Look. The crap you’ve had to fight against for so many years has exhausted you. Give yourself a little kindness. The ideology that sucked your daughter in was unimaginable. Until it wasn’t. How could you have protected your family against something that didn’t even exist?
This! I was going to the comments to say: give yourself a break. This is much better.
I’ve racked up a good bit of clean and sober time and one of the things I learned is that the need to escape, what some call the disease of addiction, feeds on shame. The shame over using (once you’ve made the decision to stop) actually feeds the next stage of the cycle. The pressure becomes so intense that the solution or excuse, to use again, becomes inevitable. I use to tell my sponsees: don’t torture yourself any more than is absolutely necessary. The whole cycle of addiction is grounded in shame and defenses we took on to protect ourselves. Since we weren’t protected, for whatever reason, we held on to those defenses, now internalized, until they turn on us. This is just just my experience, strength and hope about wanting to quit, and drinking anyway.
About motherhood, I have nothing. I was ambivalent to the point of heeding Philip Larkin’s ‘This be the verse’. I was so terrified I’d recreate my childhood for my kids, that I didn’t have any. I didn’t have your courage.
You are welcome. I’m an older retired pediatrician who saw my colleagues (not all but many) buy into this crap. I’m also very family oriented personally so how this crap ideology destroys families is something that I just hate. I think it’s an evil cult.
One thing I know about you, Mrs. Miller, is that you're a fiercely loving mom. That's absolutely clear. We all make mistakes as parents, so I'm sure you've made some. But those kids know you love them, and in the case of your daughter, telling her the truth even when it hurts is part of loving her. I'm sure she knows that.
And in the way you love your kids, you're already following God's example of unconditional love. The way you love your husband, too--to get past what divides your and stay close anyway.
Don't let a brief fall off the wagon cause you to spiral down. Look up. Pray. There's a lot to thank God for in the midst of all the garbage and stress of life. (I'm preaching to myself here, too. 😉)
As always, thanks for sharing yourself so fully and honestly with us. ❤️
Your writing resonates so much. I wish you the things you wish for yourself. If you find them, leave some breadcrumbs to help those of us still looking (I'll do the same).
Thanks so much Josh. I feel the same about you. When I discovered your work it was a huge defining moment for me. Feel honored to receive your support. ❤️
I wish I had words of wisdom to share, but I too am in a foundering boat scooping handfuls of water oversides. Sobriety is a rough fuckin grind; "they" say it's nigh impossible without some kind of community, and I'm inclined to believe them on this one, based on personal experience and that of others. Just having one other person to be accountable to can be enough. It's too easy to lie to ourselves or doomloop or wallow. The serenity prayer is some real shit. You aren't alone. Thank you for sharing, so that I know I'm not alone either. ❤️
you got it Cat. it's why I'm here. And between you and me, the validation from readers like you is in itself the wisdom I seek. How do I know this? Because it has a calming, restorative effect. So thank you.
I'd say God Bless You, Mrs. Miller, except that I'm an atheist, so I can't in good conscience say that. But the sentiment is the same. You're having a dark night of the soul, because you care so damn much, and you love with all your heart, and you want the best for everyone you love, and you worry about them, and the world, and yourself, and, like all of us, you know you're going to die but you don't know when. For some people, praying to the God of their understanding alleviates that anxiety. Maybe it can do that for you.
Just my opinion, obviously, and I could be 100% wrong about this. But I believe that all religions come from the same source and have the same purpose. They help us let go of fear and helplessness about the things over which we have no control...which is just about everything except the way we behave. And sometimes that's the hardest thing of all.
