Tag: Recovery

My Recovery Story

By: JANA GREENE

Hi. My name is Jana, and I’m an alcoholic.

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.

Thanks for letting me share ❤

6

Love has not Failed Me (an Alcoholic Celebrates 24 Years Drink-Free)

Screenshot

By: JANA GREENE

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.

And Love will dance with me too.

4

Even as a Whisper, I Speak

By: JANA GREENE

I speak up for myself now.
Well, sometimes.
As long as it doesn’t rock the boat TOO much.
As long as the person I have conflict with won’t stop loving me because I’m mad.
Only when I’ve rolled the issue OVER and OVER I’m my brain ad nauseam and have decided I’m with a safe person.
Only after I’ve played out the worst case scenario in my head, mini-grieved the possible outcomes.
And after I speak my peace (because I’ve learned my peace has value, too,) I will fret and worry that I’ve upset someone.
Doesn’t matter if it concerns life events or little frustrations, I speak.
Even if it’s a whisper, I speak.
Even though I know assertion-guilt will try to make me feel like a bad human.
I’m starting – with fits and stops – to say when I’ve been hurt or bothered, even though I’ve been a people pleaser all my life.
So…
No,
You cannot talk to me like that.
Little Me had no say, but I’m re-parenting her, you see.
I’m teaching her things I should have taught my daughters, and must have somehow over the years.
They speak up for themselves, without fear of abandonment, because they know they’re safe.
And Little Me is safe now too, finding her voice and using it.

0

Doomy Feels, a Confession

Photo by Vie Studio on Pexels.com

By: JANA GREENE

What a time to be mentally ill, eh? Depression, anxiety, we got it ALL this year. I have not been okay for a few weeks now. This morning, I awoke and write some poetry, as the angsty of nature are apt to do, and thought I would be okay today. But instead of comforting myself as usual, it felt a little disingenuous. And in the interest of transparency, I came back here to the blogosphere to air my grievances because today I’ve already binged watched My 600 Pound Life, and some show about real-life emergency room drama, and (surprise, surprise) that is not the antidote for feeling down. You know how toddlers behave when they are so maxed out on sensory input that they just melt down? They cannot tell you if it’s because they are hungry, or tired, or the seams in their socks are off kilter. They just whine in C Minor until you could pull your hair out in frustration from trying to console them. Yeah, that’s relatable. I may look fine, but deep inside, the seams of my socks are driving me crazy. The newness of the cancer diagnosis has worn off, and instead of feeling like a stab to my spirit, it’s more of being poked with a butter knife, repeatedly and with gusto. Duller, but still stabby. Just another chronic condition on my already-full roster. My overall pain level from my other conditions this week has been nonstop, as if not to be usurped by the cancer. And I don’t care who you are, everyone has a limit. So, I am fighting the urge to just give in to it, crawl in bed and sleep, and try again tomorrow, which I reserve the right to do, because again – everyone has a limit. I’m long past pleading with God to deliver me, which depending on which denomination you follow, could be construed as a lack of faith, or a surrendering. I am going with the latter. God will not stop the coaster, but he will pull the safety harness over the both of us, riding alongside me while I scream my head off. I imagine him holding my hand as I approach every incline, telling me breathe, we can do this together! And I’m yelling stop this crazy thing! Sometimes we rejoice WHEEEEE! together, other times I feel like my stomach is going to exit my body via my throat. That feeling you have at the top, knowing the ground is all the way down there, and you are way up here I and your heart hammers out of your chest? I have felt like hornking up my stomach since the election, I’m absolutely leveled by it. But days keep coming, they keep happening. So many of my friends – family I’ve chosen for myself – are in crisis mode right now, and my empath spidey senses are all a-tingle, 24 hours a day. Breathe, I tell myself. Focus on breathing. But my thoughts wander from breath to all sorts of doomy things, my depression saying see? I TOLD you everything is awful! So I come here to write. I changed my pajamas from yesterday into a fresh pair today (you expected me to say I got dressed, like a properly undepressed person? Pish.) I pray, the click-click-click of a roller coaster going up an incline the rythm to my mantra. I say, I see you to my Big Feels and realize so many of us are feeling like toddlers melting down right now, not having the proper language to express the groanings of the spirit. Maybe we need to tear off our wonky socks and run around barefoot. Maybe I need a nap and some graham crackers. Just don’t give in to the sadness. Just don’t pick up a drink. This January, I will celebrate 24 years without a drink, and Hons, you’d better believe it’s a hard-won victory this year. Some years are easier than others, but this year has been a helluva doozy. So, all of this ranting to say – If you’re feeling low too, just know that you’re not alone. Tomorrow is indeed another day. Blessed be, fellow humans. I’ll hang on if you will. WHEEEEEE.

