Prompt for Sunday, December 6/13, 1:30pm.  I will email zoom info to Recovery Writers. 

Setting boundaries is hard because I am a conflict-avoider.  I never learned how to express my feelings and state my needs.  Therefore, I assume if I try to set a boundary, I’ll either be speechless and cave in to unacceptable behavior or a huge fight will ensue.

Deciding that a sponsor-sponsee relationship is not working is a good example.  Even when a sponsee is not keeping their commitments, I am reluctant to acknowledge that. I have a program friend who was afraid to tell her hairdresser she didn’t like the way the hairdresser did her hair! That sounds silly, but I totally understand. I believe honest communication without anger or accusation is one of the most important tools in recovery and one that most of us never learned how to do.

Boundaries

The garden, edged with wire,

a jaunty scarecrow, a bit of coyote

urine, hair shavings from a buzz cut.

Don’t call me, text me.

stop with the emojis, no more

cute animal videos. 

I’m at the edge of nowhere,

on edge, waiting for silence,

flicker of senses, a sense of roots

growing underneath my feet,

threatening to expose themselves,

wrap around my ankles.

I’m afraid you will show up

with the kitchen shears

or a basket filled with bees

I’ve set a boundary to protect

the baby lettuce, a chance to grow 

without withering or sunstroke.

Fieldstone, sandstone, slate, granite--

I haul them into place, balanced

like a conversation resting on a sinkhole.

Connection to Recovery

Boundaries are key to recovery.  It is unreasonable to think I will like everyone I meet or they will like me.  I cannot expect another person will change just because I ask them to. If someone triggers me, I have three choices: 

1. Accept them just as they are, 

2. Set limits on our interaction, 3. 

Choose not to interact with that person. 

 PROMPT:

1.Write about someone you want to set a boundary with or someone who set a boundary with you.  Write loving words that do not accuse but acknowledge your feelings and the limits you choose to set on the relationship.

2.Write about the fears you have if you set a boundary.  It might be that you will never have another friend or that the other person will gossip about you. See what stands in the way of your setting boundaries. Find a concrete image, such as the baby lettuce in the poem above, that stands for that part of you that you feel you need to protect with a boundary.

Prompt for November 8/15

 Recovery Writers in November (whether you attend Nov 8 or 15) will use the following prompt:

We are Attracted to Dysfunctional People 

Many of us in recovery are baffled as to how we ended up romantically tangled with an alcoholic, workaholic, narcissist, Adult Child, or other dysfunctional person. Didn’t we know better? This was a personality we grew up with, a cycle of drama that released adrenalin and made us feel alive. Normal people were “boring.” We were programmed from childhood to seek out such people. I can recall my mother criticizing my High School boyfriend as lacking in pizzazz and personality. Today, I see that she was addicted to my alcoholic father’s personality.  

Most of my boyfriends in later years fit the pattern of out-sized personalities and dramatic narcissists.  The one I write about below wasn’t outwardly dramatic, but he was both an alcoholic and an Adult Child.  

 

Watching Walter Cronkite 

 

His dad died when he was three.
Mine hung on longer,
half-dead from Gallo and despair. 
We found each other with the radar
of children unused to being lucky. 
 
Nightly, we’d sit on his college couch,
drink gin, and listen to the man we called “Walt”: 
 

“Today, 30 servicemen dead in Vietnam. 

Tornados flattened a Midwest mobile park. 

Gas prices rose again.” 

 
Beneath his newsman’s voice, a lyric of authority,
and though we knew he couldn’t see us,
bathed in cool blue cathode rays,
we straightened up and listened close. 
 
He sat behind a desk.
We imagined a dining table.
He wore a suit and tie. 
We saw a cardigan, worn at elbows.
His desk was clear of papers, pens. 
 
We saw a jello salad jiggling its bits of pineapple 
holding out its promise of a tart explosion on the tongue. 
As our ice cubes melted, shrank in our mouths, 
 
we were mesmerized as if  our horoscope had said
tomorrow would be sunny, our fortunes would improve. 
Twenty-two minutes. He signed off: “And that’s the way it was.” 

 

  CONNECTION TO RECOVERY 

 

The man I loved was odd, even by Berkeley standards.  He always  wore a black suit and white starched shirt.  In that respect,  he was clearly dramatic. But he loved me and cared for me in the way I imagine both of us would have liked to have  been cared for as children.  He died before I could make  amends for taking him for granted.  

 

                                                PROMPT: 

1. Write about a relationship, past or current,

 with a dysfunctional person.  What did you expect? What did you get ? 

2. Try to  add an  image of a TV show that made you feel safe.

 Explore why that might have been true. 

 

 

What are Recovery Writers?

Recovery Writers are a group of people in 12-step recovery who use creative writing to recover memories, heal their wounds, connect with others in recovery, and practice hearing the voice of a Loving Parent.

I have been practicing 12-step recovery since 2005. I was raised in an alcoholic family. The 12-step program that heals those wounds is called Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA). Many ACAs also become alcoholic, as I did. The underlying feelings are similar.   There are many people who feel alone, fear abandonment, are entangled in unfulfilling relationships and who don’t know who they are.  I have healed many of my childhood wounds and discovered my true self by writing and listening to the writing of others. I did this through Recovery Writing. 

