. A better one. We never stay the same and thank God for that.
And we will never fully understand our identities in this dimension, I suspect. But maybe it’s because we are BOTH / AND a conglomeration of selves. Maybe our identity doesn’t require a label, and neither does the Universe require one. We put that pressure on ourselves. What complex, beautiful creatures we are!
We are complex characters, y’all. However we identify ourselves, we don’t always respond how you’d expect. We have a dark side. We are attributes and character defects, all rolled into one.
Blue Ridge, Smokies, Appalachians. Whatever you call them, there is wisdom and holiness in those hills. But they are haunted and hurting.
By: JANA GREENE
I didn’t mean to stay up until 3 am sobbing, but that’s what happened. Last night, I allowed myself to peek down the rabbit hole, lost my footing, and fell in. And I kept falling, no roots to grab to right myself; no way to slow my decent. And I landed in the middle of a great chasm of destruction – all the people’s evidence of life – their cars and homes and bodies, in a great mire of thick mud, devoid of hope. The Great State of North Carolina, mortally wounded, the mountains scarred by flood, human beings scarred for life. The Blue Ridge is truly blue, we are all blue right now. There is weeping and gnashing of teeth, an event as apocalyptic as a Frances Ford Coppola film, but so much worse.
So, I was up most of the night, watching coverage of the destruction in the Western part of the state. The places we have vacationed wiped off the map. But that’s just where we vacation – because it is indescribably beautiful there. Vacationers are participating in a luxury, though. Vacations are a luxury item. The families who call the mountains home and are leveled by this, they are suffering beyond what we can even imagine.
If you are reading this somewhere outside the “war zone,” you (and I) share a privilege right now.
I did what I do (I’m not sure why I do it, I’ll have to ask my therapist?) I didn’t even try to redirect my sadness. No, I dug in. I consumed news stories and footage of rescues. I listened to the stories of shell-shocked residents whose entire lives had been washed away. I read articles. Wondered why there weren’t military boots on the ground. Wondering what the F*CK is going on right now?
My hand over my mouth the whole time, trying to stifle any audible sobs, as my husband was sleeping next to me. I wanted to wake him up to grieve with me, but he has a job to do in the morning, and besides…. what could he do? My tears didn’t consult me before welling up in my eyes. It was too primal for that, too organic. Kind of sacred in a way. I needed to cry alone.
So, I did what I do this morning – sit down at a keyboard and try to unravel the tangled chain that is my mind. To tell you I’m sad, because maybe you are sad too. I’m not sure why I have to write about everything that needs processing, but here I am. My eyes are swollen, but I am safe and warm, writing this high and dry at the coast. Oh, how I wish I could share some of that highness and dryness with our mountain neighbors! How I wish this hadn’t happened at all. But while we are entertaining the absurdity of wishes…
I wish they had been warned. I wish they were alerted about the dams that would break and the levees that would give. Someone somewhere, probably with a high-paying job at the Corps of Engineers or something had to know. But this is the mountains, as far West as you can get in the state. Nobody was expecting a hurricane there. That’s kind of our thing, here at the coast. They should never have to worry about storms that materialize over oceans. But this time, they did.
I wish our government truly gave a shit. I wish vital funds – gathered from struggling taxpayers being squeezed for a chunk of every paycheck – would go directly to aid for our own citizens. I wish that instead of throwing several thousand tarps and a few million dollars to aid our friends in the path of Helene, they would funnel it directly to those suffering most. Here. In AMERICA. And while I’m wishing, I wish that the money we literally pour into other countries would go to feed hungry schoolchildren. And help struggling families here. We, the American People, can scarcely afford groceries these days. Our backs are against the wall. And we are making it rain money in a grand, global gestures to win us points on the world stage. All the while, “Rome” burns.
I am just one middle-aged housewife in North Carolina, writing with puffy eyes and a lurching heart to try and make sense of this. But there is no sense to be made. What good does it do to go down the “rabbit hole?” Why not just go about our business, maybe write a check to a relief agency, and shrug, “Oh well, what can I do?”
You see, rabbit holes get a bad rep. The term alludes to Alice in Wonderland, and the crazy-ass chain of events she set off my falling into one. She didn’t jump into it. She fell. I think that’s an important distinction.
And I think maybe everyone in America should allow themselves to dip a toe in the Hurricane Helene rabbit hole. Because people are not understanding the magnitude of the destruction they see in 15 second YouTube videos, or worse – the “news.”
