Tuesday, December 29, 2009

ChChCh Changes...


Change.
Originally uploaded by flightlessXbird

"A SAME person will drink."
~ Anonymous AA member

The quote above was shared by a member of tonight's meeting in response to the chairperson's topic of CHANGE. In particular, we were all asked to reflect on how we viewed change prior to entering AA and how we view it now that we're working a recovery program.

There are some basic fundamentals about change that were highlighted during the meeting:
- change is inevitable
- change is constant
- change is necessary for growth
- without changing, an AA will eventually drink

The chairperson spoke of that "voice", the one many of us, including me, were familiar with -- that was in our heads, gnawing and nagging at us that something needed to change. Namely, our alcoholic consumption. And how scary it was to think about having to change. And how often we ignored or denied and squashed that voice and kept on drinking. And how some folks never "hear the call" and are still out there, lost or insane or imprisoned or 6 ft under.

I have written about the fact that I heard this voice at least a year prior to stopping drinking and how I am aware today that this voice was both my future self and G-d. I sat in the meeting tonight feeling extreme gratitude for having the wherewithall to just heed this voice's plea and to acknowledge that I could no longer continue as I was; that I, in fact, needed to change. Before I quit drinking, I can remember many a restless, drunken night of awaking in a cold sweat just thinking about what the voice was telling me I would eventually need to do. And how absolutely terrified I was at the prospect of living life without drinking, without drowning and numbing any and all things painful and uncomfortable and anxiety-producing. When I would let myself try to envision a life without alcohol, it felt like a most ridiculous notion and virtually impossible. To make the change of putting down the bottle was to die an excrutiating death. The wild thing for me to just type this out is that I have the polar opposite thought today: to pick up a drink today would be the most absurd thing I could imagine doing, as likely as putting a gun to my head with my finger on the trigger.

And yet, even putting down the alcohol, if I am not working a program (which I did not for many years), then my progress toward making change is minimal at best and in dealing with change, quite poor. A guy  who I absolutely love at this Tue meeting said that he's gotta be doing the 3 S's in order to both change and accept change in his life as a sober person: Surrender; Steps; Service.
I couldn't agree more. The work I have done in this past year of returning to AA has found me doing those 3 S's in a big way. The work with surrender, which is continuous, has been one of the greatest tools in my life, both for my own change/growth AND for the way I am learning to accept change and be less resistant to it. Steps 3, 6 & 7 have been integral in terms of how I manage change in my daily life and in the big picture of my life. These steps remind me that whenever my self-will rears its head, it is a sure sign that I am trying to push away change. I am not surrendering or accepting life on life's terms. And that to work these steps, I need to turn things like resistance, self-will, or lack of acceptance over to G-d.

Returning to AA and regularly taking my inventory and especially writing here in my blog, I have discovered that in the past I prided myself as being a "laid back" person and very accommodating, flexible even. This would give people on the outside the impression that I dealt with change quite easily,  perhaps able to let change roll off my back. This of course was not the case at all.  Upon closer inspection, this was a facade and a mask so as to be "pleasing" to others, to be a peace-maker. Underneath all of this, like a dormant volcano ready to blow, there has been a control freak. An obsessive-compulsive nut job. A resentful, angry bitch. A self-pitying victim. A stubborn as all get-out, resistant to change of every kind, scared little girl, driven by fear of the unknown.

Today, while I cannot honestly say that I welcome change with open arms, I can acknowledge a few pieces of growth in this area:
- I am not afraid of change in the ways I was before and I know that I will not die from change.
- I can recognize my resistance to change much more quickly and this is my signal to take an action, like say the Serenity prayer or name the resistance or talk to my sponsor or share at a meeting.
- There is change that I have been able to anticipate and shift my attitude accordingly so that I could actually meet it with some level of excitement, to appreciate the mystery in it.
- I have a number of positive experiences under my belt that are a result of being open and allowing for change and to recall these fondly in my memory banks helps me to be less anxious about upcoming change.

Change will happen, with or without my permission. It takes a lot of energy to fight and resist change. The real juicy stuff that life is made of is in deciding to flow and accept and surrender to it. It feels good to want to experience the unfolding of life, rather than the one who wanted to pack it up neatly and give change its place on a shelf tucked away somewhere.

Bring it on, 2010 ... this gal's lettin' her hair down (and I actually have some to do that with) and offering an outstretched hand to make peace with change !

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