Like you, I gravitate more towards Buddhism, because it doesn't have a god per se, but it has great appreciation for the bitterness and contradictions of life, spiced with irony and self-forgiveness. It offers a pathway for navigating the worst of times. So I just pulled out my used copy of "When Things Fall Apart," by a Buddhist nun named Pema Chödrön. I opened it at random (which always results in a miracle of synchronicity) to page 69, where I found these words, which I had starred with a pencil decades ago:
"When everything falls apart and we feel uncertainty, disappointment, shock, embarrassment, what's left is a mind that is clear, unbiased and fresh. But we don't see that. Instead, we feel the queasiness and uncertainty of being in no-man's land and enlarge the feeling and march it down the street with banners that proclaim how bad everything is. We knock on every door asking people to sign petitions until there is a whole army of people who agree with us that everything is wrong. We forget what we've learned through meditation and know to be true. When really strong emotion comes up, all the doctrines and beliefs that we've held on to seem kind of pitiful by comparison, because emotions are so much more powerful."
Meditation. 20 minutes a day. It helps. It has no agenda except self-awareness, as long as you understand that it's not a panacea. Between that, exercise, music, some time spent around trees, and socializing with people I like, I stay more or less sane.
Last thing that comes to mind is this: I finally understand what it means to have perspective, to put myself in other peoples' shoes. I resented my parents for most of my life for all their foibles and flaws, and we weren't close. It was nobody's fault, that's just the way it was, because we're not perfect, etc.
Now that I'm old enough to die (72), I see clearly where their suffering came from, how hard they tried, and most of all that they were good people who could never meet my standards because I was a child who didn't know diddly squat and thought that the world revolved around me. Now they're gone, we can't go back and do it over, and I can't tell them the things I would say if they were here, which is just the way it goes.
FWIW, I'd say to you, Mrs. Miller, respect your pain but don't wallow in it. Spend these last precious days with your parents and forgive them for absolutely everything, including the things you can never forgive them for. Hug them and kiss them and cry, because they're going away forever. My parents were dying at the same time, it took awhile, and it was hard, but my sister and I were lucky to be able to care for them. As the Buddhists would say, everything passes.
I am right there with you. Empty nest is hard without the past few years that families went through, so it makes sense that we are troubled. I have found great help from reading Michael Singer (living untethered), listening to his talks a lot (this is a good one: https://youtu.be/Wts16PcAsSM?si=xx0eThwNd66N2fjx), doing yoga nidra daily (this is a good channel https://youtu.be/UWRRoL3vMN0?si=9bP0CTG80NW3QHB-), stepping away from the election and the news, and getting really active (physically and socially, I try to say yes to everything). Therapy too. And, once in a while, finding voices online like yours that make me feel less alone. Sending love.
I’m a new reader and fellow often-struggling parent, so glad other Substackers pointed me to here. Every day I find new beautiful powerful writing, words that resonate. Such as these: “But the seriousness of sobriety is exhausting. The clenched mind like teeth.” You found words for the thing I’ve only felt but never verbalized.
Thank you! I will say that for me sobriety took time to feel less serious, less of a consuming burden. Four years in, I’ve found the lightness of daily life again, the normalcy and frankly the joy of not drinking while the allure of it has basically vanished. But it took time and grit and patience and God… Anyway. Wishing you well and will keep reading.
Thank you! I could get drunk on literary praise that's for sure. You've inspired be to be serious about not drinking and thus locate the clearheaded lightness.
I’d like to say get out and get a hobby. But living in a blue area, you’d probably immediately find yourself in a pronoun circle and I’d be concerned for all involved.
Thank you for sharing. I wish I was more present for my teenage daughters during the Trump years in which I thought I could save the country from him. I thought they didn’t “need” me and I thought I needed something else. I would do over in a heartbeat if I could.
Now as an empty nester, I have started going back to the church I grew up in. I go by myself, pray for myself and loved ones especially my TID . I wish my husband would go with me but he doesn’t want to. It’s ok. It really helps. I did see a class being offered on the spiritual tenets of AA that looked interesting.
Be gentle on yourself and one thought keeps getting offered to me through this all, is to love and accept myself unconditionally as the greatest example to my daughter in how to be in the world.
1. The prison door is not locked - you only have to open it and walk out, but as you know, that's the tricky part.
2. The doubt you feel now, will be the regret you live tomorrow, if you don't find a way off that sinking boat (emotional and mental). As you have seen in comparatively smaller ways, your fears will become truer and truer, the higher the water rises.
