Liz's Letters

I want to start the day over today. Thankfully, it is almost over, so if I just hang on, I will be asleep soon and tomorrow is another day. Today is a day I am grateful to not be living by the Jewish calendar and starting my day at sundown. Well, scratch that! If it is sundown as I type, than technically, I can call it a new day. Whatever! It has just been one of those days. You know, where you wake up not feeling good, go to work anyway, feel terrible and wish you weren't there, and then get home and wish you were back at work? Yeah, I am having one of those days! It is at times like these that I know that I really can start my day over whenever I want. This is a program tool that I love, even though I sometimes have a hard time using it - like today. I am trying to "finish" up some things at work as I prepare to vacate my position. The girl I am supposed to train is on vacation this week. And I really am not feeling well. I feel like I am drowning in mundane ...

Last night I celebrated my birthday in Alanon . It is the tradition of my home group to have the birthday celebrants tell their own story of their experience, strength, and hope. It is not something that I look forward to, not because I don't want to share my story, but because I find it difficult to talk for a long (that means more than a 3 or 4 minutes) time without interruption . (If you have never been to a 12 step meeting - you must know you should never be interrupted .) Since I have been celebrating with this group, I have elected to only tell "parts" of my story in the past and decided to get a little more detailed this time. So, I typed up my story to keep myself on track. It was still difficult but I think it went okay. But something that I kept thinking about as the evening went on, and even after I left the meeting. I was celebrating...and others were also celebrating. But in attendance at our group last night, we had some there who were hurting. Some who wer...

The pit of my stomach churned with discomfort. "You are just mean." "No, you just ask annoying questions." "When you say something to someone that makes them want to cry, I think that is mean." This was the final exchange before making the decision to simply shut up. She knew I was upset. So was she. And the "annoying" question? One regarding a comment that was on facebook. I finally asked how she (at 16) became so mature. So mature that "things" that gnawed at me didn't seem to phase her. "Things" like being left out of plans where she was originally included. Just "things". And I, again, was face to face with my maturity...or lack thereof. The last two weeks in my Alanon meeting, we have discussed maturity. It all started when reading a pamphlet that included a "Checklist for Evaluating Our Maturity" Since "maturity" was not really the topic of that one particular meeting, we (the gr...