Category Archives: Women

Growing Your Beautiful Life

Posted on January 13, 2014 | Leave a comment

Hello Friends! I know I’ve been absent for so long. I am making an effort to return here regularly. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve stayed away from here because I realized that “Mother of Addict” had become too much of my identity.

Now I’m back because I know that “Mother of Addict” is not my identity. It describes one of the many roles I play in life – but it does not define me. I realize that while I don’t have control over many things in my life (or, even more so, in my children’s lives), I can have control over my own perspective about who I am.

One new identity I’ve added recently is Certified Christian Life Coach. Part of the reason I haven’t been here is that I’ve been building a new blog. I hope you’ll visit me there. My coaching blog (and my coaching business) is called Growing Your Beautiful Life. And we’ve just begun a journal project there. It runs for 10 weeks – and just started yesterday. So if any of you are interested in using my journaling prompts to explore who you are and where you’re going in this new year, please feel free to check out the blog and the project and jump in. You can formally register here (for a more personalized approach), or you can just use the journal prompts I’m posting each day. There’s no charge to register – it’s my gift to you!

In the meantime, I’m still OneMomTalking and continuing the journey. Know that I pray for you all (collectively and often individually), and send love across the cyber-miles.

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Posted in Coaching, God, Heroin, Identity, Parent of addict, Parenting, Recovery, Spiritual Growth, Women

Peace and Now

Posted on December 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

You are nowYou’ve heard of “peace and quiet.”  I suggest we change the phrase to “peace and now.”  Now is quiet – maybe not outside of us, but internally…spiritually.  At the core of who we truly are, now is silent and cannot be altered.

Sounds too easy?  It is and it’s not.  I’m reading Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now,” and I’m in a  section toward the back of the book titled, “Give Up the Relationship with Yourself.”  What? Isn’t our recovery about RECOVERING our own relationship with ourselves. It’s the same thing. Just roll with it for a minute and I’ll do my best to explain.

It’s this idea: “If you develop a sense of identity based on your [victimhood, loss, recovering-parenthood, etc.] you have escaped one trap only to fall into another.”  (That’s a direct quote from the book except for the parens).  This is because any identity other than your pure essence (some might say “God”) is frought with some earthly or ego-centered frailty at one point or another.

Here’s the peace in NOW:  Right now I am this breathing body filled with the spirit of life.  If, tomorrow, I experience a trauma and my mind/body experiences intense pain of some sort or another, at any given moment I am still this breathing body filled with the spirit of life.  What I’m trying to get to is this question (which we’ve discussed before in a different context): How do you identify yourself?  I’m thinking that the answer to this question begins any person’s true recovery.

I’m really just thinking through this “out loud” here on this screen.  But I’m experiencing access to an always-accessible quiet of “Peace and Now” lately. And this time it’s not just because my boys are in full recovery – because one of them had a relapse recently.  He had a relapse and I started to re-identify with my “parent-of-addict-filled-with-fear-and-worry” self again. But I was reading this book, and I find I’m changing a bit in my ability to … as A Course in Miracles says … “See things differently.”

Please know I’m not lecturing or making light of where you are, what you’ve been through, or what you’re feeling.  I’m just sharing an idea that might help others as it’s helping me today. Right now. God bless you.

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Posted in Addict Child, Addiction, Codependency, Healing, Hope, Parent of addict, Recovering Child, Recovery, Relapse, Spiritual Growth, Support Community, The Ongoing Story, Uncategorized, Women

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Missing Someone

Posted on March 31, 2012 | 6 comments

ImageLast week I was feeling so happy and filled with gratitude that my boys had birthdays and are doing well. How is it that a week later, I’m feeling despondent?  I’m filled with grief. Stress. Worry.  I don’t expect it to last. But at this moment, as I’m writing, I’m deep in it.  I miss my boys so much. In a way, I still feel like I’ve lost them.

They are at the age when it’s right for young men to move on from their parents and make their own lives. That’s not quite how it happened though, is it?  They didn’t graduate high school and go to college and get a job out of town. I want to go back two years and erase it all and re-write the script and replay it the way it was supposed to be.

I feel selfish even writing this. There are parents out there who’s children are on the street or in hospitals or  who have died. My boys are in recovery and they send me birthday cards, give me a call now and then.

I miss them. I miss them so much. And I miss being able to hug my daughter who is right here in this house with me but stopped letting me hug her after the whole addiction mess played out. So the boys are now 20 and 22, and my daughter went to prom last night and will graduate high school in a couple of months and won’t let me hug her. And here I am.

I guess I can be sad and grieving and grateful and blessed all at the same time. That’s it then. That’s what I am right now – all of those things. Figuring out how to be “One Mom Talking” all on my own.  But, oh yes, you all are here. Thanks for that. Thanks for listening. God bless you.

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Posted in Grief, Parent of addict, Parenting, The Ongoing Story, Uncategorized, Women

The Passionate Life!

Posted on January 21, 2010 | 8 comments

My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
Bette Davis (1908 – 1989), The Lonely Life, 1962

Someone commented the other day that they were happy to know that my passion was helping women know their worth.  I was thinking that, as parents of addicts, it’s easy for that role to take us over and become the central way we define ourselves.  YUCK!  So I have a question for you all:

WHAT ARE YOUR PASSIONS?  Mine are (a) helping women know their worth and guiding them through times of life change and spiritual searching, (b) performing arts — both as audience and performer, (c) words and writing, (d) family and game nights!  (In no particular order)

An Assignment:  Please respond to this post and list some of your passions.  Tell us about what you love to do — and then plan a time when you will do one of those things over the next week.  How about that??  And please suggest this post to others.  Let’s see how many of us we can get to walk on the plus side!  THANKS — you are all terrific, loving, strong parents.  And don’t you forget it!

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Posted in Addict Child, Parent of addict, Women

50-Something Women

Posted on January 20, 2010 | 5 comments

I have a 15-year-old daughter.  My hope for Cathy is that she will understand her innate value, and not attach to the crazy pressures our culture puts on girls and women these days.  When I am not wearing my addict-mom identity, this is my passion — helping women know their natural value as God’s creations!  In doing this, perhaps I can set a stage where my daughter can flourish in her life. 

To that end, I will sometimes post links to sites that support us ladies as we walk through this often crazy world.  “50-Something Women” is one of those blogs:  http://50somethingwoman.blogspot.com.

Let’s grow strong together!

5 Comments

Posted in Miscellaneous Chatter, Parent of addict, Women, Women over 50