It is tough keeping up with two blogs. But, I really want a place where I can let the recovery side of me hang out a little more. Somethings I need to say just don't seem to belong on a homeschool/family blog.

Honestly though, I have not been very good with keeping up with much these last two weeks. I have buried myself in a house obsession - preparing our house to sell and house-hunting for our future home. I have kept physically busy - which was good. Until my disease crossed over into obsession land - and suddenly everything had to be done - Right Now. And I skipped a meeting because I had to go to the home improvement store at that time, and then I skipped another meeting because I had to finish painting that room. Two, three days would vanish before I realized I had not called another alcoholic, much less my sponsor. So-my blog - really has been the last thing on my list.

So our house is going on the market in a couple of weeks. And I am just praying that I make it through this with some sanity remaining afterwards. Today - I got the message and I am going to try to slow it down. Tone down my perfectionism and impatience with how long it takes to accomplish anything and really just try to let things be okay.

I am so very grateful for the life I have today. And I am grateful that I was able to find my way back to the program. I wrote a long post on my other blog today about brokenness and my life 13 years ago. January 1993 was what I consider the beginning of my "Year of Broken-ness" the beginning of my journey to my bottom. This time of year I think about it and I think about who I was. And, almost simultaneously I have two very distinctive thoughts. The first is guilt and shame - and each year this grows dimmer and dimmer. The second is joyful gratitude that I was given the chance to have AA in my life - that I was given the gift of life. An this attitude grws stronger each year.

In a couple of weeks is my old AA birthday the one I had for 9 years. It is already tough when I see that date on a calendar. And I am doing some pretty good banging on myself - because I would have had 12 yrs - but I didn't work the program, I stopped going and I stopped growing and I did what came naturally to myself as a drunk. And it is all EGO anyway.

I have today - and today I got up and went to a morning step meeting. I took it easy around the house and I took a long, hot bath. And I just spent a lot of time offering up myself to my higher power. And - you know what? I feel so much better than I felt when I woke up this morning.

I am grateful for Today!

Peace,

Amy

Life Is Full

In the days since I have posted life has been very full and very good. Instead of whining and moaning about how miserable I am and what a failure I have been in different aspects of my life I am trying to stay in the day and live in the solution. I have also been working very hard to have goals for each day for homeschooling, work and household stuff. This helps me to concentrate only on the one day and not become so caught up in yesterday's things and tomorrows activities that I become frozen.

My focus is on becoming well. Sober is a wonderful goal and today, by grace I am sober. But I have lived dry for basically 5 years and that was miserable because I wasn't well and I wasn't living a solution.

I have restarted 123 Magicwith my girls as part of the solution. It is a very handy discipline strategy that removes my emotions and overreactions from the situations. It worked a couple of years ago when I did it with only my oldest, but I can be very inconsistent and it fell by the wayside as my disease became worse. So, this is one of my living in the solution things I am doing this week. Since I am not becoming so wrapped up emotionally and in turmoil over the kids being kids my stress the last couple of days has really diminished on the home front.

I made it to a gratitude meeting Monday night with my sponsor. It was just a really good meeting and I was very grateful to be there. I am grateful to just be back in the program. I know it works and I have even known the serenity and peace that comes from working the program. I am so very grateful for that I have been given the gift to come back.

I need to get back to my work project. Before it gets to crazy around here.

Peace,

Amy

I opened this blog nearly a month ago but have done nothing with it. I have not been sure whether or not I wanted to have a blog devoted to my recovery. But nearly every day I have something that I want to post about my new struggle with sobriety this time, but don't really feel comfortable posting it on my homeschool/family life blog. I mean it just doesn't feel right to write: my daughter read two pages by herself and then tackled math all by herself, and today all I really want to do is lay on the sofa and get wasted because I am such a horrible person.

Anyway, I need a place to vent, and put it out there. And, well, if this blog does as well as my others I will enjoy having two or three readers a day.

I will give the short version of who I am. My name is Amy. I am 31 yrs old and the mother to three daughters (6, 3, 1). I originally came into the program in 1993 (age 18) after a stay at a mental hospital to be treated for depression and self-mutilation. During out-patient they decided that *I* may have a problem with my drinking. So, in order to be released from the hospital program I went to some meetings. I could totally see myself in the rooms, but being 18 I could not, could not imagine not drinking. So after several slips and white chips and getting really pissed at someone in the program, I decided that I would not go back. Over the next 9 months my life went to hell - AA ruined my drinking for me and I set out to make everyone else as miserable as I felt. By December of that year I was totally alone and felt like I could not face another day. After, apparently, presenting an oral presentation on a sociology paper in a blackout I decided that maybe I should give AA another try. I slipped again, twice, before finally achieving some lasting sobriety in Feb 1994. For 2 1/2 years I really worked the program. I was always there, as I had nothing else in my life. My friends were all AA's because my other friends had dumped me before I came back. Then I slowly began to be able to be in society again and function. And instead of working the program I began to hang around AA for another couple of years. In 1999 I had my first daughter and decided that there was just no way that I could make it to meetings anymore, so I didn't. And in Jan 2002 I took my first drink in nearly 8 years while on a business trip so my dh would not find out. I came back, not scared from that one experience and was ready to do some more testing, only to find out I was pregnant with daughter number 2. During the next 3 years, I didn't drink and really entered a period of a dry drunk. I didn't drink out of fear. Fear of what I would become, fear of losing my husband. Co-dependency became the name of my game. This summer DH went back out and it freed me from those fears because I now had "permission". It took me three drinks to realize this was absolute insanity at work. All I wanted to do from the first drink was be drunk. So I became depressed and a raving lunatic and all I wanted to do was run away from my family so I could go somewhere and get drunk, and stay drunk. In October, for a lack of anywhere else to turn I came back to the program. I was graced in the beginning of having the depression and compulsion lifted for awhile. Then in late November they returned like a hammer. I gave in on my daughters six birthday - left a meeting, ha lunch with another member and then went to the store and bought vodka. I spent the rest of my daughter's birthday, except for the family party time, curled on the sofa drinking. All it did was make me even madder at the insanity that is alcoholism. It didn't stop anything.

So, I have today and have managed to string 23 today's together. The compulsion is there, but I refuse to do battle with it today - because I will lose every single time. My ego is kicking my ass, because I keep thinking that I would be coming up on 12 years in Feb. But I kissed that goodbye a long time ago. But, it makes me mad as hell. I beat myself up with the bat so much because I knew better. Being smart (intellectual) has in general been one of my biggest handicaps. I have to make everything so much more difficult than it is. It is what it is and I want to blow it up into some huge calculus problem.

I want to use this blog as a place for me to digest things, be honest about my life and working the steps.

Amy