Mindspace

Al- Anon gems

Al-Anon this morning was priceless.
i have been simmering all week. It started out Wednesday when i watched my husband consume 7 bottles of wine with 6 guests. Just the following Monday i was so proud of myself for not stressing out.
Then there were 2 more parties after and then this weekend in Monterey where i watched 1 bottle and 2 half bottles get consumed.
I know that when he stepped out to let a crab go and i wondered if he had stopped into another restaurant to get a beer, i am officially back to obsessing about my husband's drinking. Time for another meeting.
But this morning, we did the 4th Step -- what better distraction from my qualifier than to do a full blown inventory about myself. i've done so well for the month of November with my busy speaking engagement schedule. So busy i hadn't had any time to monitor my husband's drinking. When my meeting-mates ask me, i proudly declare " i am too busy living my life to notice ".
But now that the frenzy has simmered down and the holiday parties are up, i am back to noticing the empty bottles and the dishwasher full of wine glasses.
I notice myself crabbier, and more impatient. More prone to pushing him away. All in the same breath, grateful and thankful that if this is the most it is -- it is great.
But as i rushed in this morning to sit at a meeting, i know it's exactly what i needed to hear:

• One woman's definition of impatience as the inability to believe that we won't be here forever.
As i was taking my 4th step inventory in the meeting, i realize impatience was at the top of my list. i just apologized on text to my husband for being impatient over the weekend. i am trying to own my "defects of character" and "promptly admit it and make amends".
i am learning to trust that as my daughter systematically reads in fetal position and my son burps out loud proudly and they both have atrocious table manners that somehow this is temporary and they will learn in time.
i am trusting that this hard, lonely stage in our marriage is just momentarily, and the tomorrow or maybe in the next second, things may change.
i realize a part of me is so adverse to change, that i am willing to sit here, set up camp and make this god-awful miserable place home, because it's too much work to entertain being fluid and flexible -- even if it's in a good way.
Yet i've been praying for change forever.

• One woman talked about how her sponsor got her to imagine her ailing mother wrapped in a blanket of her own Higher Power.
The part that struck me was "HER OWN" higher power. The one hysterical thing about 12-step is that you don't have to share God. Everyone has their own Higher Power. They define it their own way, they have different relationships with Him/Her. We don't share.
Which a part of me just loves. Which a part of me feels is Christianity anyway -- we all forge our own relationship with God. But i think we often forget, we think our loved ones have OUR God, relate to God OUR way, should see God OUR way.
So this morning, i wrapped my husband in a blanket of his OWN Higher Power, trusting that God loves Him, is desperately worrying about him the same way i do. Ok i edited the last bit.

•One woman talked about how she was mad at herself for marrying her qualifier.
That one hit a chord. i was just trying to figure out this morning why i always hit this wall of fear and incredulity every time i find out my husband drinks. It would be as obvious as if i found out he was Chinese. But i reel. i lose it. i lose it to panic and fear and shame and betrayal.
And i realize as this lady shared, a part of me still can't forgive myself for marrying this part of him. Or marrying him.
It's god-awful to admit, given i am a classic, text-book co-addict. But listening to this lady share and how she married not one for 4 alcoholics/addicts. It is just heartbreaking.
And i am trying to focus on the fact that his drinking has more to say about me than him. That somehow i would be a person that would end up with someone like that.
As if i wasn't an addict myself, or couldn't be one. As if there is a part of me that blames myself for his drinking.
But this morning, i am struck by how i can imagine a part of my husband realizing this blame i feel towards myself and him. How it must be hurtful. How it must be horrifying.
To not be loved and celebrated unconditionally. The way i feel he loves me, when i am not busy reeling from being abandoned by his silence.

• One other lady shared about how abandoned she feels by her husband who found recovery and now instead leaves the family to go to AA meetings instead of drinking or drugging.
A part of me laughs. An addict is an addict, and when you get sober, you just graduate to more acceptable addictions -- like meetings.
A part of me resonates with him as she insists that he is losing his family while helping the world -- sponsoring other men. i know i feel the same way with my husband's trips to Haiti and dad's mission trips at a time when his grandchildren are growing up right before his eyes.
i am reminded of a scene from a movie when Jim a famous missionary leaves his family to go evangelize the aborigines who eventually killed him. i remembered the tears in his young son's eyes who begged him not to go.
This estrangement, this ambition, this purpose and calling God puts on men's hearts -- it's just heart breaking. Don't tell me it's good.
It's another addiction. i've reconciled myself with the idea that in order for men to feel purposeful in the world, they need the support of women, and then they leave.
We are suppose to find support elsewhere.

