Seeking Peace, you have hit on a very important thing: we have to change.
And interestingly, the more we work on ourselves, the more we realize we need to change, and often a large part of that change has little to nothing to do with them.
As I have delved more and more into recovery work over the past years, I have come to be grateful that my exhusband's alcoholism and my son's drug addiction led me to a program of learning how to be a mature adult, how to deal with myself which means looking clearly at my faults, working on them, being truly honest, learning humility, accepting other people, feeling my feelings but not taking them as factual and not acting on them. I am growing up.
I used to be very blind about myself even though I had been in a lot of therapy and had been told I was "self aware". Maybe so but nothing compared to the journey of awareness that I have been on for the past five years especially.
We start on the path of change because we are completely powerless over something and we have to accept that powerlessness, for the true first time in our lives.
We have met our match, finally.
We go through the stages of grief and we fall back again and again into our old ways until---if we are lucky---one day we really do become honest about our powerlessness. This part is a huge struggle within ourselves. And it takes a lot of time.
Once we "get" that we are powerless, something incredible starts to happen. This is a spiritual journey (not religious but spiritual). We have to learn to count on something else---not ourselves---and we call it many different things. Whatever we call it is perfectly okay and sometimes people get stuck here and can't progress further because of religion issues.
If we can push past this part, believing in even, as they say in Alanon, the doorknob if we have to----something outside ourselves---the Universe, Mother Nature, the community, something-not-named, God, Buddha, whatever...we can start to let go and make real progress.
Real progress on us. This is separate from our DCs and what they are doing or not doing. This becomes something greater than that.
You are seeing the glimmer. The glimmer of the need to change. If you are ready, read about recovery. Melody Beattie, Dr. Cloud and Townsend, Alanon literature...are good starts.
Going to Alanon meetings will speed this up incredibly if you can go with an open mind and are ready. Every good Alanon meeting follows a protocol and I have come to respect and count on that process. There are silences filled with compassion and peace and depth. Even the silences heal me and move me forward today.
There is more but I will stop. We are glad you are here. This is a journey and each of us is right where we are supposed to be on our own journeys. We can go no faster or slower than we are. We can do them no more perfectly than we are doing them. That too is part of the process of change, falling down and getting back up, and it will never stop.
This...this...is also what our DCs must go through too and this is the prize that is waiting for them, once they decide they want it, that they are completely powerless and they are ready. This is a very personal and individual thing and happens in its own time.
Warm hugs today. Keep coming back.