3. You are allowed to let go of the uncertainty, fear, anger and desperation - nothing catastrophic will happen if you do. If it were going to, it would've already. What is almost certain is that if you don't let them go, very bad things will happen. What they never tell you is you can hit the reset button, as many times as you like - the Tao would suggest not to reset wastefully though.
4. Those pleads to your ceiling were answered, but not exactly the way you wanted. Just in what you've shared, your daughter is still unmutilated, un-drugged and in tact. The answers rarely come exactly as we hope, but they do come the way they're supposed to. You do not know the purposes down the road and she, like all of us, will be a hostage of her own free will, until she learns not to be. Keep praying and asking for God to keep her safe healthy and sane - in whatever way He determines is best.
5. The hard talk: Do not waste the time ahead. You do not have to die alone or with regret. You already have experience walking away from one form of mental and emotional control. Stepping away from this mental manipulation follows the same steps. The only difference is it's you and your learned history, that's doing the controlling. That's why it seems harder. Keep in the forefront of your mind the revelations you had after walking away from the left - "how could I have believed all that self defeating garbage...how didn't I see it for what it was...why did I waste so much time mired in that pit of emotions, lies and manipulations...I wish I had made that change sooner".
Up till now the journey has had huge ups and downs, but you get to decide what it will be going forward. You are allowed to be happy.
I find myself relating to you in almost all your posts. We obviously have many things in common, except I DID find myself succumbing to the bliss of Christ in 2009. However, the bliss only lasted a few years, after that it was as raw as an open wound. I don't know if all those fuzzy Christians follow a different Jesus to me or if they are just just more blessed with a sense of ignorance, but personally I have found this road of sanctification to be extremely painful. It has occurred to me, that when God calls you to Himself and when you submit to follow, it is a road of pruning and testing and open heart surgery. Everything you love is put to the test and apparently you still have to trust God no matter what the cost. My footing has slipped many times. My humanity frail and my will is weak, but like a fool I persist to cling to this hope in have in Christ. The thing is though, if it's all true then Jesus Christ really is the King and God has saved me from he'll and there is nothing worth more than eternity with a God that is all loving and Good. I have tried to throw the towel in many times and I have been tested and broken a few times on this pilgrimage. There have been many times I have wanted to float in the ignorant bliss of the blue liberal world of sin and pleasure, but i cannot.... my heart has been bought and it seems my faith is quite unshakeable even beyond logic.
Sp apparently God doesn't save you to have an easy life, God saves you and then tests you and almost destroys you and still, you have to furn the other cheek and pray for your enemies, which Ill admit i am not there yet, HOWEVER, the internal unexplainable knowledge that God is True, does give me an eternal sense of purpose and hope that all of this BS has to count for something and that one day in a place and time yet to come, there will be judgement for all this evil that has been done in this place.
Yet another reason why you "resonate" with me. I picked up the beer 2 1/2 years into sobriety. That was about 2 years ago and barely put it down again. But the good news is, I am able to stop at some point and I don't mix with pills anymore because a permanent good night's sleep is no longer the goal. Just shutting my mind down at night. I have a lot to say about returning to use, but I'll spare you here. Just be better to yourself. You're not allowed to talk to my friend Mrs. like that. She's pretty fucking awesome.
Look. The crap you’ve had to fight against for so many years has exhausted you. Give yourself a little kindness. The ideology that sucked your daughter in was unimaginable. Until it wasn’t. How could you have protected your family against something that didn’t even exist?
Truth. I tend to lose context when railing against myself. So good at gaslighting myself. Thank you for the reminder.
This! I was going to the comments to say: give yourself a break. This is much better.
