Wide Awake ...

Wide awake....
Originally uploaded by pippy & timmy

"Our goal is to shatter and not shatter at the same time. To be awake in the dissociative state."
~ Jason Shulman

On Tuesday night of this week, I shared some of my recovery story at a women's prison. This type of experience is not only humbling, but is a sobering wake-up call. I was aware, as I looked around this small room with women in colored uniforms and I in my street clothes, that I was just a choice or two away from sitting on the other side of the locked door and having one of them as a cell mate. I shared with these women that the easy part of sobriety for me was putting the bottle down and that the far more difficult task was to live soberly.
This was, interestingly enough, the theme of an old timers meeting that I attended last evening : emotional sobriety.

I have had events just today that, in the past, I would've gotten obliterated over. The difference is that I trust myself and I choose to show up in my life. I am committed to being in reality. It is what I am made of.

Just ten minutes before I was to enter the funeral service of my friend in AA, I received a call from my ex. She had made the decision today to put our other dog to sleep. It was the right thing to do. When we spoke, I felt nothing but tenderness and compassion for her. I fully understood how difficult this experience was for her and, simultaneously, I could feel my own separateness and distance from the actual situation. I had not had a relationship with her or the dog in 4 years. I felt the grief place in me that was a composite of all of the sum total of losses up to this point and it was not as deeply personal for me as it was for her.

The funeral was incredibly moving. Almost 300 in attendance it seemed. Standing room only, with people outside the entrances. Probably half of all of the attendees were members of our AA community. I was overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and fellowship and with sorrow in seeing the 3 adult children and 2 grandchildren who were devastated by her sudden death. We sang hymns and heard prayers that were part of my ex's father's service. I felt my missing of him as the Prayer of St. Francis was read and how this has become such an important passage in my recovery literature. The tears freely streamed down my face when my friend's daughter sang "Amazing Grace" accapella, fending off her own breakdown in the middle of it. The countless AA members who filled the pews wth arms draped around one another despite the humid temperatures was a heart-opening sight.

And here's the cool part: I didn't want to miss a thing. In each moment of today's unfolding events, I wanted to be in it, feel and see and sniff it in. I wanted to be up close and in the face of my life.
Emotional sobriety, for me, is being present for the kinds of interactions and events - like today - that I would normally avoid, have an excuse to not be around for, or check out in some way.

Before any of these events occurred today, I was finishing Tara Brach's "Radical Acceptance" book on the train back home from a lunch meeting. I was filled up with emotion reading a poem she included in the last chapter by David Whyte; it captures so eloquently some of the experiences I had today in honoring the passing of these cherished lives.

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.

This, to me, is about being wide awake ...