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NEW CONTACT OPTION: WE HAVE AN EMAIL ATTACHED TO THIS SITE!!! PLEASE EMAIL ME AT: contact@nmrecoveryhope.blog

The path to recovery is always blotched with obstacles.  We continue what we believe is a straight path forward to remaining clean and sober.  We attend meetings, we tire of our 12-step work and make connections to others, falsely believing they are wiser than we are, and can keep us on track.  Then we realize that we must turn inward.  Ask the hard questions of ourselves and be RAW HONEST WITH OURSELVES.  We begin to question things with a new perspective and a clear head.  We lose sight of past goals and begin commitments to new goals.  We continue to walk…because we know we will continue to grow and learn and change, if we just continue the path.

Then a curve ball comes our way. We are faced with temptations and triggers all around us.  We may fall; we falter — but because of our commitment to our Higher Power, we get up again.  What did we learn?  Are we on the right path to begin with?  We know that Harm Reduction is a realistic model –for some.  We know that self-medication is a symptom of something deeper….We have learned about relapse prevention and what it looks like for us, and a model of what it may look like for others.  But we continue to question the journey….

Why are we here?  What the hell are we doing here?  Is the sole grand purpose of life to serve others faithfully without judgement?  Is that a challenge we can overcome?  Am I ON THE RIGHT PATH? Will it be a lonely path to continue to walk?  Perhaps I should be out ghost hunting?  Perhaps I should start a half-way house?  Perhaps I should get a degree in Addiction Counseling and try to help others like me?  Perhaps I should start a hospice home and help those who are terminally ill to not be afraid to die and to be able to do so peacefully and comfortably?  Perhaps I should write a book?  Perhaps I should change careers and get back into helping to provide others with vocational training?  Perhaps I should get back to Human Resources instead of Harm Reduction?  Perhaps I should get on with learning to Podcast and get back into Voice-over work, broadcasting, and pursuing my dream of Recovery Radio?  Perhaps I should just learn something entirely new altogether, go on Shark Tank and become a millionaire?

Perhaps I am being stupid.  I do not control the outcome.  I KNOW who is in control of this life and it is NOT ME.

I am restless, anxious and BORED.  I AM READY FOR A MAJOR CHANGE.  I just don’t know what it is yet.  Does anyone else feel this way?  Email the mailbox I added to this website and TALK TO ME!!!!  contact@nmrecoveryhope.blog

In the interim…peace, love, and blessings to all who read this…

I haven’t had the time to blog on this site for quite a while and I apologize to those who have been faithfully following, it has been a strange summer so far.  I was just getting on my feet; with a new roommate, and I bought a swingset for my yard to swing on too. I had finally accrued some paid time off and was planning to visit my daddy for his 85th birthday in Las Vegas. Also my daughter comped me a ticket to go visit my son for the first time in Madison WI.  Everything seemed to be finally coming together for a normal life in recovery.

THOSE WHO KNOW ME OR FOLLOW THIS BLOG, NORMAL NEVER HAPPENS. There’s always something lurking on the horizon that we just can’t see because we are not developed enough to see through the veils of time. I have stayed in a relationship with my late husband’s mother (my mother-in-law) for the last fourteen years since his death. I usually called her once a week since she lived in Rochester, NY and I live in New Mexico. The last time I called her right before the 4th of July she told me she had fallen and was in pain. She has been in pain a long time because the idiot doctor has been giving her the same dose of methadone for 15 or 20 years and she built a tolerance to it. At age 93, I was worried about her fall. She also had gotten to where she couldn’t hear me even with her hearing aids in, so I told her I would email instead.

I sent her a lengthy email kind of chewing on her about getting her other son to advocate for her to the doctor. Well my brother-in-law has access to read her email so he responded to my email to her about two weeks later telling me she was in the hospital and it didn’t look good. He called me the next day and said that the doctor said she had shattered her pelvis, her kidneys were failing and her heart was giving out. He recommended hospice “comfort management” where you take your loved one home to die and just give them pain medicine until they do.

When I told my kids, my daughter offered to go stay with her at the hospital while my brother-in-law went home to MI to get his things and come back to NY to transfer her home and stay with her. He handed back off with my daughter who then had to get back to Flagstaff where one of her students had died of an overdose. My son flew out next and I offered to come right behind him.