0

Safeguarding Sobriety (in the Sh*tshow)

By: JANA GREENE

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.

2

A Depression Nap Makes All Things New (and other things you might have forgotten)

By: JANA GREENE

Whoever needs to hear this today…

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.

So love already.

That’s the main thing.

Blessed be.

0

When it’s Simply a Hell of a Day (My CLL Journey)

No makeup. Just struggle.

By: JANA GREENE

In the interest of transparency, today sucks a little. I share when I have good days and get gussied up – admittedly those are fewer and further apart. And I share when I’m struggling because I don’t want to pretend I have my shit together for social media. That benefits no one. I don’t. And I won’t. Life is messy (and also great and awful, in turn. So who can give up yet?) But today the fatigue is crushing me, literally feels like a smothering blanket I can’t get out from under. And my pain level is crazytown. People get tired of hearing about my pain, I’m certain. But I’m tired of feeling it. So I spent some time meditating. And some time worshipping. And crying. And that’s the truth. That’s me, pulling myself up by my bootstraps. Leukemia sucks. Ehlers Danlos sucks. I’m tired of physical weakness making me feel less strong as a whole person. It’s just a hell of a day.

2

Life’s not Fair (But it’s Still Pretty Good)

Peace ‘n blessins

By: JANA GREENE

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 issue humanity 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.

Blessings.

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Good News I can Use (my CLL journey)

By: JANA GREENE

Yesterday was a very, very good day. It had been exactly a month since my diagnosis of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, and my husband and I met with my oncologist to get staged and get a prognosis, after a battery of tests.

I am stage ZERO! CLL begins with stage zero, unlike most other cancers. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I don’t have cancer – it just means that it’s in my marrow and blood but hasn’t spread anywhere else. My bone marrow biopsy confirmed that I definitely do have CLL, but the PET scan was clear!

My prognosis is good! We wait and watch now. I will go to the cancer center every three months forever to monitor my white cell blood count, lymphocytes, and web blood cells. But until my WBC doubles within a span of six months or I start to have lymph node problems, I am treatment free.

Will I need it someday? Most likely yes. CLL never entirely goes away. But I’m already on the one day at a time plan with my other chronic illnesses, I manage the POTs, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, and about another half dozen chronic conditions.

Life is crazy, man. Yesterday morning I was praying for the diagnosis of CLL rather than ALL – chronic vs. acute. Chronic has to be managed, acute is trouble. Funny that a month and a day ago, I would never been so flippin’ happy that I have any kind of cancer. Now I’m praising God that it is not acute, or do I require any treatment right now.

I didn’t need another major health concern, but I feel like my training wheels are off in this regard. I already live illness every day. And whatever this brings, I intend to rise to the occasion. Probably while doing a lot of bitching now and then, and maybe some crying, and a whole other layer of frustration…

But I’m pretty scrappy.

Thank you for all of you who have been praying for me. It is truly the best case scenario. I love my medical team and I’m so grateful for them as well.

Blessed be, friends. And again, thank you.

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Doing it Scared (my CLL Journey

Okay this is the proof I got out of my actual pajamas yesterday, if only for an hour.

By: JANA GREENE

Hi. In the interest of journalistic integrity (haha), I feel like adding a disclaimer of some kind to the entries I’m going to be adding in Words by Jana Greene. Because I’m a writer, I like stories to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. I like when I can weave the narrative in clever ways or end up with a cohesive piece.

Yeah, this is NOT that.

