Heading for the finish line

It is spring. Everywhere I drive I see California Poppies along the road. I love the wildflowers. Poppies are one of my favorite because they are the most abundant when things are rough for flowers to grow. Since late winter I have seen them along the road and just yesterday, I saw them in great abundance.

I have been busy trying to illustrate our book. Book? What book? Whose book?

It is about three people and their experience with recovery from difficult childhoods. Sort of that is. It is a book of affirmations about those experiences and how our recovery from the consequences of those backgrounds have progressed over the years. We three people, the authors, wrote about recovering from growing up in alcoholic and dysfunctional homes. It is based on the Twelve Steps that an early ACA member wrote. The process of writing the affirmations in the book took over 12 years to write and has been a great help in our recoveries.

Even after completing the writing of the affirmations, the book was not complete. We went through the 365 pages three more times to make sure of continuity, grammar, spelling, content, etc. So, when we were done, we did not dare to read the pages anymore for fear of wanting to change things as we continued to recover.

In the end, we were ready to “let it go.” But, “there’s more.” We realized that the twelve chapters and cover needed illustrations. We could not afford a professional. But so much of the book was about our Inner Children and the need to reparent ourselves, that we looked to one of my talented granddaughters and chose one of her submissions to illustrate the cover. That only left twelve more that needed to go at the beginning of the twelve chapters. I was chosen and volunteered to be that illustrator.

When we made that decision, eons ago … was it just before this pandemic started, I can’t remember. It is enough to say that it seems a long time ago. I thought it wouldn’t take but a few months. Expectations.

I didn’t dare read the individual pages for fear of trying to change something, to I looked at the chapter headings and the two authors and I continued our weekly meeting to make decisions on what kind of image we wanted to communicate what individual chapters were about.

I am close to the finish line now but have slowed to a crawl. I have agonized over how to communicate what that chapter is about, because it is the most important chapter of the entire book. In the earlier chapters we strove to preview the feeling and essence of each one. In this final one, we want to show the way but also convey the bright future after it.

Once I finish this illustration and get it inked and ready for painting, I will start back at the beginning and color in the earlier illustrations. Then, we will be ready to publish this book at long last. If I had been any good at staying within the lines of coloring books as a child, the coloring would be the easiest. Buy I did not ever stay within the lines as a child…. I wonder if it matters. They were drawn by my inner children anyway. It is the journey that is important. I have discovered that I can draw things that I didn’t think I could. I am happy with the result. It is none of my business what others may think.

But I have been on the twelfth chapter now for way too long. It is, of course, the most important chapter in the book. It gives a summary of our recovery journey to that point and a glimpse into the future. Most of my time for that chapter was spent deciding what the symbology would be and how to depict it. Every time I sit down to draw, I visualize it differently and keep moving things around. I believe I have it figured it out now, and with my co-authors’ help, may be wrapping it up soon.

All in all, it has been a growth experience. Writing my pages in the book made me look at myself in a focused way that I might have done otherwise. I know that trying to draw the illustrations made me look more closely at what we wanted to communicate and that has also been a growth experience.

I am quite happy with what we wrote and how we organized the affirmations. I feel it will be quite helpful for others to read and perhaps use as a workbook.

If not, one of the other two might want to write that workbook.

You’d think I’d have recovered from insecurities by now. I’ve been working on them for what seems like forever. Sincere people who I trust, tell me that they are impressed by all I can do, yet I still feel like I am not that great. I feel the down time that I have is a waste of time. I like to read, and I read a lot of e-books. But, I feel like I should be working on something, rather than reading. I even tried to read and knit the other night. It doesn’t work well.

I woke up three hours early the other day because I had dreamed a way to write something that doesn’t have to be done by me and not even right now. But, I feel that I need to have a say in how it’s written. I don’t have to write it myself, nor does it even have to even resemble what I wrote in the middle of the night. But, I want a part of me in there. I guess that’s it. When I’m gone in 20 or 40 years, I want a part of me to remain here for people to see. It doesn’t even matter that they don’t know it is from me. I guess I just want to count for something.

Oh my, that’s it. My mother always told me I would have to marry a rich man, because I would never amount to anything or be able to take care of myself. She didn’t count my scholastic ability. That meant nothing to her. In fact, that was a negative, because she hated school and left when she was 16 so she could get a job and look for a rich and handsome husband so she would have good looking children. She got what she was looking for. He was good looking and had a lot of money. She had good looking children with him. But, the looks went over time and the money had come from burglaries and other thefts. He also drank, chased women, abused his wife and children, and spent all of his money on himself.

Well, it wasn’t all his money. He had mostly quit criminal activities — at least the stealing — becoming an entrepreneur with small manufacturing, small farming, and small produce stands. Guess who did most of the work? For photographs, he leaned on his hoe in the field of produce we had planted, watered, and nurtured. I didn’t mind the togetherness with my family doing all of those things. It gave me something that almost felt like bonding.

So, where did this blog start. Oh yes, insecurities. I feel less insecure when I am working with others to create something. I guess I still am looking for ……. maybe it is intimacy. I crave togetherness. That’s why I love doing service work. I don’t do it alone. I am with others who know how I feel and who enjoy my abilities and my presence in their lives.

Signing off now. I’ll try to not be gone so long between blogs next time. I might actually get the hang of writing these things. 🙂

No. I’m not going to Stockholm. That is way up north in Sweden on the Baltic Sea. I’m going to Malmo. That is right across the channel from Copenhagen, Denmark. I’ll take a train from the airport across a very long bridge to get there.