But i sat there, eyes closed listening to each share. Thankful for a mindful, cost-free space to reflect and hear myself. And to hear my Higher Power speak to me, and tell me serenity is possible; to say the serenity prayer with a group of other people. To hear others struggle with addicts in their lives with grace and dignity.
i love my Redwood City Homegroup. i feel so loved and seen by them. i am finally staying back and talking to them. i got a number from a friend today. Grateful. Thankful. Loved.

Grateful Mondays

Its a beautiful foggy Monday -- i am loving and relishing my precious day off. It starts the week off right, with the busy weekends we keep. i am getting my routine down and protecting it with my life. i typically, wake up, try not to stress the kids out  ( " Why are you so calm mommy ? Usually, you are all over the place. " My little mirror comments ) because they typically oversleep from the weekend activities. We grab a quick breakfast and i try to start their week calm and prayerful.
I run one errand before my 10am Al anon meeting, stroll casually to my 12.15 Dailey Method workout, lunch and possibly do one more errand before early pickup at 3.10pm.
On Mondays, i wake up and dress down the one day of the week besides Saturday. i wear my perfectly coordinated Lululemon workout clothes and meticulously wear a dress-down, non-made up "Nude look" and mess around in my Ugg clogs.
i relish the fact that my Al-anon group and the mom's group at school get to see me in my workout, stay-at-home mom outfit of the week. Every other day, i am dressed to the nine for work. Never thought i'd appreciate dressing down.
But Mondays i am typically overwhelmed with gratitude, grateful for the give. i am realizing that it is indispensable given now my schedule has me back to back for the next 4 days. Tuesday i am on from 9-5 back to back, with one hour to wolf down lunch.
i am so aware of other times in my life when the day ran into each other and i didn't feel the warm security of and a single finite day of hard earned rest. Of feeling the absence of guilt, and the pre-ache of a hard driving week ahead.
Everything is so much more precious in contrast.
Listening to K-love on a foggy day --- thank you Lord.

Little Man

Little man couldn't be more perfect right now. I think God is so amazing to give me the chance to raise a man -- someone else's husband one day, a chance to be loved so completely and sincerely.
I'll never forget one retreat up in San Damiano and i was reflecting on how mistrusting i am about the affections of men -- how conditional i always feel their love is.
And i reflected the exact moment in which i realized there is one space where i actually let my guard down and let myself trust the love of a man -- that is in the arms of my son.
Aidan at 7 is a bona fide codependent. i am already saving up for his therapy bills. He has a heart as large as the ocean. While his sister has the detachment, the distanciation skills to make her an excellent physician or therapist, he is truly incapable of watching or imagining anyone in pain. He used to shake watching the slightest violence on TV.
I remember when the little boy almost drowned in our pool, and enoch was giving CPR and the police and the firemen were around, my daughter hovered around curious and unmoved. Aidan was huddled in the corner of the playhouse quivering with tears, that night he bequeathed all his birthday toys to the little boy hoping that he would get well.
Even today when i cuddle up with him in a special moment to affirm him of how much i appreciate him, he would pause and say " How about Nally ?"
But he is in such a Oedipal stage right now, i wish we could stay here forever. He hugs me as says " Mommy you are gorgeous and glorious! ". He says "Mommy you are the BEST mommy in the world "
More than that, he is so quick to anticipate my needs, my stress in the mornings, helping me pick up the kitchen or wipe down the counters.
Tonight as i watch him pick up my clothes, hang up my jeans, run to get me a mug for teeth brush, tidy up the bathroom counter, i marvel at how and where he is learning all this.
He is always appreciative of everything i do for him " Thanks mom" or apologizing for the slightest bad mood i'm having " Sorry mom" even when it's got nothing to do with him. He is the baraomenter of our how family when all of us is disassociated and preoccupied, he can sense the slightest tension in the air between enoch and i and starts working to dissipate it immediately.
He gets my door, he carries my grocery, he gets my plate.
Just feel so loved by him.

Halloween

 

We missed Halloween last year because we were in Singapore.
And i realized, i missed one of the most stressful festival of the year. Somewhere between the projective identifications that are walking around, and some unwritten sworn oath every parent has made to make all their children's "fantasies come true ", somewhere between it being a costume making, baking and party event, it's every introvert's nightmare.
This year's Halloween ran headlong into what i'll now affectionately refer to as "marketing month", which meant i took the same perfectionist tendencies i had with my powerpoint presentation into baking -- which triggered flashbacks the size of my RISD days. i had never felt more incompetent, conspired against, like a failure, agonized and obsessive compulsive since i was preparing for crits in front of my Swiss professors.
I know i had reached new levels of trauma when i was muttering to myself in tears when the cake pops tipped over 5 minutes on the way into the car and then in the car and then on the way to the class.
But here are the pictures. The kids had a blast. Of course, Aidan changed his costume 8 minutes before he left for school, so that Ninja costume was made literally in 5 minutes. Thank Goodness, it only comes once a year.