When writing about this journey in particular, I am writing stream-of-consciousness-style, and if you don’t want to read me because this page may be full of incorrectly punctuated, rambling, seemingly random words, I get it Sis. I am not over-editing, because that breaks the intention of sharing my heart and makes it sort-of clinical in a way. I’m going to get plenty of “clinical;” this is the opposite, I think.

Yesterday, I had a rollicking good afternoon. Weirdly good. I put on a dress, asked my husband if we could go to dinner. I’m so tired of having cancer-ese language in my head.

I did my makeup, which happens with the relative frequency of a solar eclipse, and my hair – which is very long and very thick, and EXAUSTING to my hypermobile shoulders. And THEN – after alllll that – I look him dead in the eye. “Baby, I’ve used every ounce of my energy getting ready. I’m exhausted.”

“It’s okay,” says he. “Want to order in wings and binge-watch Dexter?”
GOD, I LOVE THAT MAN.

So, lickity-split, I changed back into my “Agape Against the Machine” oversized t-shirt, ordered food, washed off every bit of makeup, plopped on the couch with my beloved, and ate chicken wings King-Henry-the-Eighth style in a MOST unladylike fashion with what little energy I had left.

The energy of a sick person is finite. And some days, it is more finite than others. “But you just DID it,” they say. “Yes!” say I. “And that’s why I can’t do it again!”

Doling it out over the course of the day must be deliberate. We don’t just “do things,” we do things that deplete our body’s energy ration in parcels. The parcels are not of our choosing, even. We wake up, take stock of pain, and – if our pain to exhaustion ratio is high, goals for the day get voted off the island until you are left with one crappy thing to do that isn’t even fun. Disabled bodies are utilitarian, and have no time for frivolity, on low-energy, high-pain days.

The ante was significantly upped with the cancer diagnosis June 13.

Tomorrow morning, I go for an invasive bone marrow test, which by all accounts SUCKS. I feel like up until now, I’ve been pretty accepting of my diagnosis and kind of positive about all this, but I ain’t feeling brave this morning. Fight, Flight, and Fawn all have seats at my breakfast table right now, and they look a hot mess.

So, today, I interrupt my own sometimes-toxic positivity with a special news bulletin:

I’m scared.

For the first time since the diagnosis, I am legitimately scared. I don’t know what triggered the fear (having cancer, probably – ha) but as tomorrow’s test looms, I’ve decided NO THANK YOU PLEASE, I don’t want to do this cancer thing. But thanks for the offer, I already have a full schedule full of trying to stay alive. I already gave at the office. Dance card is full. I have prior engagements. But thanks for stopping by!

But that’s not reality, so I just need to be able to say, “I’m f*cking terrified.”

When a disabled person gets cancer, there are “people of the Lord” who assume God’s got it OUT for me. Why else would he “allow” all of this? Or this secular quip: “You’re the unluckiest person I know.”

But I don’t feel unlucky. I am surrounded by light and support and love. I just feel scared today, with a chance of intermittent sadness. Not strong. Not perky and upbeat. Just run-of-the-mill scared. I feel both: Scared AND lucky to have such an amazing tribe helping me make it through.

So I’ll shut this laptop, and light some candles, and get into a quiet spot, and breathe deliberately. I might take out my tongue drum and play some tones, focusing on each one as it completes its own life cycle of vibration, letting the sound take my fear down a buttonhole. Light some sage, let it’s perfume reassure me. Pray honest. Do some breathwork. Maybe I’ll get into the paints and make a mess today. Talk to God, and listen for his answer back, which can come in a myriad of ways – you just have to have the awareness to hear it. (Just ask for greater awareness of the Divine. God wants us to have the peace that passes understanding. He is not stingy with it! Don’t believe me? God lit in the forest by yourself for a while and receive. I highly recommend.

These are some of my tools to treat the fear when it comes. I acknowledge it, thank it for trying to protect me, but busy myself in art and music until it can stop actin’ a fool. And perhaps in the coming weeks, I will have another energy burst and put on the little black dress again, and actually make it out the front door! Maybe get all the way to a nice restaurant, where I’ll be able to stay awake, digest food like a normal person, and have a whole-ass date, start to finish. My husband deserves that – and so much more.

