This morning my mother out of the blue, picked up a book that has been in her bathroom for nearly 8 months or more cd:  Beyond the Influence, Understanding & Defeatting Alcoholism by Katherine Ketcham & Wm. F. Asbury.

I have always told her about a "trick" I use with books, as I collect reference books & am always searching for answers.  If you are drawn to a book, pick it up, flip it open.  I do this often, as it seems HP is always trying to guide us...  A page will fall open to give u a message for that moment.  It has always worked profoundly for me!

Today, she did the same thing - flipped it open - it landed on pg 190, this is what she saw:

"I was neurotic for years.  I was anxious & depressed & selfish.  Everyone kept telling me to change.  I resented them, and I agreed with them, I wanted to change, but simply couldn't, no matter how hard I tried.

What hurt the most was that, like the others, my best friend kept insisting that I change.  So I felt powerless & trapped. Then one day, another friend said to me, "Don't change.  I love you just as you are."

Those words were music to my ears, "Don't change.  Don't change.  Don't change...  I love you as you are."  I relaxed.  I came alive.  And suddenly, I changed!

Now I know that I couldn't really change until I found someone who would love me whether I changed or not."

       When we accept ourselves as ourselves, w/ all our flaws & imperfections, we discover that change is possible.  The purpose of change not to compete with others, proving that you are bigger, stronger, or better than someone else, but to become your own true self, the person you were meant to be...  and perhaps, even more important, the person you would like to be.  Transforming yourself means becoming yourself, which involves learning how to be comfortable in your own (sober) alcoholic skin.

from Beyond the Influence

Well, this passage spoke to my mom & it speaks to me, today w/ my step-father.  It wouldn't have helped me when i was married w/ my ex -- I DID accept him & love him no matter what.  What I have learned about myself since the A-bomb fell (w/ my step-dad) in July, is that I was just as sick as the A's themselves.  I was love sick.

I was loving them more than I loved myself.  Hopelessly co-dependent but I don't feel like that today.  I used to say constantly I would sacrifice for my mom in a heart beat & would have to, I would have with my (ex) husband.  But where is the self-preseration in that -- d'uh, there wasn't any.

I was throwing my love away for another that was throwing their lives away and the love of themselves - away - ad infinitum... what a sick, downward spiral!!!

I can love with detachment. 

I did learn something about love a few yrs ago, when I was co-dep on a lover that I could never get enough of -- I realised that the love I feel for another is MY LOVE, my experience.  It doesn't matter what I get in return - & no one can take it from me, it is still the love I have.  Kinda like the same thing my mom said she realised.

You just never know what will get through to someone, I do know we have to want to change for ourselves.   I knew, we are supposed to love ourselves, that u can't love another unless u love yourself, like the A quoted above, I simply didn't know how.  I think I am learning today.

-kitty light