We were committed. The fire had been lit at sunset that would burn throughout the deepest, coldest and longest night of the year. It was the Solstice time when we would honor the frozen earth. We were committed to stand barefoot on the icy ground around the fire and pray. These are ancient scared rites and if they are done properly, no one suffers but all are renewed by the experience of the ceremony. Holy herbs are offered and burned as we sing in a language that is nearly forgotten in the modern world. We were near the top of the sacred mountain where the Creator is known as the “Greatness of All Things”. We were sober natives from various Tribes and we made our prayers in the wilderness where we would remain unobserved by outsiders. The purpose of our prayers was for the next seven generations of the keepers of the mother earth, to have the strength to endure the coldest winds of winter and keep our traditions alive. They were also for our elders to survive this year’s winter purification and for our ancestors who have gone before us.

Winter is the time for storytelling. We pass on those stories from our ancestors to our children and grandchildren. They help us to know who we are and why we are here. We re-tell Creation stories about how our people came into this world. We tell personal stories and some funny stories. An old woman told me that storytelling is a dying art. Before she died, Margaret told me to keep storytelling alive for the children. Tell these things in an animated way with different voices for every animal and sound effects. Do not be afraid to be animated because this way the stories will be remembered. They will entertain the listeners. The elders told them around the central fire in the longhouse where the family gathered during the long winter nights to stay warm. The extended family was drawn close to each other in this loving way. The elders were magical in their storytelling. Some of the stories were about healing herbs or animals or beings who crossed into other dimensions to find answers for the villagers. The stories contained very descriptive accounts of sights, sounds, smells and other sensations so the listeners could really see and feel the lessons contained in them. It was like watching a good movie to hear these stories. They inspired in us the desire to paint the characters, or write songs and poetry to express our love of the characters who came to life for us on those cold long winter nights. The best stories had moral teachings woven between the lines so they were educational as well as being a great way to keep warm and pass the time.

In recovery we learn to tell stories of experience, strength and hope to inspire each other to stay sober. It’s how we carry the message to others. These stories also carry a moral lesson between the lines. It is the most important lesson we can learn. Our stories make us into an extended family of sorts, who loves and cares for one another. Our personal winter solstice was the end of our drinking, the darkest and longest night of the soul. If we survive that dark cold time then every day afterwards we are heading for the renewal of springtime and new life. Getting sober is like standing barefoot on the frozen ground unafraid of the future because we are now resting in the loving hands of our Creator. We trust the process; the purification and healing that come from patience and tolerance and moves us into happy, joyous freedom. We are not afraid of our pain and we enter into it with the courage to change. The stories of others who have made it through the dark night guide us like a light through the fear and unknowing. We learn to trust each other and eventually tell the stories of the steps that are lit by the adventures of our own experience. My Grandpa said the meeting was like the ancient council fire where the people came together for healing and wonderful things came to pass for them and countless others.

Link to website: http://frandancingfeather.com/solstice/

She wrote the outstanding book, Women, Food and God which was featured on Oprah. One of Geneen’s articles was featured on Soulseeds’ Seed Exchange. This article was first published in Good Housekeeping.

There are some things in life you take for granted: Your children will outlive you. No matter how tough it gets, you won’t poison your spouse with arsenic-laced toothpaste. And if you have a best friend, you will attend her wedding.

But life sometimes upsets our most basic assumptions. And although I haven’t resorted to the arsenic (yet), I did have this surprise: My best friend from college got married today and I wasn’t there. Never in a million years did I think I would miss her wedding. We’d been talking about it since we were 18. And yet, when it came down to deciding about making the trip from California to New York, I did something radical, something I rarely do: I took my own needs into account.

