February 2022 Prompt

 Recovery Writers Prompt

for February, 2022

Amends to Ourselves

It’s often said in program that we should begin by making amends to ourselves.  But how do we do this? I suggest asking the “committee,” those voices in our heads that criticize us.  In ACA, this is referred to as the Inner Critical Parent.  We can apologize to our True Self for the messages we told ourselves and acted on—dysfunctional beliefs and rules we internalized as children.

My Bad

I know I called you fat, criticized the way

you looked in jeans, particularly from the back.

That roll around your middle—I know it hurt when

I said it was permanent.

Your grandmother had that midriff too. 

Remember her at 67 

in your graduation photo?

You made her dresses in flowered

fabrics to stretch across her middle. Did you

love her less when she was more?

Also, the wrinkles and your saggy neck.  It’s so damn

tempting for me to focus on the folds, to mourn the taut

tanned flesh you used to flash around. I’m sorry

you feel old, but remember your mother didn’t get

to age. Take comfort in the years you got she didn’t.

Did I make you take the first job that was offered?

Did I tell you money would compensate for feeling

 bored and terrified

 Did you believe me when I said

you’d never succeed without a man to get you clients?

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for all those men I talked you into falling for. 

They were dramatic, yes, flashy smiles and smooth tongues.

 I let you fantasize about forever 

when they were only good enough.

 Forgive me.  I let you settle.  

Those masks I made you wear—the sultry student,

pretty lawyer, good daughter, complacent companion,

know-it-all—I’m sorry I dressed you in disguise.

I told you Saturdays would bring unrelenting suffering

unless you had a project or someplace to go. I told you

that you had no friends, no one to talk to, life an

endless game of show-and-tell and you with nothing

much to show or tell.

I lied.  I was afraid to tell the truth.  I was afraid you

would leave unless I kept you entertained, running,

judging, always on the move. I was afraid to say

I love you just the way you are.

Connection to Recovery:

I can recognize the voice of my Inner Critical Parent, who may have been trying to help me, or may have been repeating what was said to her. I can see the inner child within me who developed survival strategies to overcome the voice of the Critical Parent, strategies which ultimately backfired into looking outside myself for love and affirmation. I see that my Inner Critical Parent taught me the power of drama to distract myself from pain. By allowing my Inner Critical Parent to apologize to my Inner Child, I both affirm my true self and develop some compassion for the Inner Critical Parent. That compassion helps soften the voice of the Critical Parent. 

PROMPT:

1. List all the judgments you make about yourself and then apologize for treating yourself so badly. Consider ways in which that critical voice may have helped you survive in the past. Gently ask that critical voice to step aside. 

2.Notice all the judgments you make about others. Do you ever make these judgments about yourself? Write about another person who do not like and see how many of the judgments could also be made about you.

3.Find a photo of yourself or look into a mirror and stare into your eyes. What do you need to say to yourself? Write a poem or free-write.

January 2022 (Sundays Jan 9 and 23 at 1EST; Friday Jan 21 at 6pm EST)

 Recovery Writers Prompt January 2022

As we move into a new year, (and the sixth year of Recovery Writers!)I offer a writing prompt designed to acknowledge the blessings in our lives, which helps us transform into our Authentic Selves. One “story” I’ve told myself is that I never had a mentor, a teacher or guide who helped me plan future. I blamed Jehovah’s Witnesses for a lot of that, as they discouraged careers or worldly pursuits. But the truth is more complex: as an adult child, I had never developed trust and I didn’t  know how to ask for help.  So even in college, I didn’t seek out teachers who might have helped me. 

Today, I can see there were many blessings in my life, including people who might have helped me if I had known to ask. Today, I can connect with a Higher Power by writing  about the gifts of the spirit that I hope to gain in recovery. By reminding myself that these gifts are freely available to me, I can see a Higher Power working in my life. 

Why Am I Here?

To receive a blessing, like Jacob wrestling with the angel.

a blessing for my elder years, these years of letting go.

To receive the wisdom of the teachers, those teachers

that I didn’t recognize, hiding in the corner, silent,

the ones who didn’t seem to have too much to say.

To let go of my ideas of how it should be done.

To let it go exactly the way it will unfold.

To remember those who came before.

To honor those before me, to accept their gifts.

To find my deepest self, the self that gives

the perfect fried egg to her child and takes

the broken one herself.

To give the power of writing full rein,

let it take off through the meadow, trust

I won’t fall off or be thrown.

To let my writing be an offering to me,

then to see if it is wanted, needed, and offer

freely to those in need.  

To create from plenty. To put down praise, 

knowing there will never be enough, a sip of praise

setting off a thirst that leads me to the addict’s

sick romance.

To believe: there’s nowhere else I need to be.

There’s nothing else I need to be doing. 

Connection to Recovery:

Gratitude is a key concept of recovery. By focusing on the gifts of the spirit, I can see my growth in program. The final couplet in this poem echoes a statement made by a retreat leader years ago. When I can be present to the gifts of the day rather than thinking about all the projects I want to do, I can be truly available to others.  I can experience the blessing of connection.