We know today that 1 in 5 Americans was raised in an alcoholic home. My father was an alcoholic from before I was born.  His alternating manic energy, self pity, and rage created a roller coaster of feelings that led me to adopt a series of survival strategies.  I share these strategies with every child raised the way I was.  They include being super-responsible, a people pleaser, controlling, and afraid of authority figures and my own feelings.

My childhood years created a feeling of emptiness and not belonging. I feared my father’s anger and didn’t know how to deal with conflict. When I was ten, my mother converted to a Jehovah’s Witness, and took her three children with her. I dreaded being a proselytizer, knocking on doors with the Watchtower and Awake magazines. I hated being different, forced to give up celebrating my birthday and Christmas. 

Because I was a Witness, I was not allowed to go to college.  My career was to be a minister. So I was not encouraged to find my gifts and talents.  The religion is all-consuming and Witnesses hold themselves apart from the world.  So from the age of 10 until I graduated High School at 17, I was subject to what I saw as a demanding god who would not allow me to be a normal teenager.

Eventually, I became an alcoholic as well, using alcohol to numb my feelings of fear and give me some relief. My journey to sobriety began in 2005.  I had been writing poetry since the year 2000, but it wasn’t until I began to connect my writing with my recovery that I realized it was a part of practicing my programs. 

                                                            * * *

Recovery Writers use creative writing to reclaim our childhood stories and practice our recovery program. The process of writing, sharing out loud with others in recovery, and then hearing the voice of a Loving Parent as we each comment about what is beautiful and powerful in each other’s writing is one way of doing Reparenting work. It allows the spirit of creativity and our higher power to breathe recovery into our lives.

All of us begin childhood as creative beings. We explore, make art, sing songs. But many of us lose that sense of wonder as age. Writing our recovery stories allows a higher  power of creativity to power our pens into writing that feels both powerful and healing. Often my poem leads me to a hidden truth, which is the essence of creativity.

Recovery Writers is a Community—the family that many of us longed for as children. We are loved for exactly who we are. We don’t have to pretend. Recovery Writers come from all 12-step programs. We offer a roadmap to uncovering feelings through telling our stories—both of alcoholism but more importantly about the childhood events that led us to become alcoholics, al anons, overeaters, or adult children of alcoholics/dysfunctional families Practicing 12-step recovery is a spiritual exercise. Writing is one key to unlock the spirit within.  

.

 Here is our Recovery Writers prompt for October 18.  We will meet at 1:30 pm. 

 Zoom info is 996 653 317 password 119868

By articulating what I wanted from my parents when I was young, I can see the feelings of loneliness and fear that underlie emotional abandonment. Here is a poem where the child calls on the parents for what the child needs: 

 

Can Anybody Hear Me? 

 

 Father, I am calling. 

Father, I am hungry.

 Give me peanuts,

clustered tight in papery shells,

or oysters, wrested with your knife

from their tight-lipped home, 

how they hold themselves 

together, resist opening

They are quivering,

helpless to resist. 

 

Mother, I am calling. 

Give me oatmeal,

chocolate pudding.

Show me where to look

beneath the bushes for berries,

the artichokes unfolding

soft and sweet,

their center worth the wait. 

Connection to Recovery:  This is my inner child asking for foods that I associate with childhood.  The message is mixed.  My peanuts remind me of the nuts at bars where my father drank. The oysters remind me of his dramatics in wresting open the shells and telling us kids they were still alive when they hit his stomach! Notice I end with an image of artichokes, bitter and inedible on the outside, but sweet within. This image reminds me of the nature of the innocent child.  I became tough on the outside to withstand my feelings of abandonment and shame, but I was soft and sweet within.  Try for some imagery that will set up conflict in your work.  This is where feelings will resonate in your work.

Prompt:

1.Write a poem in which you ask your parents for food. Imagine foods that you associate with each of them, foods that perhaps you loved or had mixed feelings about, foods that you associate either with your longings or with their nature.

2.Try to include in your request for food the idea that they were not listening to you and did not hear you. 

3. If it works better for you to ask for something other than food, feel free.  The idea is to address the parent from childhood with a request for something that would have made you feel loved and special. 

 Here is the Recovery Writer prompt for September 2020. You can write ahead of the meeting and bring it to share or write on your own. I will email zoom info so email me if you are not on my list. christiebeck90@gmail.com.  Next Meeting is Sunday September 27 at 1:30pm. 

Denial 

Denial is a powerful survival strategy.  It keeps us from feelings that we fear might destroy us.  As we grow in recovery, feelings will return.  We will retrieve memories.  I saw how many times I denied my True Self, when my Inner Child was hurt or frightened, by resorting to platitudes or statements that minimized or denied my experience.  

When someone asks me how I am and I reply, “fine,” that is not always true. With some people, it’s not appropriate to reveal all my feelings.  But in program, I need to recognize and verbalize my feelings if I want to grow. Recently, someone asked me on a cold, wet spring day how I was doing.  I said, “Drizzly.” He knew just what I meant! 

