Expect a miracle - Conscious contact

I'll be staying in step 9 for a while longer.

I did some reading on forgiveness, what it is and what it isn't in my Al Anon books after I meditated for 40 minutes this morning.

I don't think I've had a spiritual awakening yet in regard to my parents. Maybe because I'm in the middle of remembering everything that happened to me, and coming to terms with it, instead of being in denial. Apparently I need to be here for a while.

I keep bouncing people on and off the list.

I do have four people that are on it, and are a "yes" right now, and I'm living amends with them.

The first person on the list is me.

Part of my living amends is not contacting people or saying thing to them that I don't mean. That means I am not in contact with my biological parents right now.

At the meetings today, I was thinking deeply on what is behind how they treated me.

I came to a somewhat final answer in ACA. My Higher Power invited me to imagine that they weren't abusing me, they were abusing my Higher Power. Then, since I was able to see that they were really abusing my Higher Power and not me, my Higher Power invited me to go deeper, and see that they were also abusing themselves.

I don't know what this means, but I feel better.

I also have seen from this past week, that what they say to me and what they do to me is not about me. It is about them - they are telling me something very important about how they see themselves, by how they treat me. By wounding me, they are showing me their wounds.

Maybe I can eventually find some compassion for them. I feel somewhat softer - but I still don't want to talk or deal with them. Just the softness is okay for now.

I am softer with myself, and able to acknowledge that what I want and say and do matters. It is not silly that I find joy in Pusheen the cat.

It is okay to have a comfortable fashion style that is understated, but with some sparkle. I don't have to stand out in a crowd. I can wear my Christmas shirt any day I want to, and it is okay. I can enjoy life.

After the meetings, I went back to my favorite thrift store. I felt like there was something there for me, and for my husband and sons. So I went shopping with my Higher Power. I found the most amazing things, and I didn't realize at the time what they meant, because I didn't remember (lack of sleep could have something to do with it.

1) I found a necklace with an angel on it that is exactly like the angel pin I remember my Grandma having. My aunt had picked it after my Grandma died, and I forgot she had it. I had a huge fight with my Mom about her giving it away to someone else. It turned out the angel pin my Mom picked was not the one I wanted. I felt like my Higher Power was telling me that everything would be all right with my Mom and I eventually. My grandma is still looking out for me, just like she did when I was a child.

2) I found a silvery gold tree made out of grapevine. Just last week I went to a super high end christmas store, and saw a beautiful silvery gold tree. It was almost two hundred dollars. I thought  it was so beautiful. This one cost me about $4.

3) At the same store they had so many beautiful crystal ornaments. I found one at the thrift store with a mother and child for less than a dollar.

4) At the same store they had candles with flickering flame that were also incredibly expensive. I found three for less than two dollars.

Those were just the things for me that were really miraculous. I followed my Higher Power's will, throughout the store, going right where I was directed, and found everything I was supposed to find.

My Mom and Dad are they origin, the vessels through which I came, but my true parent is my Higher power. He is Father, mother, sister, brother and community to me. When I walk with my Higher Power everything falls gently into place.

I don't know why my parents chose to behave the way they did to me. I am not a Higher Power, and I don't have all the information. Maybe they didn't know what they were doing.

I don't have to judge them to protect myself. I don't have to harbor negative feelings to protect myself. I don't have to control them to protect myself.

It is my Higher Power's job to keep me safe, loved and cared for, and my Higher Power was there for me. My Higher Power placed other people in my life to fill in the gaps.

Every time they hurt me, they were hurting my Higher Power. Every time I hurt others, I hurt my Higher Power. My Higher Power lives in and works through people, myself included.

I didn't expect a miracle, but one found me anyway. Several found me, based on that shopping trip!

Just for today, I will acknowledge the miracles in my life.

Just for today, I will expect a miracle, and search for it.

Just for today, I will let myself be loved.

Change as Love Change as Good - One Day at a Time

I love change. I can count on change. If I am willing and go with the flow of my Higher Power change becomes a source of strength.