Entire families were lost. Bodies – those family members now tangled in the debris – are everywhere. As of this writing, over a thousand people are still missing. Why is this important to know? Because of our humanity, and the way it is slipping downriver, like so much floodwater. I turned on the national news. A few snippets of milder images, some anchor droning on, confirming that yep, it’s awful. The global news? It barely broke the surface. The storm was last week, several news cycles have lapsed since. It’s old news.
Except that it isn’t. And like Alice in Wonderland learned, we are all mad here. How else to explain the government’s reaction to this tragedy? Madness.
I do not regret my deep dive that kept me up all night. It felt like my tears were somehow paying homage to the lost and the despondent. A prayer behind every single one. Not in words, but in groanings of the spirit. Great, heaving groans that sound like a house being sucked from its foundation. Groanings that only God can translate.
Because I had no words, aside from what I am writing this morning. The people don’t need armchair philosophers. I don’t know why things like this happen. But I do know that there are spiritual laws. And I am responsible to share my experience with you, Readers. We are ALL responsible to share our experiences, and to spread awareness of the dire, Armageddon-esque happenings right here in “The Greatest Country in the World” (Pshawww! Alas, that’s a blog post for another day.)
Father, Father God. Loving Mother Universe. Sweet Holy Spirit. The collective soul of all humanity. Please help us. Grab us by the hand as we are falling, falling into the hole. Give us discernment to know how we can best help. As our hearts grieve, we cannot imagine the grievings of our western brothers and sisters. Let us never turn a blind eye to suffering. Let us never come to the conclusion, “Oh well. What can we do?” Increase our awareness of fellow humans who are hurting. Comfort for whom great loss has become their new reality. Help us to be your hands, feet, and mouthpiece.
Well, it’s been two months since The Diagnosis darkened my door.
The Diagnosis is capitalized, in case you’re wondering, because it’s a proper noun. A name. An entity. An alternative to the “C” word, cancer. Just now, I am still grieving the loss of one of my dearest friends to cancer. People I love very much are fighting it right this minute.
In the last ten months, it has come to call in ways far too intimate for my liking. And I guess I’m mad about it. Because yesterday, I went to therapy. I needed it. I always need it.
The session went well, and I even boasted that I have accepted it now, as if accepting something like that is a one-time deal. Like a harvest moon in eclipse. Or getting “saved” at church.
I should have known better, given my spiritual history. Because once was not enough saving for me at church, and I’d go up to the altar every time there was a call. Week after week, I would try to resolve that tiny piece of doubting, stuck in my soul like a piece of spinach you can’t get out of your teeth after lunch. I was a junkie for getting saved, even though they kept telling me it was a one-time event, no necessary to repeat at every tent revival.
And I suppose there is one tiny piece of me still that vacillates between Ascended Zen Master (as if!), Grandmother Willow-level wisdom (again, ha!), weeping Victorian mourner (I am faint with the swooning!), and crazed badger.
Because I rage-cleaned my shower yesterday, after an already full day of getting things done, after a day that my body implored me to wrap it up already. I decided that I could scrub the entire shower, even though I nearly dislocated my shoulder by putting on my seat belt earlier. Wise Grandmother Willow I am not. And this after telling my therapist (and believing it,) that I’m handling The Diagnosis well now, it’s old hat. Just another chronic condition to manage. That old chestnut! It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. Anger is in the rear-view mirror, I guess! Bye, Felicia! Fast forward a couple of hours; I am home alone with my feelings.
Could a cancer patient do THIS?? *scrub* *scrub* *scrub* for a solid hour. The answer is yes, she can. But she really shouldn’t. At some point, I started crying without realizing it. I was literally awash in water, soap, tears, and snot. Out, damn spot!
The question is: Could a cancer patient do rest? With multiple chronic conditions and zero Zen Master skills? Can she listen to her body without shutting it down for being too high maintenance?
Can she, without constantly cracking a joke about it, let anger have its say about this? Anger, my least favorite of all emotions; the one I suck at expressing the most? Can I accept that it’s a little like getting saved – you think you are, but what about this sin or that that I may have committed? I’d better make sure. And I reckon The Diagnosis deserves the same courtesy of expression that I believed would keep me from burning for all eternity. Oh, you thought you were saved? Better make sure.
Oh, you thought you were done being angry? BETTER MAKE SURE. Better scream into a pillow again. Better listen to some gangsta rap to calm down. Better pray, step up to the altar – that place in myself where God has taken up residence. I don’t have to go far to encounter him.
Better not deny those feelings, because they have every right to be here. The Diagnosis invited them. Maybe I have to entertain them in order to usher them out? I don’t know. I’ve never done any of this before, and like most things my neurosis tries to sell me, I feel like I’m doing it wrong.
