Saturday, March 13, 2010
Gratitude
As with spirituality, I find gratitude in the small things. This week my eldest was suffering due to a fight with a friend. As I lay in bed with her talking until nearly 10pm about relationships, friendships, forgiveness and communication I felt the most intense gratitude settle over me. 7 months ago I would not have been able to have this conversation with her. I would have either already been too drunk to communicate well, or I would have been too consumed with the thoughts of the drinks I was missing out on to take the time to talk to her. Even if I was sober, she wouldn't have wanted to talk to me about it. In the last year or so of my drinking, she had become distant, angry and waspish. I blamed it on her age (a ripe 7 years old) or my husband or anything else I could think of besides my drinking. I never thought she was even aware of my drunkenness. How would a 7 year old know what alcoholism is? Yet after I quit, the most amazing thing began to happen. She began to warm up to me. She started to hug me again, to say she loved me. To talk to me, to trust me. I began to learn to let God guide my words with her and we began to have deeper, more meaningful conversations on a regular basis. That we are now at a point where she trusts me with her pain, her issues, and her fears is an amazing thing. I have only my sobriety and my Higher Power to thank for that. I am so grateful.
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It's amazing how tuned in our kids are, even if we don't know it (or don't want to know it)
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on those special moments :) That's amazing!
This post made my day... my week. I'm so glad you have your daughter back. I (totally selfishly) thought of my own little girl the whole way through, and how I hope hope hope we have long talks in bed, too (I know it's too much to hope for them to come without the heartaches of tiffing with friends).
ReplyDeleteI'm just reading your entire blog from start to finish, so I'm sorry this comment is so "late".
ReplyDeleteMy daughter is 25 and went through hell with me and my alcoholism. I won't even mention what she deals with with her father, who is also alcoholic, but not in recovery.
My point is, when I got sober, she slowly warmed up to me, but even after 2 years, she still has bouts of rage and anger about...she's not always sure what. But she's trying to work through it in her own support group.
I now also have an almost-5 year old and a 17 month old, both boys. One of the most important things someone told me when I got sober was, "Your little boy never has to remember you drunk". So thank you for this post.