Tag: recovery

  • Life

    Life can be challenging. Life can be unpredictable. Life can be uncertain. Life is work. Sometimes I get annoyed with life. Sometimes I get frustrated with life. Sometimes I want a redo. Sometimes I want to leave the life I live. Sometimes I don’t want a life at all.

    As I reflect on my life, there are definitely some things I would change. There are some decisions I wouldn’t have made. There are some options that didn’t work out as I had planned.

    But, you know what? I only have this one life and therefore I try to make the best of it. No matter where you come from, what your parents did or didn’t do, what racial background you come from,  you can make your life what you want it to be.

    Never stop. Never give up. Keep living. Keep learning and keep loving life.

  • If….

    Sometimes, I sit and think of what my life would have been if. If both my parents weren’t addicts. If I would have taken that scholarship to The University of Texas. If I would have not become a teenage mother. If I would have not wasted 17 years in a marriage that was going downhill. If I would have stayed living in Texas and not moved back to California. If I would have chosen the addiction field to start my career in, instead of education. So many ifs that will go unanswered. Then the thought of if I would have learned what I know about addiction sooner, if I could have really made a difference in my parents life. I believe the answer to that is no, so I can relinquish that responsibility. However, today as I serve my clients in a clinical supervisor role I do wonder if the work I have done is making a difference and the answer to that is a big fat YES. That I am sure of, if nothing else.

  • Just thinking

    I always wondered what life would have been if addiction didn’t exist in my family. Would my parents have stayed together? Would my parents have succeeded at being US Postal Workers (more about that in another post)? Would my family have stayed together, instead of residing in different states? Would this. Would that. Questions I know I won’t get the answers to, yet still I wonder. Do you wonder about what could have been without addiction?

  • Lack of knowledge and understanding

    I am thankful that I did not develop a substance use disorder. By all accounts I should have, but my resilience is strong. I didn’t have to engage in it to know it was not for me. I saw the devastation, I lived the devastation and am a product of the devastation. When I was a child I didn’t understand addiction. I didn’t know what it was. I thought you could just stop using. I thought you should be able to understand how important life is. I thought you should put your children before your addiction, boy how wrong was I. Addiction ravishes everything in your life. I know there are people who believe that they control their addiction, but those are lies they tell themselves. Denial, ambivalence, ignorance these are all parts of addiction. I used to be embarrassed by terms like crack head and dope fiend. I used to be very critical of drug addicts. I had the mindset like so many others “Why can’t you just stop?”. I am not sure that I would have sought the answer to that question had it not been for my mother’s overdose.

    In fact it wasn’t until I moved back to California from living in Texas that I even gave that question some real thought. That is when I began to become involved in the recovery community. At this time my father had coordinated an NA group at his place of worship. I attended a few times, just to see what it was all about. This was the first time that I heard part of his story. This was the first time that I heard about how addiction affected his life. I was honestly shocked. Before hearing his story, I thought his absence was for more selfish reasons. I had so many thoughts when I was younger. My lack of knowledge and understanding about addiction caused me to treat him poorly and unfairly. It caused me to be mean and disrespectful. It caused me to think and believe things that weren’t true.