But at least my shower is squeaky clean.
Blessed be, friends. Thanks for following my journey.
I wrote this piece originally in 2014, shaken by the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. I am reposting to this blog in the hopes it may speak to another generation of alcoholics and addicts. I will celebrate 24 years alcohol-free in January, but I am not cocky about it. Because I understand completely that it is only accrued One Day at a Time. I feel like maybe the world needs reminding: Recovery is WORTH IT.
By: JANA GREENE
He had enjoyed 23 years of clean time, previous to his relapse. Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
In the announcement of his recent death from a drug overdose several years ago, CNN refered to Hoffman as “everyman,” and indeed, he was extraordinarily talented while still remaining personable. I know in my head that people with two decades of sobriety “fall off the wagon,” but it is always jarring to my heart when I hear about those occasions. Addictions will not be taken for granted.
There seems to be a slight shock that Hoffman, who suffered the same disease as Amy Winehouse, died from the same disease. His spin was not that of a train wreck, but of an accomplished and revered performer.
The article goes on to describe Hoffman as an actor so versatile that he “could be anybody.” I’m not sure the author of the piece really appreciates how true his statement is.
We are everyman …. everywoman. We alcoholics and addicts. We are legion.
Hoffman is Winehouse,
Who is the twenty-year old kid who died in the bathroom of a fast-food joint with a needle in his arm,
Who is the elderly gentleman in the nursing home, stealing pills from a roommate,
Who is the wealthy businessman drinking in the wee hours of the morning to get going,
Who is a soccer mom who cannot stop at three glasses of chardonnay,
Who is me.
If the silence of those ripped from the landscape of the entertainment world is deafening; the gaping voids left by loved ones lost to addictions are life-swallowing sinkholes.
We alcoholics and addicts….
We are not weak. The strongest people I’ve ever met have been recovering alcoholics.
We are born with super dopamine-seeking brains, susceptible to a hijacking of our brain chemistry. We know that our choices can keep our disease at bay, but we usually have to learn that the hard way.
We don’t want to make excuses for the train wrecks we pilot; we just want you to know they are not by design.
We are sensitive and are often creative forces to be reckoned with.
We contribute to the landscape of the world. We make music and poetry and art. We make business deals, and partnerships. And we value relationships more than you can imagine.
We love deeply, intrinsically…..sometimes so deeply that our souls cannot seem to bear it sober.
We punch time clocks and live ordinary lives. And truth be told, it isn’t always the pain that makes us want to drink and use, but fear of the ordinary.
We love our children fiercely. Yes, we would change “For the sake of the children” if only we could.
We have heart. We grieve so for hurting people. We often lack the instincts to handle that grief without self-destructing.
We really don’t want to self-destruct at all, but we don’t always know how to keep it from happening until the process has begun.
We crave the ability to handle life on life’s terms “normally,” like you do.
We don’t mean to embarrass you.
We don’t want to inflict the pain on others that our brain chemistry urges us to. Addiction is as a plaque in the arteries of the spirit, a disorder of the brain. Like any mental illness, nobody wants to have it.
A good portion of any recovery program worth its salt is accountability. We want to make amends with you (and if we don’t want to, don’t despair…. we are working on it.)
We are brought to our knees in a desperation that normally wired brains cannot fathom. And we can get better – if we stay on our knees.
We need each other for survival. We sit in meetings in drab church basements drinking lukewarm coffee with others like us who are cut from the same colorful brilliant, thread-bare, sturdy cloth – because we want to go on living and contributing to the world, just like you.
We need God most of all. He is the Power Greater than Ourselves that can restore us to sanity.
We are “everyman” and “everywoman.”
And we get sober. We even stay sober, with work. With the understanding that our disease will not be taken for granted.
But we need you to understand some things:
You can support people who are trying to win – and daily WINNING – the footrace with tragedy.
You can try not to shame them. They feel guilty enough.
You can start here to educate yourself on the realities of alcoholism and drug addiction.
You can know that you are NOT ALONE – if you are everyman or everywoman, too.
You can ask someone who struggles with addiction – past or present – to church. Our spirits, above all else, need to be nourished.
You can ask a recovering friend to go to the movies with you, or out to dinner, or for a walk on the beach. Our minds and bodies need to be nourished, too.
You can ask questions.
You can pray for us.
You can just not give up on us.
You can know this, mothers and fathers. Your child’s addiction is NOT YOUR FAULT. You did not cause it.
You can be tender to us in recovery, just as you would anyone in treatment for a disease.