If I can change, everything becomes possible to me.

Real change is gentle, seasonal and tender. It is not jerked or forced or harsh. Return to real change is a return to love, a return to renewal and a return to the True Self.

I love changing, becoming, being.

True self becomes dominant with real change.

I can't change the past or the future. But I can heal the past, and by doing so become healthier for the future in the present.

In this moment I can touch my entire span of life and transform everything to good. That is the power of my Higher Power, given to me. As my Higher Power is, so am I.

When I am in my Higher Power's will, everything will turn out for good.

When the anger, resentment, control and disease are felt and released, or healed, then gratitude naturally bubbles up and constant contentment becomes my companion. Everything becomes beautiful.

I told my Higher Power I was angry at him, he could have changed what happened to me when I was little. My Higher Power said yes, I could have, but if I had you would not have become who you are right now. I like who I am right now.

People around me made poor choices, but I chose to stay with my Higher Power and trust in love. Because I was able to believe in the absence of what should have been there, my parents' love, I was able to be a part of the stream of goodness.

My addictions I built became tools helping me to a better life, and for that I will always be profoundly grateful.

When I accept and love change, everything becomes possible with a Higher Power whose unchanging strength is seen in change, in the power of being able to draw good out of anything.

If I say with my Higher Power, I can draw good out of everything that could happen to me as well, just like I'm doing right now.

Just for today I will be grateful.

Just for today I will trust.

Extreme Self Care - Powerless 2 Powerful

Once I realized that I was grieving, after a long session of meditation, I immediately moved into extreme self-care mode.

I realized I was feeling the same way I felt when those close to me had died.

It's a blank feeling for me. Like there is nothing there. The mind does.not.work. There is constant tension behind the eyes, and lack of appetite. This contains an element of depression, because the people aren't really dead. The relationship is dead.

Some days its only been as much as I can do to just say my Higher Power's name over and over again. When I speak HP's name in my mind, I'm invoking HP's presence and help, according to my tradition. HP lives the name, to speak it is to be with.

Extreme self care is increasing meditation. I did 40 minutes this morning and again when I came back from work. Because of that I was actually able to work on  my term paper.

I decided that I would only be able to do 5 hours at work (gratitude: P/T flexible job).  I stopped for conscious breaks every hour. I got up, I minute meditated, I watched the rain a bit. Instead of stewing about something I needed to do, but wasn't sure about, I made those jobs a priority and asked right away so I wouldn't waste any more time. I need people. I need help.

Fortunately I've got a great supervisor. Unfortunately the way that person treats me is better than I was treated growing up - so being with them brings the sting of what wasn't there and makes me aware of what I missed. Today I was able to turn from that sting and be grateful they are in my life.

I read in a book about emotionally absent parents that looking for what wasn't there was just as important as what was there. I found a lot of what wasn't there for me. Neglect is an accurate word.

I remember being so hungry at night I couldn't sleep. I remember gorging myself at holidays because the food actually tasted good, then feeling guilty at eating so much. Then feeling guilty because I liked it better than my family's "healthy" food. I still feel guilty eating until I am full. What about all those other children who don't have any?

Extreme self-are is doing what I can, and surrendering what I can't. I can't pray the rosary. I can meditate. I can't read long passages in the sacred text. I can repeat short verses to myself. "I AM with you always." I can't go to church, I can read the daily mass. I can't be happy. I can be sad.

I set myself in meditation to feel the grief. To feel the sadness, the anger, the betrayal. I will do it as often as it takes, for as long as it takes. When I choose how and where to let it flow over me, when I let myself know that there is a safe space for expressing my pain, it doesn't come out sideways at work or home.

Just for today I will remember that this is just part of the journey, a really hard part, and tomorrow will be different.

Just for today I will practice extreme self-care, and let go of everything else.

Just for today I will do the feeling so I can have the healing.

Just for today I will surrender what I can't, and do what I can.

