Time To Grow In Recovery, Life And Relationships

The second year, The word I gave myself was “patience”.  Because I was inspired by the previous year’s word “create”, patience became very important.  The need to take care of my blessings and grow my business arrived.  I felt the pressure to grow my business and relationships.   And though I didn’t do patience perfectly, I did it well enough that by year three I hadn’t put myself into any commitments, financially or emotionally.  I did gain stability.  Now I possess more patience than I thought I could ever have.  I was patient with my finances.  Nor did I push relationships with my kids or the man I was seeing.   The funny thing about patience is that it pays you more in heart break and finacial dividends than any other spiritual principle, but feels so uncomfortable at the time.  They say hind sight is twenty-twenty.  My belief is that phrase is only used when we don’t have the patience to wait and see.  This year of “patience” gave me more than the year of “create.”  I really should do a seperate blog about that.

But I will get on with the subject of this blog-year three.  This year my word was “grow”.  I meant that in every sense of the word.  It was my desire to grow in my program and finish another set of twelve steps and do more service work.  Additionally, I wanted to grow my business and open another transitional home.  This time a home for men.  I had recieved patience but it seemed like the world was loosing patience with my patience and I was recieving a lot of pressure to open the second house.  In my personal relationships, specificly, my romantic relationship.  I had practiced patience and open mindedness in the hopes that relationship would become more intimate by growing together as partners in a home, business and shared life responsibilities,  AKA- commitment.  My want to grow my personal friendships and learn to have more intimate friendships with the amazing women in my life.  The want to grow my trust in the universe and become more vunerable because this would allow me to help more people.  And, I wanted to grow my credibility with banks and persued cleaning the wreckage of my past with creditors.

What actually happened.  And I giggle now because sometimes logic just evades me and hindsight is twenty-twenty.  So you can use that phrase even when you have all the patience in the world.  This blog will be long enough without adding an analogy, but I am going to use one.  And its one of my own so this should be fun.

Follow me now to a farm in Iowa, USA.  I have a beautiful corn and soy farm with rolling hills and gorgeous black soil.  On this farm I have created beautiful red barns for all the pigs and coops for the chikens.  Patience was practiced and didn’t buy all the best irrigators or auto milk pumps for the cows, and now, though I am humble, the other farmers see me as legitimate farmer and they share their experience with me, as well as a few resources.  Patience and creativity have paid off!  I love my farm and I love my life!  But the calling is there.  I need to grow.  I need to grow in a meaningful way.  Not just adding more high tech equiptment to make an already easy life easier.  I need to meet the communities needs.  Even though I have a great routine and properly rotate my crops, I am becoming irrelevent.  I discover that growing blue berries is the best way to meet my communities needs.  Ok great!  I add blue berries in between the rows of corn.  I put up some bee hives that are needed to pollinate the blue berries around the farm.  In a short while it is mayhem.  The corn and soy are being choked by the blue berries and then soon afterward, my blue berries are doing terrible because they are not being pollinated correctly because the pigs disturb the hives, helping themselves to honey and the chickens are feasting on the bee larva. my farmer friends have no experince or resources to help me to fix this.  They only know about corn, soy, pigs and chickens My farm has gone to shit!

Why?!  Why has it all gone to shit?  It has gone to shit because the farmers word in her bullet journal was “grow”.   The word should have been “reliinquish”.  I had already acknowledged that corn and soy were not meeting my communities needs, yet I was unable to let go of my corn and soy.  My error was that I loved my farmer friends but didn’t acknowledge that on my blueberry journey, I was going to need new friends.  I wanted a new way to meet the communities needs but I wasn’t willing to relinquish what I was already comfortable with.

To speak plainly and directly now, I wanted deeper connections with friends but I had friends who were not comfortable with deeper friendships, as well as I had friends who wanted to be the only deep friendship and I inadvetently kept some friends at a distance to “respect” the first friend.  I also had friends that wanted me to keep relationships in compartments that were their ideals and not my own.  I had my own ideals about friendships that I made as business but had developed into more but my own fears kept those friendships stunted. In some cases I already had a great relationship, but I was trying to make it fit a definition.  I am talking about my sons.  I have a great relationship with all three of my sons but not if I try to make it by the definition of my own “mom/son” standards.  My romantic relationship, I simply had to relinquish.  I was not making him happy.  I had to relinquish the idea that there was something wrong with him because he didn’t appreciate the awesomness that was me.  Rejection sucks.  I also had to relinquish the idea that I could make him happy and still be happy myself.  Believe it or not that took five years and a lot of very dramatic, chaotic, emotional hell, to relinquish.  But I would definetly have chaos if I did like the blueberries and tried to keep the corn too.  Thats a dark joke.  In all seriousness, we have to let each other go in order to grow a new relationship.

They say it all the time. “They” as in the old timers in the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous.  “You have to surrender to win.”  In order to grow I had to let go of a mega shit ton.