By simply talking about it, you help strip away the stigma. Because the only thing worse than battling a disease is battling a disease that many people don’t believe exists. A disease that – if treatment is not embraced as a way of life – can be fatal.
Can we talk honestly about denial in the name of religion?
For most of my marriage, I have unintentionally masked. I told my husband everything, but not everything. Not intentionally by sin of omission, but because I couldn’t – I had stuffed it so far up my own ass for survival’s sake, I had built up a memory meltdown. Let’s just move forward. But you can’t move forward until you switch the gearshift from reverse. Otherwise, it’s just idling.
And it worked, for many years. If I was upset, I’d stuff it. Or banished it in the name of JESUS. Traumatic memory would surface, but I would rebut it with but you’re happy NOW. And to be honest, if some of it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it. It’s a got-damn wonder I am not locked away somewhere to protect me from myself, much less sober.
One of the reasons I am estranged from members of my family of origin is that they know. They know, they remember, and so long as there is distance, they don’t have to make amends. I have accepted that they can’t. I only write about the least violent incidents. I polish it up pretty nicely. I am not saying all that I could say, I promise you that. My intention is not to make anyone uncomfortable, but if it does, maybe it should. I am writing this transparently because I know so many, many souls are walking wounded here, being told that their trauma has been Houdini-ed in the name of Jesus, but still feeling bereft.
But I will admit I remain damaged, and that is okay. It all took a toll. How silly to expect growing up in an environment of daily screaming, physical violence – and indeed the worst thing that can be done to a little girl – is expected to be taped over by some of the laughs and good times, like an unfortunate VHS performance. That’s what a lot of people won’t tell you about growing up in an abusive home. There were good times too. I suppose they are supposed to override the bad? But the bad was bad, and it’s stuck in my gray matter, petrifying until solid, since childhood. I was steeped in it.
I dealt with it by Denial by Religion and Busyness. I engrossed myself in ALLTHETHINGS, all the distractions, the past 20 years. Raising three teenagers. Battling a chronic, as-of-then undiagnosed illness. Pretending to give a rat’s ass about my “career” – ANY “career.” Launching two city-wide recovery programs. Getting Recovery Coach Certification.
Need a greeter at the church? OKAY! Need a prayer person to pray with people crushed by their own abuse and pain? I’m ON IT. Fuck my own damage, let me weave sincere and elaborate prayers for the hurting. God is good. Amen?
I was getting up early every day to have coffee with Jesus and Joyce Meyer. Just feels like the devil is stompin’ me when I miss Joyce! I would say (and sincerely mean it.) Later, be the best wife, because you have the best husband. Your marriage is proof that miracles still happen. Don’t fuck it up with your trauma and neediness! Be the best friend, mother, warrior, Bible-reader. Smile, even though the physical pain is searing. Smile, even though you have unresolved trauma like some people have freckles. It’s all in your head anyway, you’re crazy. (It’s all in your head may be the gaslightiest self-gaslight of them all.)
I mentored the crap out of anybody with a heart-wound in those years. And for that, I am not sorry. Everyone broke my heart. Everybody got a little piece of me. Every ounce of trauma was healed in the NAME OF JESUS, AMEN?! God gave me permission to stuff it, what with all the Christian counseling I’d gotten that taught me to “pray it out!” It’s been CAST OUT, as far as the EAST from the WEST! God’s ways are not our ways, brethren.
In other words, GET OVER IT.
So, the trauma sat. Because whether by flaw of character or complete ignorance, I couldn’t seem to get over it. It took residence in my body, every tissue marked by it.
In all of us lives a whole preschool of children. Not in a multiple personality way, but layered like a cake of a hundred of layers. As many layers as went into our development, as many memories went into the batter at that time. We live in the frosting – the Present – but we sit upon years of joys and sorrows, expectations and traumas. Without it, there is no reason for the frosting. But frosting is no good all on its own.
My inner 4-year old’s pain hasn’t been cast out – ironically, because she had been cast out all her little life. Just try telling your 4-year-old that memories aren’t ghosts, and POOF! they are all gone because words were said over her, named and claimed. That’s not fair to her.
Joyce Mayer’s loud, booming voice frightens her. The Lord comforts her, but not in a magical instant as advertised. She used to hide in her toybox, when things got loud at home. The lid to the box slowly lifting with a great creak, and a hand of assistance is offered. It isn’t a “one and done” experience, though – that lifting. Every day, she hides in her toybox to some degree, and every day, the lid is lifted, the sun pours in, and a hand is offered. So, I, in my 4-year-old wisdom, take the hand again and again, and sometimes, that is what grace looks like – what miracles look like. We want out of the toybox altogether, but we do it by taking the hand every day, even when things are scary.