I’ve racked up a good bit of clean and sober time and one of the things I learned is that the need to escape, what some call the disease of addiction, feeds on shame. The shame over using (once you’ve made the decision to stop) actually feeds the next stage of the cycle. The pressure becomes so intense that the solution or excuse, to use again, becomes inevitable. I use to tell my sponsees: don’t torture yourself any more than is absolutely necessary. The whole cycle of addiction is grounded in shame and defenses we took on to protect ourselves. Since we weren’t protected, for whatever reason, we held on to those defenses, now internalized, until they turn on us. This is just just my experience, strength and hope about wanting to quit, and drinking anyway.
About motherhood, I have nothing. I was ambivalent to the point of heeding Philip Larkin’s ‘This be the verse’. I was so terrified I’d recreate my childhood for my kids, that I didn’t have any. I didn’t have your courage.
man alive the truth bombs keep dropping. My deepest gratitude MM. this shame thing is poison. That's why the left wields it like a weapon.
ditto
Thank you for this: How could you have protected your family against something that didn’t even exist?
I need to say that to myself and my husband every day.
You are welcome. I’m an older retired pediatrician who saw my colleagues (not all but many) buy into this crap. I’m also very family oriented personally so how this crap ideology destroys families is something that I just hate. I think it’s an evil cult.
One thing I know about you, Mrs. Miller, is that you're a fiercely loving mom. That's absolutely clear. We all make mistakes as parents, so I'm sure you've made some. But those kids know you love them, and in the case of your daughter, telling her the truth even when it hurts is part of loving her. I'm sure she knows that.
And in the way you love your kids, you're already following God's example of unconditional love. The way you love your husband, too--to get past what divides your and stay close anyway.
Don't let a brief fall off the wagon cause you to spiral down. Look up. Pray. There's a lot to thank God for in the midst of all the garbage and stress of life. (I'm preaching to myself here, too. 😉)
As always, thanks for sharing yourself so fully and honestly with us. ❤️
Your writing resonates so much. I wish you the things you wish for yourself. If you find them, leave some breadcrumbs to help those of us still looking (I'll do the same).
Thanks so much Josh. I feel the same about you. When I discovered your work it was a huge defining moment for me. Feel honored to receive your support. ❤️
I wish I had words of wisdom to share, but I too am in a foundering boat scooping handfuls of water oversides. Sobriety is a rough fuckin grind; "they" say it's nigh impossible without some kind of community, and I'm inclined to believe them on this one, based on personal experience and that of others. Just having one other person to be accountable to can be enough. It's too easy to lie to ourselves or doomloop or wallow. The serenity prayer is some real shit. You aren't alone. Thank you for sharing, so that I know I'm not alone either. ❤️
you got it Cat. it's why I'm here. And between you and me, the validation from readers like you is in itself the wisdom I seek. How do I know this? Because it has a calming, restorative effect. So thank you.
I'd say God Bless You, Mrs. Miller, except that I'm an atheist, so I can't in good conscience say that. But the sentiment is the same. You're having a dark night of the soul, because you care so damn much, and you love with all your heart, and you want the best for everyone you love, and you worry about them, and the world, and yourself, and, like all of us, you know you're going to die but you don't know when. For some people, praying to the God of their understanding alleviates that anxiety. Maybe it can do that for you.
Just my opinion, obviously, and I could be 100% wrong about this. But I believe that all religions come from the same source and have the same purpose. They help us let go of fear and helplessness about the things over which we have no control...which is just about everything except the way we behave. And sometimes that's the hardest thing of all.
Like you, I gravitate more towards Buddhism, because it doesn't have a god per se, but it has great appreciation for the bitterness and contradictions of life, spiced with irony and self-forgiveness. It offers a pathway for navigating the worst of times. So I just pulled out my used copy of "When Things Fall Apart," by a Buddhist nun named Pema Chödrön. I opened it at random (which always results in a miracle of synchronicity) to page 69, where I found these words, which I had starred with a pencil decades ago:
"When everything falls apart and we feel uncertainty, disappointment, shock, embarrassment, what's left is a mind that is clear, unbiased and fresh. But we don't see that. Instead, we feel the queasiness and uncertainty of being in no-man's land and enlarge the feeling and march it down the street with banners that proclaim how bad everything is. We knock on every door asking people to sign petitions until there is a whole army of people who agree with us that everything is wrong. We forget what we've learned through meditation and know to be true. When really strong emotion comes up, all the doctrines and beliefs that we've held on to seem kind of pitiful by comparison, because emotions are so much more powerful."