Natalie Baking

The kids have to be about the perfect age -- more than being articulate, introspective and insightful post-hours therapists, they recently newborn cooks.
Nally's totally coming into her own in the kitchen. She now attends cooking classes on her own, googles recipes,  makes full blown cakes while i nap on Sunday afternoons.
Between that and watching Daddy's cooking shows, i am so pleased to see Aidan sitting there flipping the pan and shaking it noisily like the professionals. 
I now can be effectively bribed to take them to Mcdonalds on a school day morning by waking up to fully made, calorically acceptable breakfast -- scrambled eggs with spinach and turkey/fish/chicken and a cup of coffee ( Starbucks mixed with peppermint cocoa and a dash of creamer ). It's full service in our house.
The other day, i sat down on a Sunday to make stew in the crock pot and i had 2 suse chefs who fought over who gets to cut mushrooms and onions, peel potatoes and carrots. We had more fun making the soup than eating it.
But i am so struck by how we would never had experienced this new surge of interest and independence if we kept our in-house cook -- the nanny.
We learnt that if we let the kids make their breakfasts, they eat it. The other day, Aidan chastised me for assuming that i knew what he'd like for breakfast and putting it on the table BEFORE he opened the fridge and figured out what he wanted. ( Nevermind he liked my suggestion and ate it heartily )
But here are pictures of them cooking and cleaning. Nally bakes every weekend getting the same therapeutic relief from flour and mixing i get from writing and reading poetry.
I for one get increasing grouchy as the kitchen gets increasingly covered with uncontrollable dusts of flour and sugar.
The upside is on days like this on Thanksgiving morning, we are greeted with chocolate chip pancakes made on the fly, in the moment -- they are amazing!

 

Harvest

I was at a retreat at San Damiano and the leader asked us to think of a word that characterized this season of thanksgiving and the word "harvest" came to mind.
It has been a frenetic couple of weeks of a new flush of clients. I'm back to the crazy trainee days of 30 client hour weeks.
It's been a while, and the summer was a 3 month lull of sometimes 10 client weeks so i am facing this new flush with both new gratitude and skepticism.  The ebb and flow of private practice still unnerves me, both the fact that i can't control it and that is is unforgiving in that an empty client hour just resounds there without any busy work to fill it.
But on the other hand, God is reassuring me.
My practice is in a new space. My new clients are no longer from the "front lines" -- the cold calls that come through Christian Counseling Center. They are friends of clients, they are people that "found me" or "chosen me" from 60 other of my colleagues poring through the profile directory of the center. One of my clients asked to see me twice a week.
I have been furiously marketing with speaking engagements and yet all of my clients have been gifted to me from "ground up" from the referral richness of a 3 year old practice or from the confidence of a colleague referral which always hits a special collegial chord.
My heart overflows with gratitude at a God whom i've entrusted my living. It feels like the old days of handing over a design practice asking that He gives me enough clients to pay for my tuition for school. The gratitude every quarter when the funds came in to pay for 4.5 years of graduate tuition.
But this Thanksgiving, i am surprised by yet another "harvest": clients that i have been a year with "little" change;  clients, i've categorized a "Axis-2", the pure Freudian psychodynamic client that you know you're working in the "unconscious" space of attachment and object relations; clients that i have spent a year working in the winter of their lives, barren and "unproductive"; woke up to unexpected strides.

- a woman in mourning, paralyzed with 7 years of grief suddenly found work, is drawing boundaries and redefining her role in her family.

- a 50 year old man who hasn't worked in the last decade preoccupied with caring for his children in an acrimonious separation  suddenly starts his life back up again by going to trucking school.

- a 20-something tells her father about an abuse she kept secret for a decade.

Huge strides, enormous change but they crept up on us like the California weather -- teasingly, unpredictably, and unconsciously. Without knowing, we have ended up in Fall, relinquished our summer wear and adjusted to the reds and oranges of the thanksgiving season.

Unconsciously, after wailing and grieving for a year -- we have ended up in a season where all our prayers have been answered, all of our wounds are healing, and everything we've asked or imagined is given,
and
ironically,
we are too busy, too content living life
to notice.