Getting the chance to nurture her with the help of The Greatest Therapist of All Time (PERIOT!) is an honor and privilege. I hope to hear out all the past versions of Me, with a little more compassion now. And I am writing raw for the first time, instead of just idling.
This isn’t the funniest season of my life, that’s for sure. So my writing hasn’t been the comedy-filled yukk-fest I’d hoped it would be. It’s been absolute clown shoes for a while now, but not in a mirth-making way.
When I decided to start this blog, instead of totally rehabbing my old blog, I did it for reasons that might seem obscure to some. The truth is that I wanted to write more humor; humor about everyday life that perhaps the 2014 version of myself might find in poor taste. I’m kind of into poor taste right now, to be honest.
I wanted to write about being a follower of Christ from here, not from there. I have been “there” most of my entire life, but in this new place, there is curiosity. Questioning. Observing. Laughing. And most of all the thing I’d tried to write about for twenty years but didn’t fully grasp: Grace.
Especially grace toward myself, can I get an AMEN?
“Wouldn’t it be easier to switch up thebeggarsbakery.com, where you have nearly 2,000 followers?” said my husband, who is right-brained and makes actual sense. It can be frustrating to explain total nonsense to a sensical person, because they have logic on their side, and all I have is a handful of glitter and some unrealistic expectations.
“I have new things to say,” said I.
“I know. You’ve just worked so hard to gain your following.”
“And I won’t ‘build my career?” I say. We laugh, because I am not career-driven. I have no competitive nature, absolutely no “drive” or “hustle.” No calling higher than sharing my mind and welcoming the sharings of others’. It’s a crappy career path, but a fulfilling endeavor.
When I was a kid, longing to be a proper writer, I believed I would make a living by writing, which is totes hilar, as my kids used to say. My 10th grade Journalism teacher, Ms. Flowers, wrote in my yearbook, “See you on the Johnny Carson Show one day!”
What an amazing compliment! I hugged the words of that prophesy close to my chest, choking the life into it. I carried it everywhere I went and still do.
Now I know that reference is lost on several generations, but if you are Gen X, that is prime adulation. That’s the pièce de résistance of success. Only the most amazing writers were interviewed by Johnny Carson. Stephen King! Danielle Steel! JUDY BLUME!
As compliment like that from a Journalism teacher? That’s like saying, ‘You’ll win the writing Olympics, Kid!’
Spoiler alert: I did not win the Writing Olympics, because that’s not a thing.
When in my 20’s, I wrote for a small, local paper, crafting community news pieces for 5 cents per word. Do you know how many 5-cent words you must write to put your kid through dance class as a single mom? Or even spring for a few Happy Meals? Many. SO many words.
I then wrote community news for the newspaper in my little city. I was paid the stately sum of $12.50 an hour. This – the pinnacle of my earning – ensured that I made exactly enough every month to contribute one-third of the mortgage payment each month.”
But hold up, y’all. Because THEN, a major magazine (it was 2016, magazines were still a thing; stay with me here) happened across a Beggar’s Bakery blog post I’d written about addiction, and asked if they could pick it up for their issue next month?”
HOLY SHITBALLS, BATMAN! Yes of COURSE you can! Send over the contract! Hurry up before you change your mind, In Recovery Magazine!
The contract was for zero dollars, ya’ll.
But think of the exposure! That’s what they told me. The EXPOSURE!
Now, exposure means you’ll be compensated for your talent, just not today. It means, we see you, Boo….but maybe the next publisher will see you and pay you!But probably not, to be honest, you’ll be a pauper if you try to survive on writing. The odds aren’t really in your favor. But thanks for the free work!
I self-published a couple of little books after that, which ended up costing me hundreds of dollars and making me none. I poured my soul into the first book, my little evangelical soul. I gave countless copies away.
I spoke on recovery in front of large groups of people, which I hated. I know they said the Lord wants me to “stretch” and “grow,” and that public speaking was another way to share the gospel, but I did it with bile rising in my throat and a hankering for a Xanax to get through speaking on recovery.
I now know that God “growing” me by torture is not his bag. But when giving my testimony, I could never wing it. I carefully wrote out every word and read it with all the passion of a kid reading a term paper about state capitals. Not because I wasn’t passionate about it, but because I’m better at bleeding my words than reading my words. Please look away, people. The vulnerability is making me so naked up here.
