I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
--Bill Cosby

"Oh, how I wish my dad would get sober." "Oh, how I want my friend to get help with her eating problem."  "Oh, how I wish I could make my mom understand."

When we become obsessed with how we want others to change, we put our own happiness on hold. As we wait, hoping and scheming about how to get others to see their many problems, we are neglecting ourselves. It's almost as if we think it's not fair for us to be happy when others are miserable. But when we detach with love, we still care, we still pray and wish for the best, but we know that other people's problems belong to them, not to us.

Today let me accept the fact that if I detach with love, no one will die from it. I'll just be more healthy and happy.

 I've thought alot today about the denial in my family. Why today I'm not sure, but this article was perticularly fitting about how much hurt I feel whenever the topic comes up. About how I want my mom to validate my version of reality; about how much I want my father to just stand up and scream, "yes! yes! it's all true! It is! I did it! I'm one of THOSE people! I know it! She knows it!" How the jading of the truth--and this desperation I have to force those who won't acknoledge my version of it--has caused me great pain over the years.
 The truth is funny that way. Even in a court of law, when someone puts their hand on a bible and swears to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help them god, it's a prospective--it's their prospective based on their emotions, their understanding of the universe and their emotional sensitivities. It's a sense of jading of bias--and even in a court of law, there's a reason why people will ask 8 different witnesses to confirm, deny or state what really happened. Two sets of eyes won't catch everything.
 I guess, here, is where I wrestle with detachment Surrendering the reality that people who are too wrapped up in their own delusions to validate my needs; letting go of those not in recovery or not willing to persue recovery; accepting what is and not what I want; these are big concepts that take a great while to begin adressing.
 But, whenver I get down on myself, I often think of the philosipher Lao Tzu, writer of THE ART OF WAR: The journey of 1000 miles begins with one step. And I know I have taken much more than that.