When I got there to her apartment at the assisted living place, I was stunned to see that he had her in a recliner and planned to keep her in it except for getting her up to change her which was excruciating for her. Since I had no authority and she was still lucid, I had the chance to spend some quality time talking with her and physically taking care of her along with a hired hospice nurse on shift. She knew she was going to die but kept asking me (and everyone else as it turns out) to give her a shot to end her life.  Her thick Russian accent almost made it cute the way it sounded and I had to explain to her that they do that for animals but not people. It turns out that there are states where this is legal. When I told her that, she said she wanted to move. We chuckled together briefly. Her son only would give her the pain medicine (concentrated morphine dose) when she asked for it. It took several days and several nurses to explain to him that she was suffering and needed to get it on schedule as the doctor prescribed.

Why am I telling you all this? TWO THINGS. One, it was difficult for me to do this and not feel triggered. But I did okay after all. Two, once we began administration on schedule she deteriorated overnight, and when her death rattle began, I knew we were close to the end.

I AM SO GRATEFUL THAT SHE PASSED AWAY PEACEFULLY WITH ME ALONE IN HER APARTMENT> It was a beautiful and intense moment for me. We spent the night with her body because he didn’t want to call someone to take her away until morning. I learned a lot about life during this experience. The next day we focused on business, getting the arrangements prepared. It was my birthday too. So we had a traditional Russian Orthodox service that is like a viewing, then the next day, we had the long Russian Orthodox funeral service. We traveled to the cemetery where my late husband and father-in-law are buried, and we buried her beside them.

I feel like a chapter of my life, a long painful one, is finally closed. I don’t know if I will have any further connection with my brother-in-law. He needs to reach out to me, as I have tried to stay connected with him for years. I feel like I did everything I could for my mother-in-law; like I did what I thought was the right thing; what my husband would have done for me if the situation were reversed.

I am now making a long journey home. She left a lot of money to her son, the church, and some to my children. What I received, was the blessing of watching her transition from this life to the next.

Peace, love and blessings to all who read here….

I have come pretty far in my first 18 months of recovery, but I know I will have a long battle and way to grow for the rest of my life. What is it they keep telling me? My addiction is waiting for me in the parking lot to kick the hell out of me and destroy me and my life all over again? I say NO WAY! Time to put the gloves back on. I have a deep, growing anger toward this disease, and I plan to unleash my fury in the most impactful ways I can.

I am taking a brief break from my online Master’s program to get reorganized. My employer wants to share about the dangers of not disposing of prescriptions properly (and believe me that is impactful). Okay let’s say it is meaningful. I was researching for this share for him and came across a really good website for addiction. This woman looks much younger than I and has done some amazing things with her site.

It got me to wondering if I should keep my site going, or hire someone to help me do to this one what she has done to hers: (click on this link and check it out)

https://doseofreality.com/

https://www.doseofrealitynm.com/safe-medication-use/

I’m not sure if it is linked to a national website for NM to use it or what but there are so many great resources built into it. My generation, I just don’t have the same computer skills, so if I decide to keep this site going, I will need LOTS OF HELP redesigning its purpose and functions.

Yesterday’s Just For Today message said: “Build, don’t destroy” — “our negative sense of self has been replaced by a positive concern for others,” and the message’s content was about not feeding gossip or the darkness of negativity. I want to help; that’s given number one. I want to get involved; that’s given number two. I need to continue my education while working full-time toward the end goal of walking a new career path and a life in another location. So, for now, I will continue to just blog until I can get assistance to redesign this site and make it more functional; to help those with addiction.

The women at the office are still gossiping and playing their games, but I just smile and give it all to my HP. I am the most fearless that I have ever been and it feels so good and so liberating to know that I can do what I want with my life. Nobody can control my life anymore. What a great realization. Changing our thoughts to change our behaviors; that’s Cognitive Behavioral Thinking in a nutshell.

If something is driving you emotionally crazy, stop and ask yourself how you can look at it differently so it feels good instead of bad; rewind and re-frame it.

I plan to enjoy myself while I am between classes. It was the right moment and the right decision in order to get a chance to relieve the pressure. I will be working more efficiently. I have also learned my limitations (due to the damage my addiction caused). I have a visual memory impairment; so I am researching methods to improve my slow reading limitation. Let me know if you have any recommendations.

Peace, love and blessings to all who read this….

When I was a little girl, my parents took us to Giant Rock out in the Mojave desert for a UFO convention. There were hundreds of people from all walks of life; all disciplines. Everyone was camping out.

We met a man who had designed what he claimed was a time machine. I later met Dan Fry from Roswell who claimed to have had an alien encounter. He stayed at my folks house and gave me a copy of a book of poetry he wrote, and he autographed it for me too.