But see, I’m a prolific writer, if not a successful one. Doesn’t that sound impressive? PROLIFIC. But “prolific” really just means that I write A LOT. Obsessive-compulsively, some might say. Stephen King is a prolific writer. But so is the guy off his meds driven to write a hundred-page manifesto because he is on a mission. “Driven” can mean lots of things!
To me, it means that if I don’t find a home for my thoughts outside of my brain, they’ll stage a coup, and I will be prolifically in a fetal position forever and ever, amen. Since I could hold a crayon, the page has done nicely. It rolls out like a red carpet, welcomes my words, and rehomes the scary ones.
So anyway, thanks for reading my work. Because it affords me connection – with you guys and with myself – and with whatever sanity I have left. Life got heavier with the diagnosis of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in June. I haven’t really yukk-yukked it up in my blog posts lately. But don’t worry, I majored in Writing for Free, but I minored in Gallows Humor. So, I’ll get there.
In a way, pain and cancer and struggle and anxiety are all surmountable, because a kind teacher told my 16-year-old self that she’d be on Johnny Carson one day. Ms. Flowers would want me to write honest and raw. Prolifically. Imagine that. Kind words have power.
In conclusion, life has been humbling. Would you agree? Humbling and not at all what the travel guide promised. But still full of surprises, blessings, and BS.
I hope your dreams land you at the pinnacle of your happiness, hustle be damned. There are more ways than one to “make a living.”
A couple of months ago, when I was young and full of hope, I mentioned that I was going to try to write a little something here every day. Yesterday, I did not, because I used most of my energy decorating for my daughter’s family birthday party. I really felt bad about myself for not writing. Not because it’s writing – but because it is a thing I fizzled out on.
I fizzle out on a lot of things, but it turns out that today – after blowing up a scadzillion balloons – all my “hot air” has not all been relegated to party festivities. So even though I didn’t write yesterday, here is today’s post.
I am very good at two endeavors: Starting things and losing interest in things. Now you’d think a substantial bit of time would have to be passed between those two, but not for me. I can lose interest almost instantly. Not people, mind you. People I love for life. But just about everything else? MEH.
I won’t half-ass the starting of things, of course. I go in whole hog, as we say here in the South. For example, when I took up yoga, I swore I would make it a consistent practice. Two weeks later, I subluxed a hip trying to do a downward dog and had to quit. And I can’t really blame the injury, I was already getting bored.
I have done this with crafts, business ideas, dieting, religion. Unrealistically saying to The Thing, “you better fix my whole damn life.” And out of ignorance or denial – I’m not sure which – I will low-key believe that ridiculous shit.
The problem is that I come at The Thing with both barrels blazing, shooting until I’m out of ammo, click click click that trigger anyway, until I collapse on the floor and tell myself, you can’t even shoot right. Lather, rinse, repeat with every hobby, jobby, or political lobby, until it holds absolutely no interest to me.
The Thing will be the antidote to life. The Thing is going to be so fulfilling, I will forget that I’m neurotic and flaky and stand triumphant for once on the monument to my completed task! The Thing is going to save/help/make me worth the air I breathe.
Holy shit. I am expecting The Thing to dole out my worthiness. That’s too big a job for yoga. That’s too big a job for me. It’s too big a job for anyone but God.
Perhaps, for example, The Thing is not writing; it’s the joy and pain expressed in the writing. It’s the purging, sharing, heartache and laughter.
The Kingdom of God lives within us. We cannot find it anywhere else. We cannot summon it. We cannot find it IN anything else. It can’t be imported, exported, structured, organized, or unfulfilled. It exists in energy so divine; the glorified hustle has to take a seat.
Perhaps “going inward” is the only consistent practice we require to find The Thing. And if the venue of my spirit is good enough to house God, I guess it’s good enough for me…wild and unfocused as it may be!
There is no consequence to not tweezing your brows even though you can see two errant hairs close up when you look in a magnified mirror.
Your family will not fall apart if you have leftovers three days in a row.
If you wash whites and colors together, nobody has to know. Nobody. Will. Know.
A three-hour trash TV marathon is good therapy.
A nice, well-timed depression nap can make all things new.
Your kids can eat an all-beige diet for all their preschool years and be fine (Flintstone Chewable’s cover a multitude of nutritional sins.)
Listening to really good, really loud music is CHURCH.
Staring off into space for extended periods of time is not a waste of it.
Holding hands is not just for children.
Don’t forget to lollygag and dilly-dally on the regular.
Store-bought is fine, if you can’t make your own serotonin and dopamine.
Paper plates are a mom’s best friend.
Animals are kind of superior to (a lot of) humans.