Signed,

Afraid in the Port City

Blessed be, friends.

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The Driving Force

It’s okay to love all the parts of yourself.
(Mural Carolina Beach.).

By: JANA GREENE

I love the parts of me

that are most like the Source.

The parts that align

with all the Divine,

with love as the driving force.

The parts made of stardust

and deep mystery,

the parts not sullied by

my own history,.

The Kingdom of God

that’s within me?

It abides within you too.

We seekers and finders

oft need reminders

Of our identities

in the Truth.

The parts that align

with all the Divine,

make it all well with my soul.

So I’ll embrace

all the parts of me…

Not in part, but the whole.

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Cringey Vulnerability (a tale of betrayal)

Today’s writing prompt from The Writing Room Collective:

By: JANA GREENE

If you are going to trust with any degree of your tender, fleshy heart, you will get hurt. It isn’t a possibility. It isn’t a “might happen.” We all experience betrayal. Death has lost it’s eternal sting, but betrayal still really smarts.

Many years ago, a woman who was freshly out of rehab was being released into her natural habitat of Life on Life’s Terms. We had a mutual friend at the time, who asked me to reach out to her so I can hook her up with some meeting resources, and just generally be her friend. As a result of her past choices, she relied on others to get her around town – she lost her licence – and I was all too happy to be her recovery buddy and take her to meetings with me.

And become her friend, I did.

Not only did she confide in me, but I in her; and regularly. Looking back now, I cringe at the uber-vulnerability I felt comfortable engaging in with her. I wasn’t her sponsor, but I was her friend, and I have a propensity for letting it all hang out anyway.

She had close ties with people who used to be an intimate part of my life (ESTRANGED family, gee, that should have been a clue!) but I did a crazy thing, which is to trust her.

What I should have caught on to, but missed by a mile, was that her wildly elaborate and passionate stories about recovery were pockmarked with holes, hugs, and bullshit. My gut often doesn’t get consulted on these things, when it should be the FIRST consultation I make.

On our rides to meetings, she was super animated and would often even quote from my own blog to me. I would sometimes think, ‘okay…THAT was weird,’ but most of my friends – and certainly me – are weird. Some of the personal stories she told suspended belief!

Eventually, this friend needed witnesses who ‘knew’ her pretty well, and after taking her to meetings for damn near a year I felt confident about testifying on her behalf.  “You’ve worked so hard on your recovery,” I said. “I would be honored to help!”

The Oscar for Best Actress goes to ….

My “friend.”

After I was a character witness for her, I never saw or heard from her again. She fell off the face of the Earth. It’s hard for me to imagine that degree of deception.

Turns out, this woman had been drinking all along – Vodka apparently, so I didn’t smell it. ALL ALONG.

I kind of pride myself on this mission statement: I don’t have relationships with people I don’t trust. That assumes I know untrustworthy people and can tell when they are lying. I thought I had decent discernment. Maybe that pride needs to go the way of ALL pridefulness. In the sh*tter, where it belongs.

The question I keep posing to myself is thus – HOW could I be so stupid and gullible? I honest to God just didn’t see it. I really hurt my own feelings about it. Then I realize, there is no betrayal that can’t teach us a thing or two.

There’s no way to wrap up this post up all clean and tidy-like, because life is just so messy. I don’t think I’ll hear from her again; she got what she had befriended me for.

What I experienced ain’t terribly original.

Active addicts lie. It’s kind of what they do. They deceive, minimize, maximize, lie, cheat, steal, and all to protect their best friend – the drug of choice. I myself used to strategically hide BOXES of wine all over the house (although I’m not sure why, as those in my life at the time didn’t seem to mind if I drank myself to death.)

But once I got into a program, I learned to call myself out on these behaviors and stop lying to myself.  Because calling yourself out keeps you sober, frankly. “Rigorous honesty.”

Yeah, that old chestnut.

As with most things about recovery, I’ve learned tons about myself during this time. Had I to do it again, what would I change? Even if I knew she was using me and lying about her addiction?

I would still offer to take her to meetings with me. I would still give her a safe place to vent. I probably wouldn’t have shared as much of my personal life with her, and I surely wouldn’t have vouched for her. Like I said, it sometimes seems that no good deed goes unpunished.

