Last year my Happy Mother's Day post was about my own mother and the importance of a mother's support and understanding for her child in their recovery.

This year I wanted to talk about how much my own role of a mother has improved now that I am further into my addiction recovery.

No food, no clean clothes, no order and basically no rules. This would be a pretty good description of the way my home was when I was in active addiction. Sad but very true.

Last Mother's Day came when I was about three months into my recovery. I had realized that my family's home life needed a lot of improvements and I vowed to make those improvements even though I really didn't have the first clue how to.

I mean, how do you get someone who hates cleaning, laundry, food shopping and cooking to just accept it as part of their lives? I didn't know but I was determined to find out.

My progress in this area was slow. Very s.. l.. o.. w. I was beginning to get the feeling that I was kind of a failure in this area of life. Sure I had at one time worked 40 hours a week, had a commute of 15 hours a week, and had a small child I was taking care of but all of that chaos was kind of used as an excuse for me not to do the very basic things that need to get done in a home.

This year I've been a stay at home mom who's main job in life was to take care of my child and run my home properly. There was nothing hiding the fact that I didn't possess the knowledge of how to do this.

This was actually the best thing in the world that could have happened to me. I was forced to deal with the fact that I had no clue how to run a home and I had to remedy the situation.

I am really proud to say that I have come a long way this year in the area of being a mom and running a home. I am doing the very best that I can each and every day and I feel safe saying that this year has left me with no regrets in my role as a mom.

In the five years that I have been celebrating Mother's Day I would say that this year more than any other I feel deserving of this special holiday.

Happy Mother's Day

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1. Happy Mothers Day
2. Happy Fourth Of July
3. Pregnancy in Addiction Recovery

This insanity is all a part of our addictive thinking. It is this thought process that is our real obstacle, more so than using the actual substance. Addictive thinking is what we are trying to recover from. Since we went through the detox we already recovered from the particular drug or the alcohol that we were using at the time. I think this is the part that most people just don't understand that well.

We have to keep these thoughts in check. When I have one of these type of addictive thoughts I can identify it as being a crock of shit. I actually get a chuckle at myself. It's like my brain is trying to get one over on me. It's just bazaar. But for now it is something that I have to accept and be on the lookout for to avoid relapse.

More outrageous thoughts to come...stayed tuned.

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You know what is weird? In a professional sense I welcome change. I'm open to procedure changes and I stay positive and try to keep others positive. Why then, in my personal life do I sometimes get so sad about change?

This topic has come up in my head tonight because I was reading a post by The Junkie's Wife called Zombie Love which was talking about her missing some of the way things used to be. Me, already being down tonight (as seen in this The Write Thought Post called Feelings Suck Sometimes) was brought to tears over this post.

Sometimes I just get a little overwhelmed when I think about how much in my life has changed. I don't give into thinking about this often because it usually ends up with me feeling sad but tonight...it has gotten the best of me.

I figured the healthiest thing for me to do would be to write about this. Lucky you...you get to read about it.

I just long for the days that used to be so much easier. There was a time when my drug use wasn't so rampant as it was at the end of my addiction. There was a time when I was younger and more naive about the world. There was a time when there was not one thing in the world that could come between my husband and myself. There was a time when I didn't feel bad about my body. There was a time...

That's about all I'm going to allow myself right now on this because I do realize that nothing good will come from these thoughts.

Whatever days I'm pining away for...those days are long gone and I'm probably just remembering all of the good and ignoring the bad anyway.

Change is good right? It leads to new possibilities. I'm changing, you're changing, it's just the way things go. Here is to embracing change...hopefully I can truly learn how to do it.

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The purpose of this step is supposed to be about openly acknowledging the positive while committing to work at rectifying your negatives. I do understand the purpose of it, I guess I'm just NO WHERE near being ready for this type of outward honesty. I'm not saying I'll never be there, just not right now.

It seems that I'm not alone in my unwillingness to admit my secrets to another human beings. I have found some sites recently who's main purpose is to let people anonymously admit their secrets...both good and bad.

I had never heard of these types of sites before until I had read a post on another blogger's site about confessing our secrets. It was in this post that the website Post Secrets was mentioned.

It didn't take long for me to be in tears while checking out some of the anonymous secrets that are posted on this site. I felt so horrible for some of these people, they have been carrying around these secrets for so long. They obviously needed to unburden themselves or they wouldn't thought it necessary to anonymously share their secrets on this site.

Then it dawned on me...I'm not sitting here judging these people for what they are sharing. I'm empathizing with them and identifying with them. Feeling bad for them that they found no means of unburdening themselves other than leaving an anonymous secret on a website.

So why is it that I feel that I would be judged harshly? Why do I feel like there are things that I've done that I could never say out loud to another human being? I'm not talking serial murder here, I'm talking just normal human being type actions that result from low self-esteem and possibly addictive thinking.

I don't have an explanation for this. I have no trouble admitting to myself my wrong doings. I also have no problem thinking about these things and trying to figure out what caused these actions. I know that it's not just the result of being a bad person.