Remember that “no” is a complete sentence.
Cut ties with people who make you feel less-than important. Or LESS THAN, period.
Buy the concert tickets. You’ll almost never be sorry.
Not a single soul on this planet is better than you. Straighten your crown. You deserve to be wearing it.
Straighten your sister’s crown too, and remind her she’s a queen.
Hit the meeting. (If you know, you know.)
Be sloppily thankful for blessings, and ardently prayerful for troubles.
Shave your legs. Or don’t. No one cares.
Tomorrow is a fine day to start what you put off starting today.
Write the words, paint the picture, sing loud and badly, laugh until you pee yourself a little. And then laugh again.
And remember you are hurtling through space in a big, blue marble through an infinite, ever-expanding universe, and you yourself are made out of stardust and moxie for the express purpose of learning to love and be loved.
If we were close once, I still think about you. I want you to know I think about you with reverence, no matter what life threw at us to sever our tie. The things you told me – profound and trivial – still come to my mind as random thoughts are apt to do, and my face breaks out in a little state of happy. Please forgive me if I’ve hurt you in any way. I was only learning, as you were.
If we bore and raised our babies together, we were blessed. We did the “Mom Circuit’ together – lazy days of trips to Gymboree, the park, McDonald’s ball pits, endless breastfeeding sessions and diaper changes, co-rejoicing with one another over the milestones our babies reached, because they were our milestones too. That gave me an identity; it gave us an identity, together.
Perhaps we were friends as teenagers, furiously cutting out pictures in old magazines and making collages of our “futures.” We would turn page after page of handsome men we’d marry, fancy cars we’d drive, and families we would raise perfectly. We made vision boards before there were vision boards, and many a glue stick lost its life in our hands in the name of naiveite.
If we made friends as young adults, you were dear to me at a chaotic time. I pulled back from you because I was ashamed of my alcoholism. If you were with me when I came out the other side (24 years ago)? Your friendship is priceless. Not all of the people I love stuck around in my recovery.
If over the years, we laughed until we peed, I feel a poignant pang in my soul when I remember our laughter, even still. (Bonus points for shooting beverages out of our noses.) Yes, if we laughed together, you are tethered to my heart eternally.
Friend, just so you know – nothing that cemented our relationship ceased to exist just because time marched away from us. The prayers we held hands and petitioned to God over? Nothing went to waste.
God didn’t follow our instructions in the least, of course. Disregarded most of our magazine plans and perfect-mommy dreams. Nothing turned out like we thought it would (thank God, but also dammit) No matter. All the weaving became who we are: The smiles, the jokes, the heartache, the lessons we painfully teach each other and ourselves. The music we share, the memes we post.
All of it.
As as we reached middle age, friendships took on new importance. No longer were they relationships to be sandwiched in between the chaos of parenting and busy marriages, but tantamount to every aspect of our lives, our very selves. Friends become family at this stage. We finally know who we are, and that helps us bring our best selves into our fold. And when we’re our worst? You help me stay grounded. It’s so obvious now that we are – cliché notwithstanding – on a journey for real. As the kids say, for real for real. Nobody warns you that in mid-life, you get weepy and sentimental.
Maybe life got away from us, but I remember our bond. I wish you all the best, Old Friend.
Being diagnosed with leukemia on top of managing a half dozen chronic medical conditions has made some folks state with a vague indignation:
“That’s not fair.”
And in response, I can only say “no shit.”
Bless them for recognizing it’s too much. Because it IS too much. But the truth – whether you are a believer in Jesus or not – is “too much” is a normal unit of measurement for the bullshittery we must endure in this life.
“It’s not fair” always takes me by surprise. It’s like, Huh. Whats that like…thinking fairness was a viable option in the first place?
I think of things should be fair, of course, and I will try to advocate against the mistreatment of others. But sometimes “others” are not the problem…standard issuehumanity is. Our bodies get busted, our minds get screwy, our spirits falter.
Where one person fights health woes, another might struggle to put food on the table. When one is brokenhearted, another worries about her children constantly. Job troubles, anxiety problems, the list is endless.
If you’re really lucky, you won’t have to contend with all the above simultaneously, but perhaps you have. Or are. I have been all at once before, and I guess it lent me an anxiety-laced sense of a transcendent acceptance (whatever that is. I’ll have to ask my therapist.) Anxious some times, yes – but accepting.
I’m not angry with God, not anymore. , I’ve survived a bunch of really agonizing things, and somehow managed not to pick up a drink in 23 years. And that’s astounding. I never expected sobriety to “stick” for me, and I’m befuddled that it has to this day.