Just for today I will let the love be the pain.

Grief Journey - Powerless 2 Powerful

I have felt absolutely bereft the past couple of days.

I have been and am grieving the loss of birth family.

With acceptance that a birth parent is a narcissist, comes the decision to distance, and the realization that everyone in that family now appears lost to me due to the poisonous toxic waste put out by the abuser.

I have been put in the role of the golden child, the mascot, the lost child and now the scapegoat.

It's funny how all these roles are run through in a toxic family.

That is their dysfunction. Now that I do not fit in or accept a role - the shunning aka scapegoat.

I went to a meeting tonight, filled with longing for answers and full of problems.

I received insight into what I needed to be doing instead. Reminders. We read from the ODAAT book, and the topic was problem solving. By the end of the meeting I had what I needed. My problems are still there, but they can wait.

Right now I need extreme self care and a strong connection to my Higher Power. I'm not even able to pray in the traditional sense that I am usually able to. There are no words, there is only pain. Pain is all I have to connect with to my Higher Power.

So I gave my Higher Power my pain. My grief. My longing. For 40 minutes.

I need something to show me my progress, so I'm doing my meditation with an app now. I can see what I have done, and also see that others are meditating as well. I don't feel alone.

I need people, but I need to feel that security as well that comes with no people. Social media's "with but not with" has become a huge source of self care right now.

I am completely powerless. Now I can become powerful.

Just for today.....just for today...I will be here, in my pain.

Just for today I will be powerless and become powerful.

The loss of Sacred Text and the finding of spirituality

One of the saddest things that happened to me as a result of abuse was losing the ability to find comfort in the sacred text of my faith.

This was a direct result of the 'accusing voices' or 'critical parent' script, that told me what to believe about what I was reading once I physically got away from the abusive family and church I was a part of.

I was always able to find joy in the Psalms, however.

I have only just recently been able to return to other portions of the Word. The Gospel of John has always been a deep comfort, along with his other books. They are so mystical, so only-easily grasped by the heart and spirit, that I don't know if I ever heard a sermon on them. 

The Song of Songs was another - oh, to be loved that way, and to love! I have returned to this book over and over through the years, re-reading it over and over before key moments in my spiritual journey.

Before I became Catholic, it was all I read. Before I entered Mt. Carmel and before my first and second promise. I imagine if I am called to continue in Carmel the rest of my life, I shall return again to this masterwork of the Spirit.

With the freedom of the Spirit, I have been able to read and appreciate other spiritual traditions without fear of being hexed by the bogeyman.

I'm currently reading The Four Agreements, and I've found that its common sense take on life not only echoes but reinforces my own tradition, and give me muscular practice in spiritual change.

I find the sayings / teachings of Rumi inspiring as well.

Right now for formation I'm reading the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross. I feel like I am looking into his soul. It is his personal Song of Songs. Sometimes I almost feel carried away, out of myself. I can't read it through without entering a spiritual state.

Poetry has always spoken to me, has been there for me, and has given me a voice to express the inexpressible in my own life.

My day has been tiring. My sleep was broken multiple times, by outside forces, but I was able to surrender my sleep to my Higher Power, even surrender the inability to return to sleep, and took it as an opportunity for communion.

I'm getting better at moment by moment communion.

I subscribe to the emails of Richard Rohr, and his meditation today (by someone else) about the God particle was profoundly moving.

St. John preaches the "NADA" or the way of nothing. My ego, my will, my control, my addiction as they slowly drop off me or reveal to me my weakness, expose my nakedness, my personal expression of image and likeness, to the divine impulse.

I slowly become, I slowly return to the garden of delight, of intimate universal communion.

But I run from God, he frightens me, a creature, by his realness, and so he comes to me in the darkness, hidden living inside a body, my body and I give love to him by loving the self and together we walk hand in hand, moment by moment.

The way of nothing is the way to everything. Because without God everything is nothing, but with him, nothing is everything.

