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Wow.  I wrote a blog post on Christmas Eve and it evidently didn’t publish like it said it did.  I now know that it was because there was a nationwide internet outage for Centurylink and Verizon (which I am a customer), and we had no TV or internet or phone service for about 30 hours.  It was scary as it affected the local businesses and our whole state and I couldn’t talk to my family.  I was really worried about if someone needed to dial 911.  It finally came back up, but I realized while we were simultaneously having the biggest snowstorm we’ve had in a while, just how dependent we have become on the internet as a society!  I saw so many people go in person to the bank, like it was a “run” from the 1930s-40s.  The local businesses were only accepting cash, and I never really carry much anyway, so I stopped to get some too.  It was a creepy experience.  We know that certain other countries like China and Russia understand that this is a way to take us down.  Will we return to an old fashioned behavior in order to stay “off grid” at some point?  Hmmm.

Anyway, with up to 8″ of snow on the ground, and my children gone again and the rest of my family en route to their homes away from here, it is awfully quiet.  It’s peaceful, but I feel sad.  I even started crying when my son and his puppy drove away in his truck to head back east.  Gratitude:  I was soooo blessed to have my WHOLE family together for Christmas this year, especially last Sunday.  My daddy, who is 84 came out from Nevada, my big brother and his wife came out from Tennessee, my eldest niece and her husband came from Vienna, my daughter came from Arizona and my son from Wisconsin.  What a joy!  The rest of my local family converged with them all at my sister’s place.  We met every night to play games or do something together.

Was it easy to stay clean during the holiday?  Well, there were times when my back was hurting walking that puppy, or rather she, walked me, all the way to end of the mesa!  She ran through the fresh snow powder and frolicked in it and I could not keep up with her, and at times she broke off the leash and was free and happy until I caught up with her!  My knee was killing me.  But I made it through.  We had a painting party one night brought to us by my younger niece and her husband.  They bought small canvases and paints and brushes for everyone and set places with name tags, and my eldest niece gave us instructions and there was confusion and laughter and a lot of “catching up” between family – while we ALL attempted to paint the same picture!

Now I am all by myself again and it takes a little bit to readjust.  There is an article I was sent by a close personal friend that was published on foxnews.com and I know lots of people may not like that network, but it was about how people in legitimate pain are suffering and committing suicide due to the new restrictions and eliminations of opioid pain prescriptions.  I read it through and thought a lot about my recovery, where I was, how I got there, where I am now, and what I believe.  I still believe this: pain is good, suffering is not.  The thing is, we are all capable of tolerating some degree of pain.  It is the singular question of when we cross the threshold to intolerable pain, or suffering that is not being answered or measured.  Thus some people are innocent victims of this, and others, are becoming addicts, because it is too easy to abuse the prescribed dosages.  I don’t know.  I want to help the ones that are addicted and don’t need to be.  I wish I could help the ones that are in chronic pain, but all I can do there is suggest that alternatives be developed by the government who is controlling this.

Let me know what you think.  Peace, love, blessing and Happy New Year approaching to all!  There is help available!

It is tight for most of us this time of the year.  We all wish we had the resources to gift everyone we know and love.  Our impulsive behavior as addicts comes out when we shop and we sometimes end up in buyer’s remorse.  Or we are depressed like many during the season for a myriad of other reasons.  Well I say BAH HUMBUG TO THAT!  If you can’t BUY IT, MAKE IT!  There are so many inexpensive ways to say Merry whatever to others during the season or to give selflessly through volunteer work.  Haven’t gone through that closet for awhile?  Time to go through those thirty-three pairs of shoes (which you don’t obviously wear all the time because you can’t balance on the stilettos anymore, and spike heels kill your feet by noon, let alone the end of the day!).  Yes, guys, this goes for YOU TOO!  I’m sure you have things you just DON’T USE ANYMORE.  Now is the time to downsize and share with others!  Favorite pair of jeans just sitting in the drawer or on the hanger toward the back of the closet because you can’t quite squeeze in?  Time to give the third-story jeans to someone who really needs them.  You have dishes you don’t use or jackets or sweaters, or even blankets and towels.

Hey, did you know that the dollar stores are the best place to shop on a budget along with the second hand stores?  Go donate some stuff.  If you need to buy someone a gift, use a book recycle drop.  Seriously, how many books do we have that we read and will never read again?  Or that we bought and will never read???  Second hand books are like a quarter or fifty cents.