I pretended I had strength, until I did. God and I came to spiritual fisticuffs, and he won when I surrendered. White light meets white flag. Something shifted.
It was confirmed to me during the hard years what I’d known all along – life is not fair, but it’s really good. Even with cancer and alcoholism. There so many beautiful things in this world to appreciate, and beautiful people.
Yes, it’s “too much” sometimes – walking around in achy flesh, on a gravity-bound planet that doesn’t seem to get your vibe. But keep vibing, and so will I.
Occasional freak-outs will 100% happen again; I’m starting to think they have just as much right to be part of our vibe as does our holiest, Jesus-trustin’ selves. You know, for the sake of fairness.
I do my best spiritual work from on the ground, apparently.
I can remember laying on my mat Kindergarten at naptimes at school, a skinny little girl laying curled in a ball, watching all my classmates fall asleep like falling asleep is just a normal thing people do or something.
From birth, my brain never shut up, and my home life was dysfunctional to the point of chaos. So, I would lay with my budding anxious neurosis on the vinal mat, unable to sleep; afraid to close my eyes (and afraid not to.) No sleep, only unease.
My teacher, Mrs. Carter would stand over me and holler in front of the whole class, “CLOSE YOUR EYES, JANA!” I can remember squeezing them together and doing a rudimentary version of praying. It was a crude and simple exchange with the God of my Vacation Bible School stories. Even as a child, I seemed to know instinctively that there is more help available from the Divine than we ask for or expect.
“I can’t calm my mind,” I would have said to the adults in my life, had I the language to ask for what I needed. But I didn’t. Little girls with big, grown-up worries don’t know how to self-soothe, because OF COURSE they don’t; and they surely don’t know how to articulate anxiety or ask for help calming their minds.
That’s where I remember doing my first earnest prayers – on the kindergarten mat – asking of Jesus who already lives in my heart to be seen and soothed, comforted and feel less alone.
Twenty-seven years later, I found myself on the bathroom floor of my house, battling an alcohol addiction, wishing to die. On January 3, 2001, I came to the end of myself on that floor. Wretching, sick, alone, and desperate. From flat on the tiled floor, my fist in the air, eyes tinged in red, and skin yellowing, yelling at God and no one in particular, I came to the end of myself.
It reminded me of the biblical story of Jacob “going to the mat” with God in an all-night WrestleMania event. “I’m not going to take this laying down!” Jacob was thinking. But he ended up exhausted and limping, which is how most of us end up in that mindset, if we are not careful.
I had prayed many, many times before for sobriety, but there was a different outcome on that day. A peace descended on me like a dove. In my sickness and desperation, I was met on the floor by a God undeterred from my anxiety. One minute at a time, and then one hour, then one day, week, month, year… that was 23 years ago. A lifetime ago.
“I CAN’T CALM MY MIND” I simply told him. And here’s the thing: I know the same Spirit who curled up with me on my kindergarten nap mat is the same Spirit who met me in the bathroom, me clinging to the toilet, him not at all afraid to get the hem of his garment dirty on my behalf.
I am now learning to meditate now, and it’s a challenge. My husband, who never seems to tire of my endless new “hobbies” took me to get a nice, double-padded yoga mat. I’ve been on quite the little awakening for several years now and am learning so much. I absolutely love incorporating the tools I’m learning into my faith life, which is not a conflict with the holiness of God at all, no matter what Debbie at the Pentecostal church says. (I plan to write at length about what I’m learning, if you’d like to journey with me.)
The first group meditation session I went to, I dutifully spread out my mat amongst the hippies and lovers and seekers at the group event, excited to learn this new coping mechanism. The atmosphere was thick with love and cleansing. Yet can you guess what the prevailing thought was upon getting situated?
I CAN’T CALM MY MIND.
“Okay,” I felt Spirit say, over the Native American flute music and swirling clouds of burning sage (that former evangelical ‘me’ would be scandalized by.) “I am in you and with you and around you.”
If you feel you are on the “floor” in some regard to your life, I just want to remind you that it’s a nice, stable surface from which to start. You are simply grounding, darlings. The floor is a very vulnerable place to be, but be vulnerable we must, if we are to grow. We glorify striving, when simply being is enough.
So just ‘be’ today, friends.
Just be, Groundlings. And don’t forget to breathe. And ask the Universe to make you ever more aware of his presence. If we increase our awareness of this supernatural experience, we begin to see God everywhere – in every ONE.
In you, too! Ready to see, soothe, and comfort you – meeting you on hallowed ground.
Words by Jana Greene 