Like many addicts I had a complicated relationship with my mother. It wasn't until I came into the rooms that I heard of powerlessness where alcohol was concerned. The verbal chaos I was raised in was certainly evidence of an unmanageable life. The ice tea glasses of clear liquid that smelled like jet fuel my mom had to take with her to bed every night certainly seemed like evidence also. And perhaps most painful to me, the criticism my mom thought she was entitled to dole out along with judgement she was unafraid to express. For all my mom's, "Can't we just be happy? happy? happy?”, her preoccupation with image made faking it an olympic sport. As long as people thought we were ok, we were ok. Ok? I have so many instances of , "You're going to wear THAT???" imprinted on my heart I was convinced I was going to carry them around like a Nepalese Sherpa carrying oxygen up to the summit forever.
My mom also grew up in an era where being thin was a religion. My mom was 5'9 3/4" and a size 6 the day she got married. The self-hatred that drove her to drink found its origins in her physical appearance. Her inability to accept that love wasn't a function of body size. She grew up in an era where women smoked cigarettes as a way to suppress their appetite. My mom stayed thin on a diet of Virginia Slim Lights, Popov Vodka, Diet Pepsi and resentment. But when her health required that she stop smoking, she was left without her crutch. She turned to food to fill her Mike (God) shaped hole. She gained 100lbs in 2 years and developed type 2 diabetes. With control of blood sugar being imperative, she was unable to give up the use of sugar-laden alcohol as a coping skill. The surgery that ultimately caused her passing was being done to reopen the femoral artery in her left leg. She had a seizure in recovery and spent 7 1/2 weeks on a ventilator before succumbing to pneumonia. She died unable/unwilling to accept that she was powerless over alcohol. It wasn't until I came into the rooms that I read about the solution offered in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that I understood there was another way of life available. I came into OA at the age of 25 and concealed my participation in OA because I was afraid she was going to do something that would be just the excuse my disease was looking for to get me out of recovery. For 7 weeks I went to 5-7 meetings a week together with the woman I was privileged enough to enter the rooms with. When I finally told her what was going on and where I had been going she was understandably hurt that I felt I couldn't confide in her. Her bruised ego was present in our interactions for awhile. As I had mentioned before, she broke my anonymity to her sister and friend without checking to see if it was okay with me before she did it. The self-centeredness of her feeling she had a right to share things about me was huge. As I became aware of, and focused on, working the solution to my disease I began to change in a way that was threatening to my mom. See I had been her eating buddy before finding the rooms. And now I was trying to stand in my truth and make different choices around food. Her own disease would make well intended but flawed attempts to sabotage my recovery frequently because it would get her eating buddy back. It became unmanageable to live with my mom. Coming into program in February 2000, I moved into my own apartment by July. I now had a safe space to devote to my recovery. I just had to deal with the flood of feelings around my move. Thank goodness people in program freely shared their E, S, & H of dealing with similar pain,
So I came into program carrying a substantial resentment towards my mom, on pop what I later realized was the consequences of her untreated alcoholism and its effect on my life. And like a lot of unrecovered addicts I struggled with letting that go. Much to my egos embarrassment, I became what I so ruthlessly judged. Which was someone who shared about the mess of their relationship with their mother without applying the Steps to heal it. And because I then spent the next 20 years in relapse, I was talking about the dysfunction surrounding my relationship with my mother for a really friggin’ long time.
BUT NOW, receiving entire abstinent from my HP (Mike's) grace, I am seeing that relationship with Mike's eyes. Where once I saw a mom who couldn't watch my relationship with my father without pain and jealousy; I now see a woman who couldn't handle watching me get the relationship she never got to have because her dad died of a heart attack when she was 7. She had to watch her daughter get the quality of relationship she'd been robbed of by fate. And because my dad thought I hung the moon and was not afraid to show it, it became a huge source of contention in their marriage. She had no coping skills other than alcohol to handle her resentment. And while that certainly effected me significantly, I can now see her as the still suffering alcoholic who knew no other way. I have such immense compassion for her and her predicament. Truly life changing healing is occurring because Mike has removed this resentment. And as someone who thought I'd be carrying that resentment around like a scourge for the rest of my life, to say I am amazed before I am half way through is a RIDICULOUS understatement. I'm only on Step 3 and a resentment I thought would curse me for the rest of my life has been removed. Does or does not my HP Mike ROCK?!?!?!?!?!
And now that I have taken my mom off the cross of Catholic persecution, I am wishing she were still here. Because she passed in 2011, she never got to see me enter the dating world and try, however misguided, to find love. We never, ever, spoke about relationships or sex in adolescence or young adulthood. And because she was pretty apparent in her opinion that being fat made you less than in some way, I internalized that to mean that if I were overweight no man would love me. And I had it absolutely imprinted on my heart. I remember my amazing therapist asking me about my dating/love life in private session for several years. And I'd look at him as if he'd just descended from Mars and was asking where the local Martian Bar was. And Mike bless him for replying, "Bullshit" every time I'd try to explain to him for the umpteenth time that the sun rose in the East, set in the West, and no man could love me because I was overweight. Because it was GOSPEL TRUTH in my mind. You know, the mind of an addict where of course all things are true (wink, wink).