Blogging at San Damiano

i am blogging at San Damiano.
i almost feel hedonistic sitting there with my 3    incarnations of technology -- my phone, my kindle and my laptop. It's rainy outside and i've had my fill of Edwina Gately. Too many poems read by the poet herself. Yet enveloped by the energy of my favorite part of the retreat center -- the bookstore -- i feel finally centered and content.
i need the written word to ground me. Center me. The room is too comfy, the retreat too wordy. It's too wet to be outside.
Yet here, i am so thankful to finally be able to write. It's been so hard to even ground myself enough to blog.
But i am reading old entries in 2008 and it's so poignant and lovely to see God come full circle.
• 3 years ago my husband and i were at a party that made me officially worried about his drinking
• 3 years ago, i attended Al-anon for the first time.
• 3 years ago, i weighed 130 lbs which is what i finally weigh AFTER 3 years managed to get back to.
• 3 years ago, i ran into Kahlil Gibran's poem about Love and i swear it is just about perfect for a couple i am working with today.
The beautiful thing about blogging for the last 8 years is that i have history documented for all but mostly me to see. i see the rhythms of His goodness, the wisdom of His hand, the parts of life that has not changed, and yet the poignancy of what has -- my own eyes, new perspective, new wisdom on my part.

Loving my Kindle

So i finally broke down and bought a Kindle.
In the efforts of being more environmentally friendly. In the effort of having all my books "with me at all times". And i am blown away at how much i love it.
It suits me perfectly.
Suits the way my brain works with books, in that i sip them only in small increments. All of my poetry works just perfectly on a Kindle. They are slivers, and exist only in small bites on a page. I love that there is so much room around them, so much page. I love that i can bookmark them and find them immediately to read to my clients. i love that i have this bizarre feeling of having Hafiz, Mary Oliver, Rumi with me at all times.
i realize that there are some books i just want to be near. i want "with me", who's presence calms me. i realize books have been my soothing blanket as a child, during awkward moments at the table or socially anxious moments. i have a book. And now i have 20 books.
Slivers of them, the exact line, page and number all the touch of a screen.
It's lovely and i realize, it's not fiction i want with me. It's the wisdom of Pema Chodron or David Whyte, or David Richo.
i realize that just being in the library at home calms me down, or bookstores.
The kindle is the  closest most portable way to it.

San Damiano with Edwina Gately

Up in San Damiano for a much needed respite off a month of craziness. Up here with Edwina Gately -- poet, artist, activist. i first learnt about her through her work with inner city prostitutes.

Up here with my friend M who is going through a divorce.
Up here grateful, a little off kilter from the mixture of energies -- my friend's M's frenetic warmth which i've always adored, Edwina's British energy which is slightly triggering from my British "Professors-oppressor" days. The beauty of San Damiano always throws me. My body almost responds to it involuntarily. The air just makes it way into my lungs, without having me to do those methodical deep breathing exercises i did with a client just on Thursday.
i am "stuck" up on the hill, neither here nor there.
Knowing that i am too twitchy to be up here and too wired to go back down there.
But i am trying to enjoy a different experience.
-- the ease of a girl room-mate with masks and talks in the dark
-- having Edwina love a poem i wrote and read to the group
-- settling into M introducing me as a psychotherapist
-- noticing how hard it is for me to show up, the more visible she is.
-- my immediate connection to a more cerebral group retreat across the way
-- the beautiful mugs i got to buy for M as a gift
-- my gravitation to art and painting this weekend
-- my need to write on the computer again

Thank you Lord,

i am trying not to pick at your table
To settle into this season of gratitude and
receive wide eyed and open
every morsel as if
you have tenderly prepared for me
Thank you Lord
i am grateful
this season of harvest feels rich and undeserved
i feel thankful in my practice,
for the love and loyalty of my clients
for the joy of being held
so carefully by them
the connection,
they see me as much as i take pains
to see them

The Power of Prayer

Somedays i feel like i should just read my blog. Because the things God tells me are the same things resonating through the years.
i've been changing blog editors and thumbing through old entries and ran into this one almost 6 years ago.
It seemed so poignant next to this past month since God has been re-emphasizing in my heart the importance of prayer; since i've taken up his challenge to wake up every morning to pray for my marriage.
I don't know what's changed in my husband's heart but this I see: - a new peace, confidence and commitment in our marriage

- a new power in my counseling practice as i stand on what i do know is true -- His character, His power, His will.

- a place to put my control-freak anxiety in a way that is productive

- the children's new awareness of special time and a new love for His word.

- new intimacy and grounding with Gods

I sat in Al-Anon this morning and meditated on Step Two...

We came to believe that a Power Greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.

Ultimately, the torture and terror isn't outside of us, but in our heads. i keep thinking that true peace lies in a destination. My husband's epiphany, his spiritual awakening, his recovery. That's not the restoration that God promises. He promises sanity.

And these days, i am even asking for serenity.