Meditation. 20 minutes a day. It helps. It has no agenda except self-awareness, as long as you understand that it's not a panacea. Between that, exercise, music, some time spent around trees, and socializing with people I like, I stay more or less sane.
Last thing that comes to mind is this: I finally understand what it means to have perspective, to put myself in other peoples' shoes. I resented my parents for most of my life for all their foibles and flaws, and we weren't close. It was nobody's fault, that's just the way it was, because we're not perfect, etc.
Now that I'm old enough to die (72), I see clearly where their suffering came from, how hard they tried, and most of all that they were good people who could never meet my standards because I was a child who didn't know diddly squat and thought that the world revolved around me. Now they're gone, we can't go back and do it over, and I can't tell them the things I would say if they were here, which is just the way it goes.
FWIW, I'd say to you, Mrs. Miller, respect your pain but don't wallow in it. Spend these last precious days with your parents and forgive them for absolutely everything, including the things you can never forgive them for. Hug them and kiss them and cry, because they're going away forever. My parents were dying at the same time, it took awhile, and it was hard, but my sister and I were lucky to be able to care for them. As the Buddhists would say, everything passes.
God Bless you, Mrs. Miller.
Thank you Beeswax. You nailed it. Love me some Pema. Stopping wallowing. Check. Planned a visit to my dad on Friday. With the whole family.
I am right there with you. Empty nest is hard without the past few years that families went through, so it makes sense that we are troubled. I have found great help from reading Michael Singer (living untethered), listening to his talks a lot (this is a good one: https://youtu.be/Wts16PcAsSM?si=xx0eThwNd66N2fjx), doing yoga nidra daily (this is a good channel https://youtu.be/UWRRoL3vMN0?si=9bP0CTG80NW3QHB-), stepping away from the election and the news, and getting really active (physically and socially, I try to say yes to everything). Therapy too. And, once in a while, finding voices online like yours that make me feel less alone. Sending love.
Thank you! Will check out Michael Singer.
I’m a new reader and fellow often-struggling parent, so glad other Substackers pointed me to here. Every day I find new beautiful powerful writing, words that resonate. Such as these: “But the seriousness of sobriety is exhausting. The clenched mind like teeth.” You found words for the thing I’ve only felt but never verbalized.
Thank you! I will say that for me sobriety took time to feel less serious, less of a consuming burden. Four years in, I’ve found the lightness of daily life again, the normalcy and frankly the joy of not drinking while the allure of it has basically vanished. But it took time and grit and patience and God… Anyway. Wishing you well and will keep reading.
Thank you! I could get drunk on literary praise that's for sure. You've inspired be to be serious about not drinking and thus locate the clearheaded lightness.
I’d like to say get out and get a hobby. But living in a blue area, you’d probably immediately find yourself in a pronoun circle and I’d be concerned for all involved.
I'm fixing to learn to shoot.
“My pronouns? Smith and Wesson.”
It's a wonderful escape and a very good skill to have! Do it, you will love it and have a blast!!!
That truly made me LOL!
Ha!
Thank you for sharing. I wish I was more present for my teenage daughters during the Trump years in which I thought I could save the country from him. I thought they didn’t “need” me and I thought I needed something else. I would do over in a heartbeat if I could.
Now as an empty nester, I have started going back to the church I grew up in. I go by myself, pray for myself and loved ones especially my TID . I wish my husband would go with me but he doesn’t want to. It’s ok. It really helps. I did see a class being offered on the spiritual tenets of AA that looked interesting.
Be gentle on yourself and one thought keeps getting offered to me through this all, is to love and accept myself unconditionally as the greatest example to my daughter in how to be in the world.
Thank you. 🙏🏼
Observations Mrs. M.