I made a decision I now recognize was born out of the self-loathing of an addict, to gain experience with physical sexual relationships outside of a committed monogamous romantic relationship. Just looking at that, it seems like a wild justification to just have a mild"slutty phase". Growing up Catholic with a woman who went to school in the 1950's, my mom had some pretty conservative opinions about sexual relations that she felt more than free to share. Good girls didn't eat the frosting off the relationship cake. (Am I right SFHS Troubies?) . But she never had to be confronted with me having a brief period of enjoying more than my fair share of unhealthy yet available frosting. She was gone before I acquired the confidence to even try. I was 39 before I had even kissed a boy and it saddens me that my mom was unavailable talk about that with me. Because like all alcoholic families the was A LOT that never got discussed. The winter after my mom passed my dad traveled to Palm Springs where he spent time with my aunt, my moms sister. After he returned he asked me in the car which was where we seemed to get a lot of deep conversations handled, a question that broke my heart. "Kathy, why did we never discuss mom's alcoholism?"
The day we decided to take my mom off the respirator, my aunt and I had a very important conversation. She had heard from one of her children that I had attended an Al Anon meeting. That in and of itself was a big problem. Because my mom prized her image above almost everything and requires secrecy to maintain it. Protecting her mage was sacrosanct. And the judgement she felt on herself she projected onto her sister and family. So the fact that she perceived any honest discussion about shortcomings as"gossip" made disclosure ill advised if not outright impossible.
But I had just been told that my mom's time on earth was limited and for the sake of my sanity I couldn't not tell her. So I screwed up my courage and tried to broach the subject as if I were releasing mustard gas onto an open field. I gingerly approached and then threw the truth as if it was a grenade that could explode. Such was my fear of my mom knowing that I was breaking the shroud of secrecy that se had so painstakingly constructed.
So I said to my aunt, "Well....um...I think my mom might have had a problem with alcohol" You would think I had just told her I thought my mom was a Libyan terrorist. And in the voice of someone who'd smoked for 20+ years she replied, "YA THINK!" I was quite taken aback at her emphatic confirmation of a problem I never even existed until I came into the rooms of 12 Step myself. And it was then that I learned that my mom's drinking was one of the worst kept secrets in her small, insulated, home town in southern Minnesota. In retrospect the story I learned about my mom getting arrested with some of the girls she'd gone to school with for disorderly conduct for spraying a cop car with whipped cream makes sense. She was probably intoxicated when she joined in on some harmless fun, and managed to be the one girl in the car that tagged a cop-car. When I learned the background on that story I originally was proud of her badge of mischievous honor. But now I can see it as just a consequence of her sliding into alcohol addiction. Of being bodily different from her fellows. And not just when she'd graduated from. from a small, private Catholic all girls college in St. Paul MN and graduated in 1958. So her alcoholism which had previously been guarded like a military state secret, was now out in the open. And I still had to go to the hospital to say my goodbye's. We drove downtown to the hospital in sort of stunned silence.
But for the family of an alcoholic, that's just the cost of doing business. It was the norm. But with the damn of secrecy broken, the former secret could now be exposed to the sunlight of the spirit. And that has just now occurred with the clarity I've received from 63 days of entire abstinence and freedom from the obsession to engage in my addiction of choice.
I now see my mom as a perfectly imperfect child of God who did the best she could handling a very painful up after having to try to accept a loss that I can't imagine. I can have compassion for the woman who didn't know any better how to treat her children or a husband who loved her immensely but showed it in some really maladaptive and codependent ways. Where once there was anger, hurt and resentment, there is now IMMENSE love, compassion and understanding. I absolutely consider this yet another miracle of healing made possible by Mike, my HP. I thought I'd be carrying around this burden forever. Shows you what I get for being in self-will. Once again God has done for me what I never dared imagine being able to do myself. The feeling of easy and healing when my mom comes to mind is miraculous. And I think, had I not fully surrendered in Step 1 and began to see my own self without shame and through eyes of compassion, that I never would have been able to see my mom that way. And that's yet another miracle. That our HP's can not only remove the obsession to eat/use, but it can truly solve all my problems. Talk about a power greater than me.
I am more than amazed before I am just about 1/4 through. And if this is how good my HP thinks I deserve it, I'm going to continue to work to achieve full recovery and be qualified to carry this message to other addicts. Because I have to share the miracle of recovery that has changed my life so much in just a little over 60 days.
Thanks for being along for the ride.
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