The Blame Game

Look In The Mirror

The blame game gets old very fast. I’m not a “regular” person, I’m a recovering alcoholic yogi mom traveling through my 11th year of sobriety post-divorce. I’m no newcomer, but I do a meeting every day. Today I’ll do two. Does that mean I’m struggling not to drink? Nope. It means it’s a design for living right up there with yoga. It works.

If you’ve read the Four Agreements (I highly recommend it), you will get this. Am I impeccable with my word? I like to think so, but not always. Do I get everything right? Am I smarter than most? Oh, hell no. The only thing that gives me a leg up on my own behavior is holding myself accountable for it. If I’m pointing a finger at somebody, which I have done because it’s in the unwritten divorce manual, I have to look at the fingers pointing back at me. That’s in the AA vernacular but it relates to everyone. If something is bothering me, I need to look in the mirror. If I’m out of integrity with myself, I’ve got to fix that fast.

This morning was 11th tradition work, which is keeping AA anonymous and keeping to attraction not promotion. I smile a little at that. Do you think somebody engaging in self-harming, addictive behavior wants to sit around on folding chairs with a bunch of people who are doing the same thing and telling the truth? Doesn’t sound like fun to me. Yet it saved my life. What you choose to say about your own recovery is your business. There are celebrities who talk about how AA saved their life and a few in the rooms don’t like that. I do. Rob Lowe and Jamie Lee Curtis among others thank sobriety for saving their lives, a beautiful thing to me. You can be rich and famous and feel like us. If you don’t like celebs doing this, okay. It’s not my business.

What is my business is what pisses me off. I can practically see the flashing danger lights! Spot your own red flags because I can be like a bull in a china shop when I’m mad. I’m an Italian woman, it’s in my DNA. This happens when the behavior of another person impacts my life…and I let it. Narcissism, smear campaigns and lies do affect kids, even grown. Does it help me to talk about it? Go tit for tat? I’m finding it helps less and less because I’m falling right into the trap of walking in lockstep with someone who is not sober in their behavior. I’m reacting. I’m not giving it to a higher power. I’m (gulp) playing God. That’s the biggest mistake anyone can make.

So I’m narrowing my scope to helping women through the divorce process because believe me, it’s a time to drink….and I didn’t. That’s a miracle I’m only partly responsible for because I knew I couldn’t do it alone. To not be bitter or spiteful I must speak specifically only of my own behavior, survival skills, and experience. Divorce is clear evidence the relationship wasn’t working and sadly we no longer like each other. Narcissism is the phrase du jour, people throw it around without knowing its meaning. I’m glad to have been a researcher in my career as a journalist and a big fan of self-help and often brutal therapy so I know I’m dealing with it, but it’s my reaction I should talk about, the only thing I can control.

Life isn’t fair, things are going to happen to you that are not your fault, but how it affects your life is up to you. It’s all in the serenity prayer. Again, this is all over 12 step programs, but it should be all over everyone’s life. Read the words, and if you take offense to the word God, sorry, not sorry.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Simple, yet do we do it? It even gives you options. If you have courage to change something you feel is an injustice and hurting someone including yourself, go for it…but it can’t be the actions of another. It won’t work. If you can’t change something, which is usually the case, you have to let it go, another phrase we have been using for so long it falls into the category of transitional words. It’s the most important thing I’ve learned.

Then there is the last sentence, “wisdom to know the difference.” There’s the catch. How do you know what you can change and what you can’t? Easy. Look in the mirror. That’s what you can change.

What a conundrum for women who are told we must take control of our lives, because what’s in our lives? People. So we have to control them? That’s where everything goes wrong. I nodded my head yes to my sponsor thinking inwardly, “nah, I can change him.” With almost 40 years of sobriety, she was right. What a shocker. Here’s a fact. People need to want to change themselves. If you’re pointing a finger at somebody who’s hurting you, has lied about you, stolen from you, smeared your name, what do you do? Here’s where being an alcoholic makes your life easy in my eyes. Don’t drink. That’s it. Of course there are sub categories like don’t act like an asshole, and many things fall into that category. As a sober woman and a yogi to my core, when I write about anything negative, even things that have been done to me, it sits wrong in my gut. That’s why I survived the divorce sober and sane. I surrendered and admitted I needed help and I got it.

I won’t say it was easy, I gained 35 pounds, but I did not relapse in my program. I surrounded myself with good energy and weeded out anyone who was hurting my emotional sobriety. It’s a helluva long process because many of these people are those you think you love. Maybe it’s just attachment. Time will tell.

As I near a holiday I have never celebrated because my dad died when I was 10, I need to stay in my own lane and zip it. Relationships end, money comes and goes quickly, we often feel like we are failing, self doubt plagues us, fear clouds our judgment, and perhaps most profoundly, people die. I’ve been hit with that one too many times, and I’ve even had a death sentence thrown at me. There is absolutely no good that can come from blaming other people for your problems. It’s the coward’s way out.

I can now take an honest appraisal of my accomplishments too, like losing that 35 pounds, asking for help when I needed it, saying nothing if I couldn’t say something nice, giving love without expecting it back, not taking things personally because the world does not revolve around me, and knowing when I leave this world, it will continue to spin. I’m but a speck of dust just finding my way as a sober, single woman. It gets easier when you realize how tiny you are yet how significant you can be if you’re a source of hope. I never lost that.

I will write something on Father’s Day to my dad because he earned it. Another huge shift in me…but that’s another writing. It’s a thank you to my mom and dad, both flawed individuals who did the best they could under horrible circumstances which ended in his early violent death at age 41. Our best is all we can expect from ourselves and others. Mom is still my guiding light.

If I’m near somebody making me feel not sober (aka sane), I suffer the extreme discomfort then move away from it. We love our comfort zones, but our comfort zone can be a bed of nails. Time to bite the strap. Chemicals aren’t an option for me. I don’t know how you feel reading this, but I feel really good having written it. I’m responsible for my life. I’m responsible for my relationships and the position other people take in my life is my decision to make. I just have to remember to hold myself accountable for the way I respond to the way I’m being treated. Mom says “you teach other people how to treat you.” I’ll never forget the moment she said it as I was driving her home one snowy Thanksgiving night not very long ago. Mom is almost 87 now, she has survived a seemingly unsurvivable life, and she hasn’t had a drink in 28 years. She’s my idol.

So I’ll keep my finger to myself, all of them, and surround myself with positivity and love when I can. I’m not a saccharine person, I’m keeping it real. How your life goes begins and ends with you. Nuff said.