1. The prison door is not locked - you only have to open it and walk out, but as you know, that's the tricky part.
2. The doubt you feel now, will be the regret you live tomorrow, if you don't find a way off that sinking boat (emotional and mental). As you have seen in comparatively smaller ways, your fears will become truer and truer, the higher the water rises.
3. You are allowed to let go of the uncertainty, fear, anger and desperation - nothing catastrophic will happen if you do. If it were going to, it would've already. What is almost certain is that if you don't let them go, very bad things will happen. What they never tell you is you can hit the reset button, as many times as you like - the Tao would suggest not to reset wastefully though.
4. Those pleads to your ceiling were answered, but not exactly the way you wanted. Just in what you've shared, your daughter is still unmutilated, un-drugged and in tact. The answers rarely come exactly as we hope, but they do come the way they're supposed to. You do not know the purposes down the road and she, like all of us, will be a hostage of her own free will, until she learns not to be. Keep praying and asking for God to keep her safe healthy and sane - in whatever way He determines is best.
5. The hard talk: Do not waste the time ahead. You do not have to die alone or with regret. You already have experience walking away from one form of mental and emotional control. Stepping away from this mental manipulation follows the same steps. The only difference is it's you and your learned history, that's doing the controlling. That's why it seems harder. Keep in the forefront of your mind the revelations you had after walking away from the left - "how could I have believed all that self defeating garbage...how didn't I see it for what it was...why did I waste so much time mired in that pit of emotions, lies and manipulations...I wish I had made that change sooner".
Up till now the journey has had huge ups and downs, but you get to decide what it will be going forward. You are allowed to be happy.
Praying for you and your crew Mrs. M.
I find myself relating to you in almost all your posts. We obviously have many things in common, except I DID find myself succumbing to the bliss of Christ in 2009. However, the bliss only lasted a few years, after that it was as raw as an open wound. I don't know if all those fuzzy Christians follow a different Jesus to me or if they are just just more blessed with a sense of ignorance, but personally I have found this road of sanctification to be extremely painful. It has occurred to me, that when God calls you to Himself and when you submit to follow, it is a road of pruning and testing and open heart surgery. Everything you love is put to the test and apparently you still have to trust God no matter what the cost. My footing has slipped many times. My humanity frail and my will is weak, but like a fool I persist to cling to this hope in have in Christ. The thing is though, if it's all true then Jesus Christ really is the King and God has saved me from he'll and there is nothing worth more than eternity with a God that is all loving and Good. I have tried to throw the towel in many times and I have been tested and broken a few times on this pilgrimage. There have been many times I have wanted to float in the ignorant bliss of the blue liberal world of sin and pleasure, but i cannot.... my heart has been bought and it seems my faith is quite unshakeable even beyond logic.
Sp apparently God doesn't save you to have an easy life, God saves you and then tests you and almost destroys you and still, you have to furn the other cheek and pray for your enemies, which Ill admit i am not there yet, HOWEVER, the internal unexplainable knowledge that God is True, does give me an eternal sense of purpose and hope that all of this BS has to count for something and that one day in a place and time yet to come, there will be judgement for all this evil that has been done in this place.
Sorry, just speaking from the heart here ❤
no apology necessary. thank you, Al. I appreciate your unfuzzy take very much.
I’m not crying, it’s the onions.
(That no one is cutting.)
Tears reading this. I can relate on so many levels. The fears of being alone- then having to put my “big girl pants on” and get on with life.
Thank you for reminding us that we are not alone either!! 🙏
Yet another reason why you "resonate" with me. I picked up the beer 2 1/2 years into sobriety. That was about 2 years ago and barely put it down again. But the good news is, I am able to stop at some point and I don't mix with pills anymore because a permanent good night's sleep is no longer the goal. Just shutting my mind down at night. I have a lot to say about returning to use, but I'll spare you here. Just be better to yourself. You're not allowed to talk to my friend Mrs. like that. She's pretty fucking awesome.
Awww Jean. We should have a Fresca together. 🥹
Appropriate post for Day 1 of DNC. 😔