We went to Giant Rock a few times. We also went to a UFO convention in Tonapah, Arizona. My mom took me to see a woman there who channeled an alien. What a kick she was!

I was raised to believe in God, the Creator, and that we are not alone in the universe. I have seen some truly inexplicable things in my life, but have not had a close encounter.

Although I am in recovery, I think I would have to have a stiff drink after that kind of experience.

In the interim, I have been painting, caulking and redecorating my place. I am keeping quite a busy pace. I am trying to get ahead in school.

If I saw an alien or UFO, I’d ask them to do my homework and take me for a ride 🙂

In the meantime, peace, love, and blessings to all….

You know it never ceases to amaze me how in this new millenium some cultural issues never change. Remember when you were a kid, and you used to play telephone? Back then, you would have someone whisper something to you, then you would whisper what you heard to the person next to you, then they would do the same thing, and so on. By the time the “original message” from the very first person got through the group of players, it was usually really distorted in content.

Also, I have to say that with all the studying I have been doing and homework for my degree program, I am learning that some things and some people never change. Females are held as the highest gossipers. I would argue that men are just as bad if not worse, except what I have witnessed is that when men gossip, it’s out of boredom. When women do it they are downright vicious and determined to hurt someone. Why are women so hateful to one another sometimes? I watched that HBO special about the abused gymnasts and saw how they banded together as a voice of empowerment and fought a monster, and in doing so started the #MeToo movement. I was really crying as I heard their impact statements. Wow, check it out through Amazon or on HBO direct if you can, it’s called At the Heart of Gold. <–That’s how women should be toward each other! Supportive!!!

Anyway, relationships are such work, aren’t they? I mean all good relationships require work otherwise they are just passing acquaintances. Communication and compromise, as I always say!!! Well, it has become very easy for me to withdraw from friendships with women over the years, because they are such work, and because I have been burned by so many in the past. Recently, I had really developed what I thought was a close friendship with a female colleague, and had been giving her guidance, helping her with her work projects, and lately, bought her a front-row ticket to a concert for her birthday. We had a good time, I thought. I didn’t get much sleep but it was worth it to me.

Then of course the very the next day comes the hateful stream of text messages with no explanation as to what (who) is behind them. You know what I learned? I was happier without the investment in this relationship. It sounds like that’s an unhealthy attitude, but it is better not to have these toxic women in my life. I give too much; get burned. Where is the trust? Enough of that. On to happier topics. So I think that drugwarfacts.org is a great resource, I think I have said that before and if I didn’t, go check it out! It covers every possible topic related to drug and alcohol addiction. I learned all about Ibogaine, and then studied other topics on it too. My current research is on the use of antidepressants to treat depression, in spite of the fact that a lot of them (SSRIs) are known to cause suicidal thoughts or behaviors. Psychotropics = not the answer. Will let you know what I discover are the best treatments. I already know one is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. These teach change techniques and self-awareness and are really easy to use if you buy the workbooks on Amazon cheaply. Also they recommend activities like Tai-chi, yoga, and meditation (ommmmmm!).

Keep searching, keep learning, keep changing, keep growing…be part of life not apart from life. The best way to deal with your emotions is to deal with them. Get a deck of cards. On all four of each of the Aces or face cards, (your choice, like for the women, we may use all four of the queens), write down four different emotions, one per card. For example the Queen of Hearts is LOVE or LONELINESS…the Queen of Spades is ANGER… the Queen of Diamonds is SHAME or GUILT…and the Queen of Clubs is FEAR or TRUST. Basically you choose the names of the feelings or emotions and place them on the cards, then shuffle and deal throughout your day until you get at least one of those cards. Once you get one, then decide to let yourself feel it, even if you do not want to. Sit or lie in a comfortable position and ask the card you drew what the healthiest way to play it is in your life. WRITE DOWN ALL FEELINGS AND SITUATIONS WHERE THIS EMOTION IS IN PLAY. This is a coping skill. WRITE DOWN HOW YOU WILL LET GO OF THE EMOTION UNTIL IT IS NEEDED AGAIN. NEXT, TELL THE EMOTION THAT IT IS DISMISSED; IT CAN GO UNTIL IT IS DRAWN AGAIN. THEN PLAY A GAME OF SOLITAIRE OR GO FISH and JUST LET THE CARDS BE FUN.

If you know of other creative strategies or coping skills for depression, please share with us here at the link on this page. You can also email vanesseter@gmail.com

Peace, love, and blessings to all…until next time….