Mother's Day, A Sigh of Relief

It feels good to catch up here again.

Today was a good day as a mom. I enjoyed a reflective day, got exercise with my son and husband at the Y, had a good EA-step meeting (step four) and a wonderful dinner out at an Indian restaurant. Conversation with a favorite aunt was a great finish to a sun filled day.

For once I did not feel guilty for the joy I experienced or the money my family spent on me.

This is in sharp contrast to last year, when I had a hard time feeling worthy of any kind of celebration and I was distraught at getting a gift that my son loved that I could not appreciate. Having not yet made peace with the fact that I had grown up with a mom suffering from BPD, I felt alienated from my family of origin. I wasn't sure if I had it in me to leave a good legacy.

This Mother's Day feels so much more sane than last year's. In our community at this time in 2009, we had a killer on the run, who had shot three people in our town, including his wife. For weeks, I'd not been able to listen to the news or read the paper. It was an aunt from another state who told me (on Mother's Day) that the murderer's body had finally been found a few miles from our home. That man was likely a narcissist and a sociopath. He was also unfortunately the father of a sweet girl in my son's class at school, which made it even more personal.

Tonight I can say a hopeful prayer that the children have been woven into their life in a bigger city where they live with an aunt and uncle. I pray that love heals, and that they have more than enough love to flourish.

I hope that if your day has been planned around being a mom, honoring one, or making peace with one, that it was a satisfying endeavor.

Look Back over 2009

Just a few words of reflection over a year gone past.

I had two crises last year that I tried to grapple with: One back in April, the other in September. Both almost landed me on my butt, and reactivated old fears in a very big way.

I felt some shame and loss each time, because I did lose ground and I also wondered if I could really ever trust myself to stay well, if I was so vulnerable as to fall two times in one year.

My thoughts as I reflect back in today's sunshine, and the birds singing outside during my meditation (carolina wrens, chickadees, the cardinals..) are that the first fall was so dismaying because it took me so by surprise, because it was catalyzed by someone who should have been inconsequential: the man I encountered from Australia, who was likely a narcissist, and decided I had BPD! The man who really did not know me, but for what I had shared openly in my recovery group. I felt so vulnerable and yet no one understood why.

Now I realize why the fellow was so dangerous to me; not only was my discovery of my mom's personality disorder so fresh, but I still had my own fears that I might have borderline personality disorder. In addition, I see today that my personality type does not naturally protect me from folks that can be emotional vampires. It is a kind of miracle that I still have emotional sensitivity and over the years I have acquired a smart mouth that keeps me relatively safe. What made my encounter with this internet vampire so awful was that he knew more about me than I ever wanted to know about him! And the group I belong to does not encourage open resolution of conflict! So I had no way to use my smart mouth and drive the fellow away. And, members of the group felt compelled to help this fellow (who was a loudmouth and a bore with a need to be the center of attention) in his recovery. One of the trusted leaders effectively felt that it was our business to reach out to new people in need. Well, in theory I believe that, too. In practice, and in this particular case, I knew in my heart that helping this person would take our whole group down. And it almost made me quit our recovery forum.


Add to that an unremitting level of stress related to M's out of town trips, a murder-suicide in our town (the first of a wave of murder-suicides last year), and the fact that a child in my son's class was affected. Add again, the fact that I don't have good defenses and take on other's stories as if they could be my own... What a nose-dive I took!


In retrospect, I recovered relatively well. First, I am fortunate, I have a very compassionate and astute head-shrinker. Second, I let myself learn from this and made sure I reduced all the commitments in my life that I was not totally enthusiastic about. I let go of my evening meeting commitment for our local schools. Felt like a flake resigning as president, but also felt a lot truer to myself. The part of me that felt like a flake needed me to do some concerted work, validating, supporting, and loving myself. I did that work to the best of my ability, and I also educated my friends so each one had a place in supporting my choice.

Once this school year began, I had a "retreat" to look forward to, for the very recovery group I had almost resigned from back in April. The retreat was in the capital city of my state, which I rarely visit. The retreat was in the middle of September. In hindsight I went for many of the same reasons I chose NOT to be the president of the advisory board. I went to prove that I was competent, responsible and creative. And guess what? I learned I was all three, but ... I also got to feeling like I had over-achieved on one hand, and was too much in my ego, and not enough on helping folks in the recovery chapter I belong to in my own hometown. Catch-22's all over the place. Zena can win in one arena of her life, but totally "fails" in another.

And the retreat had consequences for me as a writer. I found that I got so many lessons from the retreat that I was having a hard time focusing on (and believing in my ability to complete) an article assignment that I had created! Add to that the fact that not one of my interviewees was emailing or calling me back, and my husband was on his own time constraints with a big work deadline. Add to my ambivalence, a family crisis, with our cat needing to be repaired surgically. I had to write my editor and renege on the assignment and this brought up again my feelings of being a failure.

Failure is big for me. Failing myself personally, in my recovery. Failing to meet my commitments of a writer. Those feelings get me to my core and I have no defenses. I suspect this year I will see more progress and will recognize Catch-22's a little earlier, and I might just give up turning the guns on MYSELF when I see that I am not pressing forward with my flags held high and strong.

2009 word count

Some 28,000 words are logged in my last year's blog. And that at an average of 3 posts a month. I would say this too is evidence of progress winning over perfection.

a new year, a new start, the twelve steps

I've learned, after many years of cycling through recovery, that it really does not matter the speed in which I "do" the steps. Nor does it matter how deeply I do them the first time. The point is to be willing to do them again and again and learn something new each time.

For the more I study a subject, and the more ways I cover the material, the better I learn it. But like everything else in program, perfection is not the goal, progress is. I don't need to stay on step one for a year to get it right! No, the program is very forgiving, and if I need to repeat any of it at any time, there is no shame.

As for me, I like to study using whatever I need at the time. Yes the steps come in order. Yes. That is wonderful. Yet, I also need to remind myself and my sponsees, this is not a program that "works" linearly. In the version of program called "Emotions Anonymous" we do not "control" our emotions-by the same token we can not "really" make our program work in fixed order!

It is wonderful to think of myself as being at the center of a circle, with the numbers 1-12 at different places on a clock face. From my center, I can easily step from 1-3 and then come back to know myself better.

Thank HP the program is one of paradox. (Look that word up, it is important.) We come to find peace with opposites here, and also with the fact that people utilize (and speak up about) different aspects of the program at different times in their growing. What you need for your program in your beginning stages may be what I need much later in my program! What we all have in common is that we come 'round these steps over and over as we practice them and make understanding and new habits a part of our lives.

A significant celestial event has just accompanied us into a new year: a blue moon. Last night the full moon repeated itself in our night sky for the second time in December!

For a few more hours of daylight today... I have a new beginning. The first day in my 2010 program year is beginning. I launch Step One again as a tool for living a serene life.

May this year be the best one yet!