I stepped away from my notions of what a good person would do, what any loyal friend would do, and considered the facts: I’d just returned from teaching an exhilarating but exhausting weeklong retreat; I had a broken ankle and a sprained back and could barely walk; my friend decided to get married rather suddenly and told me she wasn’t expecting me to come. And I realized that although I would miss seeing her walk down the aisle if I didn’t go, I would be a hobbling, exhausted wreck if I did. So I stayed home, sent champagne, and wrote my friend and her new husband a wedding story. It was an agonizing decision but not nearly as painful as the tale I told myself about it: If I don’t go to my best friend’s wedding — the very friend who held my hair back the night I drank a bottle of Cold Duck and threw up on the sidewalk — people will finally discover how selfish I am and I will lose every friend I have. I will spend my dying days alone, dribbling Diet Coke on my chin with no friends or family around. As soon as I realized I’d made a leap from taking care of myself to visions of dying alone, dribbling and friendless, I understood that I considered looking out for my own needs a radical concept — so radical that it scared me to (a pathetic, lonely, and potentially sticky) death.

I should know better. In working with tens of thousands of women over the last two decades, I’ve found that there is a whole set of beliefs called “the bad things that will happen if I take care of myself.” I’ve heard things such as, “My son will choke on a fish bone the minute I leave him alone and take some time for myself.” “My husband won’t be able to make friends without me if I stay home from this party and rest.” “My friend will hate me if I don’t make brownies for her bake sale.”

Think about this: Do you feel it is right to put yourself at the center of your own life, or is your secret fear that if you consider your own needs, you’ll alienate the people you love and end up homeless, rifling through old chicken bones in a dark alley? Are you afraid that a “me first” attitude will get you drummed out of the “good people” club?

Most of us secretly believe that good people, especially women, take care of others first. They wait until everyone else has a plateful and then take what’s left. Unfortunately, most of us make decisions based on our ideas of who we think we should be, not on who we actually are. The problem is, when we make choices based on an ideal image of ourselves — what a good friend would do, what a good mother would do, what a good wife would do — we end up having to take care of ourselves in another way.

Enter food. When you don’t consider your real needs, you will likely fill the leftover emotional hunger with food. (Or another abused substance. Or shopping. But most of us opt for food.) You eat in secret. You eat treats whenever you can, because food is the one way, the only way, you nourish yourself. You eat on the run because you believe that you shouldn’t take time for lunch; there’s too much work to do. You eat the éclair, the doughnut, the cake, all the while knowing this isn’t really taking care of yourself. But to really take care of yourself, you have to think of yourself first.

“Is that possible?” you ask. “What about my children? I’d die for them.” Have you ever considered why, on an airplane, the flight attendant tells you to put on your own oxygen mask first, before you help your children? It’s because your kids’ well-being depends on it. If you aren’t grounded, present, calm, and able to breathe, there is no one to take care of them.

What would your life look like if you acknowledged the truth that working nonstop for 10 hours, taking care of other people, leaves you so spent and weary that there really isn’t much left of you for your kids, let alone yourself? What would your life look like if you realized that you need to set aside time every day to fill yourself up — even if it’s only by taking a few 15-minute breaks during which you stare at nothing or go outside or lie down? What would the pace of your life be if you went on “soul time” instead of clock time, even just a little?

It’s possible. A few days ago, I spoke with a first-time mother. Her baby son had colic, and she was completely exhausted. She was so afraid she wouldn’t be there when he needed her that she couldn’t sleep even when he was napping or with her husband. And she was turning to food to calm herself down. I asked her what it would be like to do something very simple for herself: to sit down and breathe. That’s all. No big deal. Nothing to achieve. Just let the body do what it was already doing and give herself a break. She said she could try that. She just breathed.

At the end of five minutes, I asked her how she felt. She said she was relieved, immediately calmer. She said that since she’d had her baby, she had forgotten all about herself and her needs, and while some of that was natural (“I’m so in love with him,” she said; “I’ve never known love like this before”), she was not serving him best by exhausting herself. She said that caring for herself was doable — maybe not in the same ways she did before she was a mother, but in new ways. Taking small rests. Eating well. Going outside for even five minutes while he naps. “I can do this,” she said. “I can treat myself with the same kind of care that I give him.”