1. My romantic relationship was going nowhere, fast.  I quickly accepting that the priority this relationship had was not in alignment with what it deserved.  He wanted me to make it a priority but he didn’t want any commitment other than to have fun together.  Fair enough we are both approaching our 50’s, keeping it light was alright with me, but then I have a business as well as friends, children and my own recovery, the “lighter side” relationship, was indeed last in my priorities.  Resentment was building from the he time he consumed.   Resentful of a relationship that would not go deeper.   And those frustrations were distractions from my goals to grow.  The decision was made to surrender and relinquish that relationship.   Relief was received as an instant reward from the universe.
2. The Men”s House was something I still wanted.  And, I will open a men’s house but for now the universe had other ideas.  Through Da Vinci Home I hosted a grand opening event with a firewalk!  I made plans with a local apartment complex to rent a very large apartment.  Patiently I waited while they made upgrades on the units.  The day I was to sign the lease, I was informed that the complex was going through some legal issues and I could no longer rent from them.  So began the whole process of finding the right location again. Once again I surrendered and relinquished that plan for now.
3. The idea that I could do everything all by myself had to be relinquished.  I was attempting to run my own online magazine, with all the content and media it required.  Yes it is this blog site you are reading now.  From the very first day, I knew Da Vinci was going to open, I knew that I would not waste a precious moment of all the experience I would gain. As well as somehow share all the experience the women who came through Da Vinci had to share.  Helping women get recovery was my first priority, because every addict saved is another addict to spread the message.  My second priority was always to spread the message of recovery using digital media.  This positive world of recovery is so rarely shared.  We hear so much in the news of what addicts do wrong, but not of the incredible justice served to a community that encourages strong recovery.  But I couldn’t any longer do it alone.  Combined with mentoring the women of Da Vinci and trying to keep up with all the new content, I was not getting anywhere alone.  I needed help.
4. This one is the most important of all four.  I had to surrender that a relationship that I had with my very first client had grown beyond professional.  She had become my dear friend.  No, she also wasn’t the most model client.  But Lissi and I connected.   And a friendship with the rarest of bonds was formed.

Looking For Growth

In my attempts to keep my relationship purely professional, I listened to other clients when they accused me of “liking her better”.  I can’t really tell you in truth if that is true.  Yes, I enjoyed her company and her humor for sure.  I reside at Da Vinci and know ALL of my clients well.   And, I am proud to say that all of my clients enjoy living and growing at Da Vinci. I know that she had no more or no less consequences than other clients.  Further I know I had not done her any more favors than I had for any other clients.  Therefore when the women I cared about felt neglected, I spent many months pushing Lissi away.  Moreover I was harder on her for house infractions.  That is a regret now.  It must have made her feel very lonely to loose my companionship and only have companionship that had resentments.  No worries, in the end she persevered, but not due to me being a good friend during those times.

There came a day when Lissi violated the terms of her community control.  What a horrible day that was!  And despite the fact that I had pushed her away, another resident had maliciously told her probation officer, I favored her and was enabling her to violate her probation.  This was not true.  So now our friendship was causing her harm.  That sucked!  She was in jail for 84 days.

During that time, I talked with the girls at Da Vinci.  Every Tuesday we have a house meeting.   The house was divided with mixed reviews about what happened.  There was no doubt about if she was coming home but some had their concerns.  Lissi does indeed possess a strong personality.  I assured everyone that jail was not going to take that away.  But it was my son who privately told me that I deserve a friendship, and that Lissi coming back to Da Vinci not as my client but as my friend was alright.  That I should clearly stop containing a client relationship and allow our friendship to grow.  I never was responsible for Lissi’s recovery anyway.  I was responsible for Da Vinci.  To provide a safe place, free of drugs and chaos.  It was important to maintain a home with an environment and culture of recovery, introduce them to a 12 step program and fellowship, as well as give them opportunities with other resources to learn they never have to use again.  More it was a home to get a job and be comfortable enough to become independent, uncomfortable enough that they would want to grow.  Thirteen women easily supplies the uncomfortableness.

Lissi was released from jail.   And yes, she needed my friendship.   But time would tell that I needed her friendship as much.  By relinquishing the old bonds of our relationship,  I was able to help Lissi more than ever, but more it allowed her to return that friendship, as she had always wanted too.  My online magazine is getting even better attention than needed!  I also started my own social media company!  It’s not the men’s house yet, but was given this by the universe and hopefully will be able to help and hire more addicts into this industry.  She is relentless in her pursuit of making Da Vinci Productions grow.  The business growth could not have been accomplished on my own.  I am grateful for her help, her encouragement, her humor, her company and her friendship.

I have made some sacrifices and she has as well.  We share a bedroom like all the other residents do.  That means she sleeps with a pig.  Unlike the rest of the residents. I relinquished some of my personal space, but she has provided comfort during the time I have lost a romantic relationship.  By relinquishing the old relationship, it has allowed her to help me with my other plans to grow.  I have gained so much more motivation.   By relinquishing some of my tasks I am no longer overwhelmed.  And the biggest gift of all? Is that giving up the old ideas and sharing my burdens with a dear and trusted friend, I am much better as a mentor.  I am indeed more free to spend time with the other women of Da Vinci.  Truly I am blessed with a house full of wonderful women with outstanding recovery.  My decision to let go and let in a friend and now I am so much more able to be there for all these incredible women, that have now become even more dear to me.

 Angie H