I like to make things.  Last year I made a trivia game for my family.  I also made my sister placecards for her fancy dining room table for each member of the family.  I even came up with a FAMILY DATES CALENDAR one year and we still update it EVERY YEAR; it has all the birthdays, holidays, namesdays, anniversaries, etc. and believe me, everyone always asks me these questions, so it has been a life-saving gift.  There are lots of ways to make it through the holidays without going into debt and simultaneously being generous to others and giving of yourself.  Buy someone a meal.  Buy someone a tank of gas.  It all helps.

Now to wrap this up in recovery, I have promised this author to post his article on Employment when New to Addiction Recovery.  See Below and peace, love, blessings….

By Rufus Carter

New to Addiction Recovery_ Here_s How to Make Ends Without Working Full-Time

You’ve heard that said in a meeting by someone…”An addict alone is in bad company” but I think I may disagree now….It has taken me over a year to learn about myself and that includes how to be alone with myself comfortably.  My therapist told me last year to “fall in love with my life” –my house, my bubble baths, my body, myself.  This has given me the door in my journey to walk through…ALONE.  I have been a widow for nearly 14 years and the loneliness was unbearable when I was in active addiction, but NOW IT IS NICE TO BE ALONE.  I have had the ‘quiet moments’ I needed to make real major decisions; life-changing decisions, that I could not have made without growing spiritually.

In my last blog I talked about not compartmentalizing my relationship with the God of my understanding.  I have practiced each day giving everything that troubles me over to Him (or Her or whatever you believe in).  IT WORKS!  I also make sure to be grateful.  I was staring at the Help button in the elevator and wondering wouldn’t it be great if you could push that button and ask God to help you with everything?  This is a true story:

I got off the elevator and ran into my ex-pastor who now works in my building (this man is my friend and considered like family to my family and me.  I was telling him about the latest message I heard in my online church about the Beatitudes and verse 9 of Matthew chapter 5 that says “Blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  I was telling him how the online pastor interpreted that as we can all be peacemakers by fixing our relationships, at home with family, with friends and at work.  Well he agreed and we talked about forgiveness and he said to me “use healing words; even down here” and he motioned toward the office area he works in where the Admin and I had gotten into an argument she escalated, then called in her manager, then filed a complaint against me.  I won’t say anything else about it other than I felt she was way in the wrong and had instigated the whole thing.  Then after speaking with him, my heart said I needed to heal that relationship.

Just as I walked away from him, the woman; the Admin I had the incident with was coming out of the stairwell.  She stopped me…She apologized…She hugged me.  I responded in kind…with healing words, we made peace.  Not even ten minutes later, I got a phone call for a job interview for a position I really want.  I couldn’t believe it.  Then I got a call from our HR-ER department.  The Big Boss I had talked to about the woman who has been bullying and harassing me for the past four years, contacted HR-ER and told them my story and to contact me.  At first I was scared and worried, then I remembered the elevator button and I gave it over to my HP.  The rent was due as well as a large minimum payment on my credit card but we were waiting 3 weeks for the next check due to the company transition to new management.  I was trying to figure out what to do after work and finally resolved myself to a late charge on one of them since my account was short by fifty bucks.  I stopped to get the mail from my mailbox….

Un-freaking-believable!  There was a check from the US Treasury for 58 dollars….My whole week my attitude has changed.  Be thankful, be grateful, be forgiving, give the rest over to God to worry about.  Then take notice of the miracles in your daily life that you would normally not see, or would write off to chance or circumstance, or coincidence.  I am trusting in my faith and not anything else.  I enrolled in school too for the MS in Addiction Counseling I want.  If it is HIS WILL and NOT MINE, that will materialize too.  This is my story.

Peace, love and blessings to all….

I can tell you that since I have been in recovery for a year now, I feel like I have been in a constant state of frenzied panic.  I guess there is no other way to explain it, other than I feel like I am in a hurry all the time “…or else….”  I don’t think the “or else”es really have been as critical of consequences or repercussions as I made them out in my mind to be.  Most of them were not being late to appointments.  No matter how early I left, I found that I still felt stressed that I wouldn’t get somewhere in time.  Even when, no, especially when driving.  I would look at the clock on the radio, then on my cell, heck I even broke down and got another watch and wore it, but, even as they all showed me that I had sufficient (sometimes more than sufficient) time to get to my destination, it still felt like I wouldn’t make it on time; I couldn’t shake the feeling.  Well, I started practicing how I feel when I deliberately take my time to do things (including driving places); both how I feel physically, and what is going on inside my head and my heart.  I KNOW, I mean…I KNOW that I understand there are no consequences severe enough to be worth allowing myself to continue experiencing that level of stress and anxiety.  It was a learned behavior and I need to unlearn it.  Like everything else, that takes [opportunity], practice and time.  So I have set a new recovery goal for myself as I commence my second year which is to SLOW DOWN, my whole life.  