“Now you’re talking,” I said. “And the better you take care of yourself, the more he will know as he grows up that it’s fine for him to take care of himself, too.”

If you operate on what you believe a good mother/partner/friend would do and you leave yourself — what you need, how you feel — out of the equation, your relationships will suffer.

I’m here to tell you that cherishing yourself by making yourself a priority in your own life is possible. You can take care of your needs and your relationships with family and friends can thrive. I know, because I am making this my daily practice, and I am confident I will not go out either alone or dribbling.

copyright 2010 by Ian Lawton. All rights reserved.

We are all story tellers and that innate ability has helped many of us share about ourselves and uncover truths, as well as assist others find keys to their own recovery.

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Love and Tolerance.

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The functional alcoholic (not in recovery) is still attempting to control his own life and manage his secret addiction. He is a willing subject of King Alcohol. Therefore he hasn’t hit “bottom.” He is not ready to consider getting help even though he suspects he drinks too much and too often.

Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. ~ Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions 2011, p 24

In other words, the functional alcoholic is able to maintain denial of the problem. In fact, only those closest to him have any idea that he is held captive in the grips of alcoholism. You may have a family member or coworker who is a functioning alcoholic and not be aware of it.

In practical terms, here is an example of the behaviors of a functioning alcoholic:

• Preoccupation with the next time they can drink
• Only willing to eat where alcohol is available
• One drink always leads to a craving for the next, and the next
• Habitually drink before going out for meals or to the bar
• Increasing memory lapses or black outs
• Surround themselves with heavy drinkers
• Reputation for being able to ‘hold their liquor’ better than most
• Reluctant to leave an unfinished drink
• Cannot imagine life without alcohol
• Setting drinking limits and breaking them
• Exhibit personality changes when drinking
• Able to be dry for periods of time, then quickly increasing consumption again
• % of alcoholic content becomes increasingly important in drink choice
• Quickly become defensive if confronted about their drinking habits

PS: Are there other behaviors that you would add to the list?

How many of the above behaviors does it take to qualify as a functional alcoholic? Any 3 should be a red flag.

Answer: Go to the meetings anyway. If the meeting you attend is God-centric, ask about other meetings, or shop (more plentiful) Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for one that’s more your style. The “higher power” isn’t God, necessarily — it can be goodness or reason or whatever you regard as an entity that’s bigger and more enduring than you are.

Think of it this way: When people have big things to wrestle with, often they take comfort in seeing mountains, skylines or beaches. Why? Because monumental things make a person feel small and impermanent. So all you need for the higher-power process is the idea of something that makes you, by comparison, small and impermanent, something that will long outlast your pain. It’s about bringing your problems down to size.

Comments:

1. Just let go. “Letting God” means accepting that whatever’s going to happen will, whether you throw a fit about it or not. I don’t know if I believe in God, but I believe the world revolves on an axis that isn’t me — something I didn’t grasp before recovery. God’s existence or lack thereof has been a minuscule part of my recovery.

2. Thanks. It’s “letting the chips fall where they may,” if God-free cliches make the concept easier to accept. Even non-addicts can benefit from reminding themselves that much of their sense of control is an illusion, that choices that are truly, 100 percent ours are quite limited. Liberating, really, if you think about it, and quite useful when deciding where to focus our attention in increasingly cluttered times.

From: Carolyn Hax Advice Columnist at Washington Post

The Almighty commands us to use our free will: “See, I have put before you, life and good, death and evil … choose life so that you may live…” (Deuteronomy 30:19).  Why choose life so that you may live rather than choose good? To choose life is to choose to live in reality and to accept the pain of living in reality rather than seeking comfort, indulgence, escape.  Free will is about moral choices of right and wrong — not about which flavor of ice cream you wish to eat.

If you can answer the following question as it is answered here then these suggestions in using your Free Will can be helpful in “doing the next right thing”.

“What does God want?”

To use your power of choice to merge with the most meaningful and powerful Force in the universe: the transcendental, The Power of God.

