Some of you may or may not know that I have been married / divorced more than once. I met my first ex when I was in high school, and we married when I was almost 19. He was 5 years my senior, and he was very controlling / verbally abusive. He also was an alcoholic / drug addict, but I did not discover the truth until after we were married.
While he was out test driving a car with a friend, he got pulled over because he was driving recklessly, and was taken to jail because he had an 8 ball of cocaine in his pocket. His friend came back to the house to tell me, and I was dumbfounded. I did not even know what cocaine looked like, let alone what an 8 ball of it was… and that was the day that changed my life forever.
That was the beginning of a lot of new things for me, including jail, bail, bond, court, rehab, lawyers, Narcotics Anonymous (NA) and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).
He was court ordered to AA. Since I had to drive him, I hopped over into an Al-anon meeting. Al-Anon is a program of recovery for the families and friends of alcoholics. This was what truly changed my life. When he stopped AA (as he only went when he had to), I kept going to Al-anon.
This is where I learned what it meant to be codependent and where I learned I did not want to do it anymore. My ex’s lawyer told him, in front of me, that if I kept going to Al-anon, that I would leave him… and he was right. It did take a huge straw to break the camel's back (he threatened to burn the house down with me in it), but I finally worked up the courage to leave him.
The point of telling this horribly personal, unpleasant story today is to this end: the tools I learned in Al-anon still help me to this day. The one I fall back on the most is the Serenity Prayer. You know the one...
“God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”
When I am struggling with worry, or facing what seems to be insurmountable stress, my natural instinct is not to be calm, peaceful, and untroubled (aka—have serenity). I have to take a deep breath and recall this prayer. It helps having it somewhere I can see it frequently, like a plaque in the bathroom or a post-it on my computer screen.
I have to remind myself that it’s not about the situation I am facing, but how I react to the situation that really matters. This is where “having the wisdom to know the difference” comes in. We all have that wisdom, we just need tools to remind us. I put my wisdom into practice by focusing on determining if this particular situation is something I can change, or something I need to accept/let go. Serenity is not freedom from your troubles, it is the peace within them.
I have to remember, things I cannot change include other people’s opinions, actions, or attitudes. I cannot change the past. I cannot change the weather. Things I can change: mainly myself. I can change my choices, my attitudes, my future.
For those still stuck in a codependency lifestyle, I also wanted to pass along another tool that has worked so very well for me, The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency, by Melody Beattie. This book was such a powerful tool for me. You can read one daily meditation or you can use the extensive index in back to find many meditations about the specific issue you are facing at that moment.
If you are struggling with an alcoholic friend or family member, click here to find an Al-Anon Meeting in your area.
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