Although the deception happened TO me, it is not ABOUT me. It’s not about me in the least. But it stings all the same –  I’m just being honest about how this whole debacle made me feel.

Still, God calls me to be grace-full, and I’m trying. He never called me to be a sucker, though.  I have forgiven this lady (although she never asked for it) after wasting precious hours and hours on trying to figure out what clues I missed.

But forgiving someone doesn’t mean you want to break bread with them. You can forgive, walk away, and be wiser for the trouble.

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The Crying Canons

By: JANA GREENE

When I was a child, my parents sent me to catechism classes for a few months, before they decided Catholicism wasn’t for them, and I have a few spotty memories.

I have always loved big words, and I remember learning the concept of “canonization,” which is when someone who lived a really stellar life could be declared a saint. According to Wikipedia, it is also declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of saints.

The extent of my experience with “catalogues” was that Sears put out a “Big Book” and that thing was the epitome of childhood joy! The be-all-end-all; about three solid inches of dog-eared, magic-marker-circled laminated possibility. The funny thing is that when it came in the mail each year, I cried. I sobbed with overwhelming emotion. It was TOO. MUCH. If I had had the language, I would have said, “I CANNOT EVEN WITH THIS.”

There were tears later for excerpts from the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, but that’s a story for another time.)

How odd that despair and all-encompassing joy make us cry.

I still cry, but not in as much despair. At lease not most days.

Despair, when taken to liberally, only buys me more of itself. It confirms what every trauma of my life told you was truth. It makes me conduct life as if in mourning clothes – black and somber (but also a little bit enveloping and cozy.) Comforting because it’s familiar, and destructive for the same reason.

Here’s the thing: As far as I can tell, life is a tearful experience. No getting around it.

Tears are salty, either way. Whether they are generated by grief or extreme joy, there they are! Manifestations of our Big Feels, rolling down our cheeks for all the world to witness. No two spurred by identical emotion, each unique to the life experience that prescribed it.

I suspect that God is forever traipsing along behind us, collecting every single one; and not minding a bit to get his hands wet (or even snotty.) I don’t know why the image of the Almighty Cosmic Creator collecting our tears is so comforting to me. It’s validating, I guess.

So many of us were sprinkled by “holy water” to be baptized in the church tradition. How odd then that the sprinklings that we offer God so often roll down our cheeks. I like the thought that none of it goes to waste; that all tears are valid. (Are tears holy water too? Maybe they’re the holiest.)

I laugh more than I used to, too. Sometimes at the absolute absurdity of life. I mean, you can’t be serious, right? This place is crazy, man! Humanity is writhing right now. Each facet of our existences seems upended and spent. We are divided, swamped with information, fed a diet of doom, and all of this can make a very “connected” world feel very lonely.

Our instinct is to make our woe a solitary endeavor, but we’re all connected. Joy to joy, woe to woe. As best as I can figure, there are a trillion filaments of light woven between and through us all. That’s what vanquishes the darkness.

So yes, I cry. Some days, quite a bit. There are many times I “cannot even,” when my physical pain and mental/emotional pain are trying to outdo each other in a footrace, a good, cleansing cry is where it’s at. Not as a concession to the pain, but to spite it.

Being Earthside is wretched, brilliant, brutal, beautiful, and exquisite. It is a predetermined number of dog-eared possibilities.

But I’ve made it through 100 percent of the mess thrown at me so far, and so have YOU. That’s a pretty good track record. All we can do is try not to let our tears make us salty toward an open-wound world.

We become venerated by our tears. Canonized. Made whole and sainted, I think. All the really cool saints weep on the regular. I believe Jesus did, and why would he not? He rejoiced with weeping and wept with deep, abiding sorrow. He himself is the (Big?) Book of Life, not constrained by the two-thousand years of dog-eared, magic-marker-circled laminated possibility we have assigned him and called “Truth.”

Teardrop by teardrop. Emotional outburst by emotional outburst. Primal screaming session by primal screaming session. Whatever it takes to get through this stellar experience of life together.

Blessed be, friends.

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