Prompt:

1. Think about the gifts of the spirit, such as love, compassion, slowing down, listening deeply, and write about how these gifts are present in your life or how you would like them to manifest.

2. Write about any teacher in your life, particularly one you may not have recognized as important at the time.

3. Think about any of your laundry list traits and write about how releasing one of them will bring you peace and authenticity.

4. Honor any gift you have received from a family member and how that gift manifests in your life today. 

5. Write your personal manifesto of how you would like to live your life today. 

December 2021 prompt NOTE: No Session December 26. We meet December 12 and 17 only.

 Until I was ten, Christmas was celebrated with a tree and gifts.  I recall driving into Princeton to see the Christmas lights on all the houses.  Those were magical times.  I found a photo of what must have been the last Christmas we celebrated before my mother converted.  I’m sure she was exhausted, trying to keep three children happy in an unhappy house.  I wrote a pantoum about what I imagined her feeling:

The End of Santa

My mother looks disconsolate, 

like crumpled wrapping paper.

Not what she got, not what she wanted,

not what she was hoping for.

Like crumpled wrapping paper,

as if she knew what was coming,

not what she was hoping for.

Next year, she’d no longer celebrate.

As if she knew what was coming--

her final Christmas Day. No Santa

Next year, she’d no longer celebrate

with cookies, gifts, good cheer.

Her final Christmas Day. No Santa.

Converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses.

No cookies, gifts, good cheer--

she’d exchange them for The Truth.

Converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The coming war of Armageddon.

She’d exchange them for The Truth.

Convert her hapless children too.

The coming war of Armageddon.

Plaid-skirted on her chenille bedspread.

Convert her hapless children too,

looking woebegone and lost.

Plaid skirted on her chenille bedspread,

oblivious to the coming loss of hearth.

Looking woebegone and lost, the cookies

left for Santa on a small white plate

                                            

Connection to Recovery:

Today, I can feel compassion for my mother and understand her sadness of being married to an alcoholic and doubtless engineering Christmas all by herself (as I did when my children were young.)     I can also be gentle with myself when I find my expectations of trying to create a good time for others results in my abandoning myself and my needs.                                       

PROMPT:

1.Find a family photo from your childhood that stirs a memory of conflicted feelings.  Write down one of those feelings and circle around it in the form of a pantoum.

2.Write about any holiday you can recall.  See if you can capture the fun of a special day. Write about your parents or other caregivers and how hard they worked for you to have a nice holiday. 

3. Write about what you expected from any particular Christmas or other important holiday and what actually happened.  Find an image, like the cookies left for Santa, that fits the feeling of your piece.

note:  A pantoum is a repeating form in poetry in which the second and fourth lines of a 4-line stanza are repeated as the 1st and 3rd stanzas of the next stanza, continuing through the poem. The final stanza often repeats lines from the first stanza, although I did not do that here. If it’s fun, try it.  

Prompt for November 2021 The Manicure

 

A family with a secret often has more than one.  My grandfather had a girlfriend named Frances later in his life that I believed was a secret from my grandmother. I met Frances in his hospital room after he had a tragic car accident in which he struck and killed a child.  That brought on an attack of emphysema.

 I was summoned home from college because the doctors thought he was dying.  When I got to his room with my mother, there was Frances (my mother’s age) sitting on the side of his bed.  When he died a few years later, my mother gave me the job of calling Frances. 

The Manicure

A young Korean man bends over me.

A shock of black hair hides his face.

He takes my hand in his.

I am embarrassed by the age 

spots sprouting on my skin.

He clips my nails, oblivious. 

To him, I’m just a client.

Then I recall my grandfather, 

a lean, laconic farmer, gasping

through ravaged lungs in the hospital,

attended by the woman he had decided,

fearing death, he wanted me to meet.

Her name was Frances.

Frances from the feed mill.

She was my mother’s age.

Here, seemingly in secret 

from my grandmother,

Francis held his hands in hers

and gently clipped his nails 

as if seated at the feet of Christ.

This gesture, more shocking

than a kiss or exposed flesh,

silenced small talk.

The silence grew, divisive,

deadly, deft.

Connection to Recovery:

Alcoholics Anonymous has a saying: “You are as sick as your secrets.” Keeping secrets was part of the “don’t tell” rule of an ACA childhood.  We didn’t tell what life was like in our homes. I wasn’t the only one to keep my grandfather’s girlfriend a secret.  My mother was complicit too.  It was she who handed me Frances’ phone number when my grandfather died. Keeping secrets was generational in my family.

The cost of keeping the secret was shame—shame on behalf of my grandmother and shame that I was not being honest. I allowed myself to be overpowered by an authority figure—my grandfather. I participated in a family drama.  Today, I recognize the signs of drama and learn to step away.

                                

                                          PROMPT:

 1.Write about any secret that you have kept for someone else,

particularly if you were conflicted and wanted to tell the truth.