It’s hilarious that I am sharing this at this precipice of radical change I am now facing.  I think I may be in for a major life change if my job goes away (all due to things I have shared about between myself, another woman in the workplace that I report to again, and her band of followers).  I decided regardless of the outcome, I need to walk through the door I have been dreading and accept the outcome whatever that may be.  I also decided that the time is right to start (just start) the process of my next higher education goal.  I still have other fires to tend to.  I am trying to keep the hometown home group alive.  I need to channel some energy into that first.  I am making plans about that today.

Also, I allowed so many things to interfere with my blog site that I owe my readers a length and sincere apology.  I have not made the time to do this as frequently as I was in the beginning, and that is something that I can and will change.  I think if you tried to find me in my house about two weeks ago, all you could see was my eyes and nose buried in a mountain of paperwork, bills, and yellow post-it notes (remember Jim Carey in Bruce Almighty?).  I actually got smart and hired a couple of my sisters to help me go through all the paperwork in my house and vehicle and create a filing system!  Which proves that I am not hopeless when it comes to organization…(LoL)

There is so much to be grateful for and I don’t need to make a gratitude list to be aware of that.  On the other hand, this is perhaps the best time of year to make a gratitude list.  Start with the obvious, but don’t forget the details.  I love drinking bottled water.  It’s the only way I can make sure to stay hydrated and it keeps me healthier.  I am grateful I can afford the bottled water and that it can be recycled, but even better than that…it is snowing today and I am extremely grateful for THAT!  I love the way snow falling makes me feel, calmer and quieter, a little introspective, nostalgic and looking forward to the Holidays instead of worrying about it.  I have another thing to add and that’s I am grateful to have the job I have; that I have had it for this long and until however long I have it.

I heard a really good message on CentralAZ.com weekend messages (I like this church), my own journey, but this is about  the messages.  I was listening to one about one of the Beatitudes (sometimes known as the “Blessed Ares”) and he was talking about how we tend to compartmentalize our prayers and faith – job, family, love, health, possessions etc. when we talk to our higher power and it should just be one thing.  So I am making a concerted effort to give my job and everything else to my higher power to take care of, and like I said, whatever the outcome, I am going to trust that it’s what is meant to happen now.

There are so many things to talk about.  For now, I wish you all peace, love and blessings….

Oh and postscript here – I intend to post another guest article someone wrote about finding employment in recovery.  Stay tuned for that as I will try to do that one next.

There’s so much to share and I am not sure where to begin. Let me start by saying that I did get some closure on my trip to the east coast. My time in New York was hurried but productive. I spent as much time as I could with my mother-in-law who is now going on 93 years old. She is not doing well and doesn’t want to be here anymore and I understand that I really do, but as I tried to explain to her, when my husband died (her son), her husband just chose to give up shortly after. He died just a few years later. She and I had to keep going for many reasons.

Last year when I was at rock bottom for the last time and wanted to give up my life, it was my daughter who helped me by holding up the mirror and showing me that it wasn’t my choice to make.

So I had to have this same conversation with my mom. We were at her house which is going to be sold (a 2-story with a basement) and she can barely walk with a walker and me carting them both back and forth with the rental car. We were going through pictures of the family and came across a totally unexpected email.

We read it together and I got very angry. It was a printed copy of an email from my husband to my brother-in-law. He went into great detail about the joy and excitement he felt about the doctor he found who was also from Rochester NY and how he discussed all the risks and mortality rates and answered all of his questions about deaths.

I was flabbergasted.

He knew. All the time…he knew everything… and he NEVER EVEN TOLD ME.

Well he never said a word to her about it either.

We were both angry that day.

But…we decided to let it go in the end… but not before lashing out at each other first.

She became defensive and I got angry. In the end, it’s all about the journey.

More tomorrow….

Peace, love, Happy Thanksgiving blessings