I guess I'm looking for some feedback on this topic. Are there those people out there that don't feel like they have gotten to the point of being able to bare their sole to another human being yet? Am I holding my self back in terms of my recovery because I can't do this? Should I just wait until I feel ready? Will I ever feel ready?

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So, you know THOSE type of days. Everything that could go wrong does go wrong down to the tiny things like driving away from the drive through to realize that they gave you a flavored iced coffee instead of the coffee flavored iced coffee that you wanted and needed...desperately.

So on a day when all those little things combined with a few big things start to pile up, how do you get through? That is, how do you get through with out the old standby solution of smoking or drinking or snorting your troubles away...for a little while.A while ago I had written about the lingering consequences of addiction that can show up in our recovery.  My particular lingering consequence has to do with me going to court because of some money that I owe. Not an outrageous amount but an amount big enough that I can't just pay it all right away.

Today was a follow up court date. Fine, not the end of the world. I'll go and sit in a court house all day and have the security lady be rude to me even though I was nice as pie, and I'll have some weirdo guy that stinks like booze sit next to me and want to strike up a conversation about ? I have no idea and I'll...well you name the little annoying thing and I went through it today.

I get it...I owe money, the creditors had to take me to court to get my money and I shouldn't expect my time in a court house to be like a day at the spa.

I also understand that my trip to the court had put me in a less than jovial mood causing every other little daily annoyance to be magnified leaving me shaking my head about 30 times today wondering...WTF?

Then I realized something. Even though I was shaking my head asking WTF, I was a little amused about just how bad everything was going. I realized that today was one of those days where you just hang on and wait for it to be over.

I didn't try to change the feelings this day was causing inside of me by going and getting effed up. I also didn't try to use this day as a justification to shirk my responsibilities and run back to bed with a "headache". Nope, I just realized what was going on and I hung on for dear life.

I don't have enough money to fix one of my cars, my car payment is late by a couple of days because of something that came up needing a large amount of money asap, I had to go to court today, I ate an egg sandwich for dinner tonight because that's all I had in the house and I won't have money to buy food until tomorrow.

But you know what? I made it through today without using any mood altering substances to change the way I was feeling. I feel my mood improving and I feel good knowing that today is over. Tomorrow is a new day and nothing that happened today has any real effect on how I feel tomorrow.  Life is good.

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Deny, Deny, Deny
I have seen it written in many places that diabetes has the highest denial rate of any disease in America. The reason for this denial is the fact that most times the person with diabetes is not feeling all that sick when they are diagnosed. If they don't jump into action when it comes to taking care of themselves they aren't really going to feel the negative effects any time soon. The effects are mainly to their long term health.

Well we all know that denial is a huge part of addiction. How many times have you heard stories of an addict or alcoholic with severe health problems as a result of their using? I'm sure that these problems were seen earlier on and the patient was warned about continuing their using and what negative effects it would have on their body. Denial makes up a huge part of the addiction disease.

So what let's a diabetes patient break through the denial? The same kind of thing that brings an addict to face the realities of their lives...rock bottom. Now I am in no way saying that these rock bottoms are in anyway alike. Usually with addiction the person has lost a lot of things in their lives and finally it clicks.

A diabetic doesn't necessarily have to have lost things, per say, but they still have that shocking moment that usually drives the severity of their disease home. For my husband it was the fact that a doctor sat him down and explained to him that if he did not take care of himself the way that was necessary to deal with his diabetes he would die. And he wouldn't just die in his sleep. He would slowly die. Starting at the toes and working it's way up to his organs, diabetes would slowly kill him.

It Works If You Work It
As addicts we know that you need to constantly stay on top of your disease. When I started out on my road to recovery I felt the need to live a very, very structured life. I needed to go to meetings, I needed to see my therapist once a week. I needed to get back in the habit of eating a nutritious diet. I needed to relearn how to fall asleep at night without the use of narcotics. It was so difficult to get through each and every twenty-four hours without using that I felt that every minute of every day I was struggling to stay clean.

When diagnosed with diabetes most people have got to change just about everything about the way they live. They definitely need to think about every piece of food that they are putting in their mouth. They need to make it mandatory for themselves to increase their activity level. Newly diagnosed diabetes patients usually have some sort of medication that they need to take daily, without fail. They need to check their blood sugar around 5 times per day.

Basically diabetics and addicts have to work day in and day out against becoming complacent. Complacency in either one of these diseases spells death. Death is usually not the instant result to complacency but it is inevitable in both cases. Diabetes patients and addicts need to work on staying in the moment and putting their disease as the top priority in their life each and every day.

And Then There Is The Relapse
I know, when you think relapse you don't really think diabetes. I can tell you from experience with my husband that diabetics relapse. Their relapse doesn't consist of using a mind altering substance but it involves them not working their program. The complacency has kicked in. With my husband it would start out with checking his blood levels. He would say "I've checked my levels everyday for the past week and everyday they are good...why keep checking?".

