"Happy Monday!"
In two more days my children will be going back to school. I will miss them! In two more days the stress of all the homework, schedules and ups and downs of the school year will begin again. I look forward to it,...I think! In two more days my children will experience change, new things and will become more knowledgeable. I will encourage them! In two more days I will experience my own change as my children grow older, wiser and more independent. I will cherish this moment, this year and this time with them. I love my children!
If I was still drinking today my thoughts would of been negative, bothersome and over joyed that my children would be going back to school. Now, do not get me wrong, my one friend loves it when her kids go back to school and she is not an alcoholic, just someone who can only be around her kids for so long and then needs a break. Hey, at least she is honest about it! I, on the other hand, am different. I become depressed as the summer ends and know that my kids will be facing another school year, grow older and will become different in how they once saw things, dealt with things and yet have to endure things all together in the new school year. I will miss my children! Although, I will enjoy the time I will have without them, meaning, I will be able to attend day meetings, work without interruptions and go running whenever I want too,...etc! These gifts are all good,...but I still take awhile to accept the change of another school year my children will endure in the new year. I know change is good and some of you may think I am ridiculous to feel this way, while others may identify and some may not even know what the heck I am talking about. Whatever, how you see it, deal with it,...it really does not matter to me, it is how I feel every year towards the end of the summer and at the end of their their Holidays breaks. This feeling will eventually pass and I will accept the new school year in stride but today and the past week I have had to face the feelings of sadness of knowing the summer will be ending and my kids will be going back to school. I will accept the change!
When I was drinking change for me was not acceptable. I would not say that, I would just react negative to it. I would not respond well to it. I would not want to change. Acceptance, on the other hand, was never even looked upon. I would accept nothing and cast out judgment and behave in a selfish manner. Acceptance to me would cause me to become angry and resentful and result in a "no way" attitude of allowing myself to love, understand and see things differently in any situation. Not accepting and not changing caused me to be very controlling, very miserable and very disconnected to God! When I drank I refused to understand change and acceptance!
I look at my recovery today as a gift. I look at my recovery as a way to be open to any suggestion, opinion and guidance one may say to me,...even if it is not something I agree with I have the choice to agree to disagree. I have the ability to accept change without anger, resentment, judgment and selfish behavior. I can deal with change. I can deal with acceptance. I can deal with me! On the other hand, I am not saying it is always easy to accept and change,...because, it is not. It has taken me a very long time to work on this area in my life but I had to be willing to want to do it. I had to be willing to choose what type of recovery I wanted in my life and the areas I needed to work on in order to love, understand and accept my own issues as well as other peoples issues. Today, I may be feeling sad about my kids starting back to school but this too, shall pass! I could be facing much more harder or life changing obstacles in my life, but for today I am dealing with this sadness and I am grateful for that. I am grateful I am sober today and I have children. I am grateful my children never experienced me drunk. I am grateful I became sober before I became pregnant and had them. I am grateful I had the opportunity to be a stay at home mom and had the privilege to watch them grow throughout the years. I am grateful for a lot of things when it comes to being a mother and having the children I have today. My children are gifts to me. I am a gift to my children. I will accept the changes that are yet to come and take them with grace, some sadness, hope, understanding and mostly love. I will accept the changes in my children!
Do you struggle with accepting the changes in your life? I know I did and sometimes still do. Today, I know I can and will accept changes in order to live a peaceful and loving life. Today, I will do yoga to calm my spirit, to become reconnected to the reality of what I will face in the coming school year with my children. Yoga will calm my spirit and allow me to accept the changes gracefully.
Sobriety Fitness by Cathy Shuba is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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