Suggestions:

1) Be aware. We are making decisions all of the time.  Once you become sensitive to that fact, then you can monitor your choices.  Don’t let your decisions just happen.  Take control.  Ask yourself: Is this the decision that I want to be making?  If it isn’t, then change it.  At this point, you’ll be using your free will actively and not passively.

2) Be your own person.  Don’t accept society’s assumptions as your own unless you’ve thought them through and agree with them.  Take responsibility for your decisions.
Likewise, don’t be a slave to a past decision; just because you once thought that you couldn’t do something, don’t mean that the decision still applies.  Start each day anew.  Constantly reevaluate where you are in life in order to be sure that what you chose then is what you would still choose now.  Make sure it’s you who is guiding your decisions, not your decisions that are guiding you.

3) Understand that the battle is between the desires of the body and the aspirations of the soul.  There are times when you know objectively that something is good for you, but your physical desires get in the way and distort your outlook.  The ultimate desire of the body is to take it easy –to escape and exist in perpetual comfort rather than make the effort to confront life head-on.  The ultimate desire of the soul is to live fully, vibrantly with every fiber of your being to do what’s meaningful, what’s right, what’s productive.

4) Identify with your soul.  Your soul is the real you!  Therefore, if you can identify with the desires of the soul, it will satisfy the needs of the real you. Your task is to train the body and coax it to reflect the reality of the soul.  Use the same strategy that the body uses on you. Identify with your soul and make your body a reflection of your soul.  If you do that, you’ll have real inner peace.

The story goes that Brian was leaning against a fence enjoying a magnificent view of the Grand Canyon, when the fence broke and he began plunging down into the abyss.

About halfway down he was able to grab and clutch the branch of a tree growing out of the side of the canyon. Gasping he looked up and down, there wasn’t any escape. The chasm below stretched out before him unbroken for 500 yards or more. He knew to fall would be to die. He also knew that no one had seen him fall, he was alone at that lookout spot and he guessed that he was far enough down that his screams would not be heard. He knew that this was the end, but something inside of him desperately wanted to live.

He cried out to the heavens, ” God help me.” Recognizing how much fear he was in he again repeated, ” Please God, help me.”

To his amazement, within seconds there came a response, “All right.” The initial warmth and relief turned to even more fear as the the voice continued, “Let go.”

Brian glanced down thinking maybe something below had changed, but he still saw the cavernous abyss and he knew that to let go would be to die.  He looked to the heavens and said, “But God you don’t understand, I’m too far up, I can’t let go”.

“Let go,” the voice repeated.

Silence filled the canyon, then in a weak terrified voice Brian asked, “Is there anyone else up there”?

Many people feel strange when going to their first A.A. meeting. Some people think they are too young to be in alcoholics anonymous. Others feel embarrassed or haven’t been drinking for very long. There are even members of Alcoholics Anonymous who never really drank “hard” liquor.

At Alcoholics Anonymous, you soon learn that it really doesn’t matter how much you drink, where you drink or what you drink. The important thing is what alcohol does to you physically and psychologically; only you can decide whether or not you have a drinking problem.

Here are just some of the Myths & Truths about Alcohol and Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.):

Myth: A.A. is only for older people who have been drinking for several years.

Truth: Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship for anyone who thinks they may have a problem with alcohol abuse; no matter how long you have been drinking.

Myth: I can’t be an alcoholic, I can drink a lot and not get sick

Truth: Even people with large capacities for alcohol can become alcoholics

Myth: Joining A.A. means complying with a bunch of rules, regulations and people telling you what to do.

Truth: Joining Alcoholics Anonymous is always free and never requires forms to sign or dues to pay. The only “requirement” for joining Alcoholics Anonymous is a desire to stop drinking. People in A.A. tell stories and give suggestions on how to stop drinking and stay sober.

For more information on Alcoholics Anonymous including news, website reviews, meetings and more, keep visiting us here at www.TheAABlog.com