Just for today I will try to improve my conscious contact with God.

Just for today I will seek love with love.

Happy, Joyous and Free

Today I was able to help a friend.

I was tired out, emotionally spent and happy afterward, so I went to a meeting, and for the first time passed when it was time for me to comment.

I felt like I had just given her a spiritual transfusion of blood, and I needed a meeting for support while I recovered.

I was able to go to two meetings today despite being given work to do over the weekend, and having an application left to fill out for school.

I was able to do it by resting each moment as it came with my Higher Power.

The second meeting was ACA, and I had a spiritual experience there while listening to someone share a perspective about looking at the past. I'll share this because it's also in the Al-Anon literature. Looking in the past should be like looking in the rear view mirror, just occasional glances, while living in the now is like looking through the windshield.

I don't know what it was about his story, or how he shared it, but right there I just felt very strongly the presence of eternity, and how I would always be held by love. I let myself be loved right there, and I brought all my ACA friends with me.

After doing a couple hours of work from home, I wanted to keep the excitement going by attending the Al-Anon speaker at our AA anniversary meeting, but I decided not to. I recognized that I was 'going off' into drama and excitement, and that adding another meeting to the day would be overwhelming and exhausting.

So I chose to put on a silly movie, Get Smart, and washed the dishes and made a little something to eat while waiting for my husband to wake up and get dinner for us.

I watched through half of Get Smart, then I was done, and I was ready to do more work. I was able to accomplish much more than I would have ordinarily been able to do. It is such a gift to have so much head space freed up from anxiety and trauma.

It is such a gift to work hard, and see the fruit of meditation crop up during an entire day. To know the presence of God, and to just walk always seeing God. I don't feel him, but he is there. He is just a sure presence.

I mentioned my husband, well I had several choices during the day. I could have gotten upset when he was not up at the "proper time" to get us dinner when I thought he should. I didn't wake him up and I didn't say a thing.

I was able to stay away from anger and bitterness. I was able to not set myself up as god, and I was able to not set him up as god either. I just got a little snack and trusted he would be up whenever was good for him, then I say down and did more work.

I'm really quite amazed at the changes in me. I've been treating myself more gently, and have been able to treat others gently as well. I'm not faking it anymore to survive, it's a gentleness that flows out of me.

Today I will acknowledge that I am receiving the gifts of "doing the healing work."

Today I will be grateful for the ability to do that work.

Today I will enjoy being happy, joyous and free.

The Narcissistic Void and God

I was just reading my twitter feed when I saw a tweet that talked about the Narcissistic void.

In Catholicism the new take on the 'sin' of Adam and Eve is not that they became dirty, evil and deprave. It was that something that was there before, was lost, and that was the real, intimate and internal contact with God within. Or, as it is called 'original grace.' The dirt came gradually after that as a natural impact from something beautiful missing.

That sounds kind of like the narcissistic void.

I feel extraordinarily lucky to have been able to find my Higher Power by not losing Him, so to speak. He has been there for me all my life. Bad things happened to me, but I was given the gift of retaining the faith in my Higher Power.

Was that faith accurate at all times? Hell no. Probably still isn't. But I was able to talk to Him as a friend, a confidant. For a long time He was all I had.

When I entered 12 step, I was able to take a good look at what attributes my Higher Power held, and I was able to see that I had put on Him some of the negative qualities of my parents. I was saddened by this, but really, it is quite normal. Instead of dwelling with the sad, I moved on to grateful for the awareness.

The sad comes and goes, but that is my normal, and a different topic.

Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you - St. Augustine.

I think that space within me always hoped to find a God of my understanding, kind of hoping he wasn't like my parents. And He wasn't.

By having that relationship with my Higher Power, my heart is stilled and that 'hole' feels less empty. Slowly I'm able to let him in to the broken places, by feeling all the feelings I am sent. By accepting myself as I am in each moment, I find God.

After all, its not about the narcissist. It's about me and my recovery.

Acceptance is the key to all my problems.