Denmark is where my mother’s maternal grandfather was born and raised. He became a fisherman on the North Sea, married in Denmark, and followed a brother to America to get as far away from the ocean as he could get – (or so the story goes). I visited Denmark many years ago. It was over Christmas and into New Year and very, very cold. It snowed that year for the first time in a number of years in Denmark and on Jutland where I was staying with a friend and her family in a little town called Glud. I had been in recovery for some time by then and learned how to be in the moment — was conscious of where I was the whole time. So, I had a wonderful time. I learned a lot about my ancestry while I was there and found living relatives (my mother’s second cousins). I even saw the beach where my great-grandfather’s fishing boat was probably anchored and where he took a dingy to go out to it. It was a little village that now is just holiday homes and no one is a year-round resident anymore.

• 

But back to my blog. I am going to Sweden to work – volunteer work, not a vacation at all. And, this blog is not about the trip, not exactly. It is about being in the moment so I can remember where I was and what was happening. It is about what I will not do when I am there. I will not project and expect to know what will happen at the strategic planning meetings, conference, and convention I will be participating in and attending. I will not have preconceived notions about what to expect. I will just be there and do what I have to do and participate in what I have to and therefore be there the entire time I am there.

You may ask how I could be there and not be there? If I have preconceived ideas of what it will be like there, I will thinking about what should be happening instead of living what is happening. If I am thinking about what I said or didn’t say or what someone else said and I should have said something back, etc. I am not there. If I am thinking about what I will be doing later or not doing or wondering what I am going to be doing the next day or ……. I will not be there. I seldom do that anymore. I am usually present when at all times. I am fretting a bit about the fact that I have to get up in front of a whole room of people and tell them what the committee I chair has accomplished this last year. I know I will forget vital parts of it but I have to remind myself that it is okay. In fact, it is, most of what I wanted to say, I wrote in the report that was printed and is in the Delegates’ binders. So, I just have to remind them that our committee exists and that we need more people on it. The, I have to thank them and go listen to someone else and not think about what I said or did not say.

That brings me to what my blog is really about. It is about my thoughts on the idea of criticism, self-criticism, and constructive criticism. This morning, during my morning writing, I began thinking about that subject and then judgement came into my mind. What brought this up this morning was that I was reading from a book on self parenting was a list of exercises to do for my recovery. One thing on the list was a suggestion to jot down notes about times during the week when I had been criticized. I was then to share about how I felt about it at a meetings, and then decide whether or not I could use any of the criticism to improve myself. I realized that I will not stand for anyone trying to do that to me (or for me). When the situation arises where I can stop the person, I do. If not, I do not fret or dwell on it. I note it and tell myself it is none of my business what they think of me. I then, avoid that person if possible, or let my limits be known.

It is none of my business what anyone thinks of me is something I heard in my recovery program many years ago and it works for me. Criticism, wrapped up any way you want to do it, is judgement. I do not give it any weight. In my mind, people who criticize people are trying to shame them. I do not care how they try to cloak it. It is not a positive thing. So, why would I want to look at something someone who is trying to shame me and consider it has any value in my life whatsoever? I won’t. I’ve heard from seemingly healthy people that constructive criticism helps a person improve. How can the opinion of a sick person who wants to shame others make me a better person? Their criticism is their judgement of what they think I should be doing or how I should be thinking ad nausium.

As for self criticism, I used to be very good at it. I criticized myself and judged what I did because I wanted to be perfect. I no longer strive for perfection, nor do I allow myself to criticize me either. If I catch myself doing it, I apologize to my Inner Child to make amends and then find a way to praise myself, promise to do better next time, and work to change. Then, I write about what I was criticizing about myself. I look back at my life and especially my childhood to find out where I learned to do it — to find the root of my self-criticism. That will then be my recovery work until I dig it out. I use the root metaphor to remind me of weeds and the knowledge that in nature, if you pull a weed out by the root and throw it in the garbage, the weed cannot grow back. If you leave any part of the root, it does grow back.

That is true with issues that I ignore or talk about superficially and then put aside. They always pop their ugly little heads back up. So I have to sometimes have to talk about it and dig up my past until I find that ugly little root and take it out in the air and then “let it go” into the garbage where it belongs.

Okay, so what does Lord Byron have to do with my recovery journey? Simple. I looked at why Lord Byron’s inability to stand up for himself was irritating me so much and realized that I was like him before I started my journey of recovery.

Lord Byron was a doormat. I was one, too. He worked to solve other people’s problems while his live was drama and chaos. I was the one people called with problems and my life was full of drama and chaos. He was brilliant but really unaware of the fact that he caused his chaotic life. I was considered intelligent and sane and yet was completely unaware that I caused my chaotic life by my choices.

Then I realized that part of my irritation was due to the fact that Byron reminded me of someone I had in my life from the time I was 2 ½ years old until 18 years ago. That’s when I realized I had been seeing that sweet little tow headed little boy that I loved then and not the grown man he had become. The ease in which Lord Byron was manipulated by women reminded me of that little boy grown who had his own manipulator, too, a person who Lord Byron’s female tormentors reminded me of.

It was physical painful for me to read some of the book until realized while writing about the book in my morning pages that it was reminding me about the last day I saw them.

My recovery journey continues with one more layer of remorse and grief to get through regarding that long-ago life and the people that were in it. Because of Byron, I have begun grieving for the little boy that became a man I did not know or trust. I grieve, too, for the years I struggled to understand why my life was out of control and the little girl I was for whom life did not turn out like she thought it would.

I now know that life is what I make it in spite of what happens around me. I welcome the healing power of grieving.