Finding those phrases that we use to deny our true feelings is a good way to write about denial. 

Denial 

 

I’m fine. Really fine. 

Her criticism didn’t bother me. 

Those weren’t really tears. 

I’m fine.  Really. Fine. 

 

It didn’t hurt that badly. 

It was clear he’d changed his mind. 

We get to fall in love and out. 

It didn’t hurt that badly. 

 

Other people have it worse. 

The mothers who can’t feed their children. 

The refugees in camps. 

Other people have it worse. 

 

What’s past is past. 

I say let bygones be bygones. 

Put one foot forward and march on. 

What’s past is past.  

 

  

When I hear the things I say, either out loud or to myself, I  can see the extent of my denial. Then I can start to tell the truth about how I really feel, recognizing that my feelings 

 may change, but I can express them in the moment. If I am overly-agitated, I can pause and ask whether I need to express a feeling right now.  But I need to be cautious that I                                                    don’t wait and then talk myself out of my feeling after it has passed.       

My general rule is if I am still obsessing over a conversation in my head 24 hours after it occurred, I need to say something.                                  

PROMPT: 

  

1.Think of the phrases you say when someone asks you how you are. Write about what you say and what you would say if you were telling the truth. 

2.Write about phrases you recall from childhood that caused you to deny your feelings.  This is a good way to identify the voice of the Inner Critical Parent and to see where you repeat it today. 

3.Write about all the ways you minimize your feelings, such as “other people have it worse.” Make your list of excuses for telling the truth.

  

Recovery Writers Prompt—Trees and your Higher Power

What can trees tell me about recovery? First, trees are part of nature, a place where many in recovery find their Higher Power. The Redwood trees in Muir Woods, California, also embody the power of “holding on,” as they survive on little water and build a complex interconnected root system to support their height.  I use trees as a metaphor for the Higher Power of my community in recovery.  They quite literally “hold me up,” often in ways I don’t see.  

When I visited, I saw a group of Redwoods in Muir Woods called The Cathedral Grove, a cluster of redwoods in a circular pattern, formed when a main trunk was damaged and a number of new shoots grew up around it.  As these trees are 600 – 800 years old, this cathedral is ancient. In 1945, leaders of 41 nations gathered in the cathedral grove in a memorial to Franklin Roosevelt, founder of the United Nations. The photograph of these men from many lands, seated on folding chairs beneath one of the most magnificent of nature’s monuments, is both inspiriting and sobering.

 I use this metaphor in a poem I wrote, juxtaposing the grandeur and power of the trees with my daughter’s eating disorder, over which I was powerless..  

 

 

Valley of Shadows

                    

The winding road descends from sun-struck hills to reach Muir Woods, where redwoods rise three hundred feet enveloped in thick fog.

 

Dwarfed by massive trunks of battered bark, my daughter’s legs are twigs. She thinks she’ll reach perfection if she starves herself.

 

These trees survive the summer’s drought on filigrees of fog that drift in from the sea, catch on their needles, condense, 

 

 fall to the forest floor. They grow in circles, shelter shoots that sprout from trunks. Their roots entwine with those nearby to hold each other up.

 

She is beyond the reach of roots, the comfort of the scent of loam, of sea spray, new growth, and decay.

 

Yet when I reach down with my hand, she takes it as she did when she was six, when I knew all the ways to keep her safe.

 

 

Connection to Recovery:

The image of the trees holding themselves up, with their

roots in a circle, reminds me that in recovery I am not alone.

I have others to help hold me up.  It also reminds me that

I need to be those roots for other people in recovery,

working slowly, sometimes unseen, in order to  keep

holding them up. My daughter did eventually recovery,

with the aid of many other helpers, who acted as redwoods

to hold both of us

 

                                                     PROMPT:

1.Write about the life force of nature and its resilience.

Use any part of nature that appeals to you.

How do you connect to that power?                      

2.Imagine that an object in nature is a source of wisdom.

 Let it speak to you about any problem you can’t seem to solve. 

 

Recovery Writers:
You can post your work here.  Comments, if any should be supportive.  What did you like? What reminded you of how we practice in recovery?

What are Recovery Writers?

We know today that 1 of 8 Americans is an Alcoholic and 1 in 5 of us was raised in an alcoholic home. Both are true of me. I have been practicing 12-step recovery since 2005.

I was raised in an alcoholic family. The 12-step program that heals those wounds is called Adult Children of Alcoholics. Many ACAs also become alcoholic, as I did. The underlying feelings are similar.   There is a huge number of people who feel alone, fear abandonment, are entangled in unfulfilling relationships and who don’t know who they are.

My book, Beneath the Steps: A Writing Guide for 12-Step Recovery (amazon),  shows how I have healed many of my childhood wounds and discovered my true self by writing and listening to the writing of others. That is what I call Recovery Writing.

We each have a story, actually, many stories, to tell.  The process of writing and sharing them is transformative. I hope you will join me in this inspirational work.

Online recovery writing. I will post the assignment for March 15, 2020 here.

March 15, 2020 Assignment:  Write about what the words "Snow Day" mean to you.  Please post.  Add how this writing relates to your recovery.