 2.Write about any situation in which you learned a secret that changed the way you felt about someone you looked up to.

3.  If you have kept a secret, write a letter to the person you want to tell the truth to, even if that person is no longer living.

October prompt

 Recovery Writers Prompt October 2021

from: Beneath the Steps: a Writing Guide for 12-step Recovery by Christine Beck

Break-up of the Family of Origin

My mother didn’t leave my alcoholic father until I was fourteen.  By then, her job could support us.   By that time, we had nothing to mourn about leaving the farm.  But it had been home for fourteen years and was imbued with a strong sense of history. As we painted furniture in our old house to take to our new one, I knew we were moving.  

But, like many Adult Children I have big gaps in my memory.  How did we move our furniture?  Where was my father when we left?  What did he say about our moving out?  Logic tells me it was a huge melodramatic scene, but in my memory, one day we lived on the farm and the next day we lived in town. I don’t recall approaching the move with hope or even relief, although I imagine those feelings must have been there.  

But it was change, big change, and I’m sure the dread of change inspired feelings like the dead moth that appears at the end of this poem (an example of the surprise that can happen). 

Starting Over

When my mother kicked my father out,

silence tumbled in.

Our farmhouse had been furnished

in old wood, mahogany and oak--

the dining table, desk, and bookshelves,

even bedsteads, all evoked the color

of brown dirt, dark and dank, as when

the plow clears last year’s stalks away.

We painted it all white. For weeks,

we made each piece as pure as baby’s breath.

With each stroke, I covered fourteen years.

They lay stuck in drying paint, like a moth,

when it surrenders to the trap, its wings

turned hard and gray.

Connection to Recovery:

Like the moth, I was trapped in an alcoholic home. The feeling of being trapped can be triggered in adulthood.  Today, I can recognize the feeling and remind my inner child she is not trapped today.  I can help metaphorically to build her a new home. 

  

                                       

                                           PROMPT:

1. Think about a piece of furniture, flooring or wallpaper from your childhood home.  Let it speak for you about the loss of your home, even if you didn’t think it was a loss. 

2. Write about any move you made in childhood, trying to capture the mixed emotions any move entails.

3. Write about any breakup in your family when you were young.

September post

 

                                            photo: Artur Aldyrkhanov on unsplash.com

September 2021 Prompt, from Beneath the Steps: A Writing Guide for 12-Step Recovery, by Christine Beck,p 125

The Bible is a treasure trove of stories that bubble up when I explore emotions of longing or disconnection.  The following poem speaks to the fear of abandonment. It also involves issues of class, which tormented me as a child.   It’s the story of Ruth and Naomi. Naomi is Ruth’s mother-in-law. Ruth, a foreigner, is married to the Jewish Naomi’s son, Boaz.  When Boaz dies, Naomi plans to send Ruth back to her homeland, which was the custom.  Ruth pleads to stay with Naomi. I’m exploring contemporary notions of meddling mothers-in-law before turning the poem in a loving direction.

Mother-in-law

Just when you think you’ve heard enough,

her suggested hostess gifts, secret signals

of how her people learned to recognize each other, 

the initialed cocktail napkins, pressed lightly to lips, 

never mauled into a ball, a wrinkled mess. 

Just when she starts in on the nursery

school, the kind where our kind

goes to get ahead, 

Your head goes to Naomi, the Israelite, 

mother-in-law to a heathen girl named Ruth.

Boaz, Naomi’s son, stone dead, and Ruth, his widow,

lonely as the wind on Mount Moriah, 

clings to Naomi’s skirts, begs not be repatriated.

Ruth wants any task, just to hold the hand

of someone who once held him.

Wherever you go, let me go there too.

Connection to Recovery:

We all have stories or myths that take root in our subconscious. This story of possible abandonment had a happy ending. Naomi let Ruth stay. This one reminds me of the power of women in recovery. I need to keep them close and ask for help, just as Ruth asked Naomi.

                                          PROMPT:

1.Think of any story from the Bible, Shakespeare or any well-known piece of literature in which the characters display your longings or fear of abandonment.  Transport those characters

 to a scene from your life and see what happens.

2.Write about any current conflict in your life and then “flashback” to a conflict in some myth or fairytale that relates.

Response to July Prompt by Anna

 

If I go away.........

Snap snap goes the belt

daddy can't see me under the bed

I'm invisible.

light streaming from the hallway

i look around my room

there's my record player on a small table

will daddy break that?

He knows how much love my records

45s smashing across my bedroom wall

there are my worn out, stained dolls in the corner

i continue to look around my little room

a room that was once cozy and safe

i see the pink and white striped wall paper i love so

under a tear in the wallpaper is a message I wrote with a crayon

if I go away will mommy stop drinking?

if I go away will daddy stop scaring me?

if i go away will daddy stop touching me?

I float up to the sky

snap snap goes the belt

daddy can't see me under the bed

I'm invisible.