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brings healing, sometimes however, a bit of distance and time off is needed to heal me enough to love without conditions. since my niece has moved in with my Mom, i have been able to step away from taking care of her and seeing her four or five days, every single week. after three years of that daily, dreadful trek, i have had time to breathe and assess my own feelings about her, her health and her choices. when i called my Mom yesterday, it was because i had the desire to do so and not out of any obligation. sure she lied about how she felt about her choices to sit in her chair until she could no longer do anything. her doctors were quite explicit about what she needed to do three years ago to avoid this fate and she chose to ignore their educated advice with her ever famous, “i know what i am doing,” brush aside. i knew that she would do lie and for the first time, i did not get angry as i pretended to swallow her duplicity. in fact, i just went with the flow and found myself in a place where i could love her without any conditions in that minute. she made choices and continues to deny them, and that is her stuff entirely.
this morning as i sank into the depths, i felt a certain satisfaction that i had turned more than one page on most of my family relationships and a few of my other ones. there was not a whole lot of shaking going on and other than our dawg being all weird as i sat, as if she was afraid i was going to rise out of my body and leave her, i just heard the quiet. there are days when the quiet will not come, no matter how hard i seek it. there are other days when the battle between the noise in my head and the quiet is an uneasy stalemate with each making its dominance known to me. on days like today, when i slip into the quiet, with no effort and any of the noise arises and fades in an instant, i feel as if this was how i was meant to be.
if i were one to look for “signs” that i am on the correct path, i could interpret the feelings i had this morning as a reward for doing all the right stuff. since i am certainly not one of those, i see what i experienced this morning as a symptom of something more, continued spiritual growth and the perspective of seeing things from a bit of a distance. living a life of active recovery allows me to be more and certainly to feel more than i ever did in active addiction, where my love and devotion was anything but unconditional. i practice acceptance by greeting all that i see on my work out and finally arriving at the place where i do not expect anything in return. that has taken more than a minute, but each time i am able to be there, i feel just a bit more whole and certainly more genuine. i may not be perfect, but i am certainly much better than i once was and if i were to take a rational look at how i react and respond to the world around me, i might even glimpse the person i have become, just for today.

∞ DT ∞