It is little slips like that in the routine that eventually lead to stumbles. Diabetics can go from not checking their levels to not scrutinizing everything they eat to not exercising. How does it happen? Just like it does with addicts. Everything is going good. You let your guard down, you slip back into addictive thinking...you relapse.

So although I know that there are diabetic patients out there that would be insulted by me comparing their disease to the disease of addiction, I think they have very similar.

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I still had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the conversation but once I was in it... I was so glad I was. Things are not magically fixed but I feel a hell of a lot better now that I've gotten a few things off my chest. Funny how that works huh?

So then this leads me back to the same question I have been having... "why do I find it so hard to talk about my feelings?". I just don't get it. Am I afraid of the reaction I will get? I don't know. What I do know is that nothing but heartache comes from keeping your feelings in and that I absolutely need work in this area of myself. But who doesn't need work right?

Today I have a sense of relief that I haven't had in a long, long time. I need to remember this feeling the next time I think about stuffing my feelings. I'm grateful that I can spot these destructive habits in myself before they get way out of hand. I'm grateful for a lot of things these days.

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Walaaa...my first review of my site. Done by myself of course so it was a stellar review!

You guys don't see my stats but if you could you would see that my site has somehow turned into Cymbalta Central. Just about all of the search engine traffic that I'm receiving on my site daily is from people searching for Cymbalta.

If you haven't checked it out, look at my post on Cymbalta Withdrawal Symptoms Suck and see how many comments that I got from people all going through the same type of cymbalta withdrawal. The common theme is that none of the people were told up front that this drug causes this type of withdrawal symptoms. It's pretty freaky.

I guess that subject is pretty fitting for this site...but come on! Well, I'll take any kind of traffic I can get and I am glad that I'm helping people who are going through the same thing that I did.

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I just think it's funny. Out of everything that they could have picked they chose an item that would be out in the public eye a lot of the time. I know, I can hear it already, "What would you have picked instead Mrs. Know it all?".

Let me think here for a moment. Bottle opener? No, that's not a good idea, kind of sends the wrong message. Umm...I know a little vanity mirror! No, no that could be used as drug paraphernalia (you former coke users out there know where I'm going with that one). Wow, this is harder than I thought. Ok, ok. I give up. I can't think of anything better than the key tag.

Hey no one ever told me I had to put my keys on it anyway. I guess I'll just collect them like I do the chips. That is my favorite part of the meeting. Everyone really gets into it and applauds other people for their hard work and their success. Even though I'm just getting a plastic key tag I feel like I'm accepting an award. Hey, maybe they really do know what they are doing at these meetings huh?

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I was thinking about the part of the serenity prayer that says "grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change".

Now, I'm not going to try and fool you into thinking that I go to NA/AA meetings all the time by talking the talk.

But, I do want to point out that there are a lot of things that I took away from my time in NA/AA that I find useful in my everyday life.

One of the things that I feel that I've struggled with has been the whole accepting the things I cannot change. Rationally I know the importance of this acceptance but I have struggled to take that rational thought and put it to use in my life.

That was until I heard myself telling my son "you do what you can, the very best that you can, and that is all you can do". Boom! How simple. But could it truly be that simple to accept the things I cannot change?

What I've come to realize over the past week or so is that depending upon the situation you are faced with, it is to be expected that you are going to struggle over the possibility of whether or not you can change something.

There are some cut and dry type things like due to an unexpected expense, like your car needing work, you find yourself with a very small budget for the week. Out of this very small budget you need to be able to get gas and feed your family.

There isn't anything you can do about the money you find yourself with for the week. That is the part of the equation that you cannot change. What you can do is to do your very best to spend that money wisely until you find yourself in a better situation money wise.

In this situation it would do you no good to get mad or sad about your budget. By getting mad or sad you are not at all changing the outcome of how much money you have for the week. So you accept the situation the way it is. The only thing that you have control over is how you deal with it.

In life you run into situations that make this money situation look like a day in the park. It is in those situations where it is completely appropriate to struggle with accepting the things you cannot change.

Just as a for instance, a while back I was faced with the situation of having a sibling that was in active addiction. He hadn't admitted to himself that there was a problem and certainly was not at the point of accepting help.

That situation left me struggling with the idea that ultimately I couldn't do anything to change it. I had to accept it, ride it out, do what I could with what I was left with and wait for it to play out. It was hard but I did it...I had no choice in the matter.

Now, all in all, the two situations I explained had the same components:

• Being faced with a situation
• Examining the situation to see if you can have any effect on the overall outcome
• Accepting the situation for what it is and doing the very best that you can to deal with it in a healthy way

I now feel that by putting the "accept the things I cannot change" to use in even the smallest of situations in life I am learning a thought process that will allow me to lead a more peaceful life.

In the future when faced with a more complicated situation I'm hoping that because of practice I will better be able to spot and accept the things that I cannot change.

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2. In Recovery Act As If…
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