Oh I wish I could have taken you all with me this weekend!!  We had our local Alanon Spring meeting and if any of you have been blessed to hear any of Father Tom W.'s stuff he's a Jesuit Priest or if you get the chance to hear him speak I highly DO recommend it!

I will share more of the wisdom he gave .. what I loved most about him is he gave me permission to be ok about the fact I have felt and still feel angry from time to time.  I do not have to live there and I get to respond to it in a different way.  He grew up with seeing in real time people like Mary P and Blanche from Texas for those who use the podcast speakers as a tool if you do not it's a great way to hear real alanon talk being shared especially by these giants of alanon. 

So something else he talked about was a workshop they had in their area call Murderous Thoughts (this is not permission to go out and kill anyone I just want to qualify that statement) however let's get real who hasn't had those thoughts fly by in their mind?  I sure have mine were pretty tame .. I call them my "dark fantasies" where his whiskey truck would just explode.  Seriously I could tell you how I would spend the insurance money and the fact the kids could collect social security for a few years .. lol.  It would be more than child support I'm not getting!!  The following year it graduated to What Would You Do with the Body?  Well, if anyone has listened to Mary P (and I think that's who I'm thinking of), she actually did kill her A by drowning him in a bathtub, she proceeded to have a moment of clarity, was a nurse so she resuscitated him took him from the bath tub to the bed, blew his hair dry even as he was still passed out from intoxication .. she tells it in such a way .. I swear when I hear that story from her I cry laughing.  Thank you Alanon for my warped sense of humor!  Anyway, he actually met her one time during a panel he was speaking at after scaring the crap out of her by jumping up and exclaiming you saved my life as well as a few other people's .. he asked her so what would you have done with the body?  She explained in a quiet voice, well first thing first, you have to kill the SOB! 

I'm so grateful that he said what he said about anger and the fact he's a priest no less and gets it .. there was no shaming or guilt .. it is ok to be angry especially in the beginning it's totally normal.  It's a feeling not a fact.  Resentments are different than anger.  Resentments are what kills.  Anger just is a moment.  I can let go of a resentment and while forgiving is what I work towards I do not have to forget the fact that person is an untrustworthy person.  I do not have to include them in my circle and it doesn't have to be all let's hold hands while we watch the rainbows and unicorns pooping purple poop!  I like that!!

The other thing that he gave me great perspective of was dealing with alcoholism.  An alcoholic dances with a gorilla at some point no matter how great the dance is the gorilla will eventually kill you.  As the codependent I want to get in the cage with the gorilla because after all the cage needs to be cleaned, and maybe if I throw a table cloth on the gorilla I can then go and call it a coffee table instead of calling it what it is .. it's a gorilla and gorilla's no matter how nice they can appear .. they can and will turn in a heart beat. 

Alcoholism as a disease .. it's got a diagnosis, it's progressive and just like cancer it will kill the A if it is not addressed for whatever reason that makes sense to me and that I can wrap my brain around. 

There are some other things I will share because I did apply them already .. none of this information is new or different than what has already been shared through alanon lit, meetings and so on .. it was the right shot for me to look at things from a different perspective.  So much more to say just trying to take it all in at the moment. 

Hugs S :)