Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Holidays to everyone!

One of the difficult parts of my job is that I have to work on Christmas Day. The fact that I work in a residential treatment program means that the patients are always here and presenting for treatment. So, someone has to do it and I generally volunteer because it is a rough time for many young men away from home and family, and I can attend to them when they need help.

However, one of the good things about my job is that I work on Christmas Day! The overall lack of supervisors and fellow workers, combined with the cutbacks in and re-design of the schedule, means I have time to write in my blog.

One of the subjects that typically comes up in 12 Step meetings this time of year is gratitude. Addicts and alcoholics in recovery generally have a lot of gratitude for their new-found life and they love to express it in the halls and rooms of recovery. So, I thought I'd express some of the things I am grateful for this Holiday Season.

Foremost has to be my gratitude for my family. There was a time when I was using that I felt estranged from my family. This was because I was living a lie - about my use - and frequently couldn't be around them much less look them in the eye with the truth. I felt they were moving away from me. A strange aspect to this is that it was only in recovery that I learned that my family had never really left me.

I was enabled by my Mom because she loves me deeply and always would do what she could to help me. She would arrange for money when I was particularly strapped because I refused to take responsibility for my life. I exploited this love and begged and borrowed from her throughout the using years. This was also a hard character defect to shake in early recovery as well and showed how deeply my disease ran. Today I am very grateful for her love and support and am humbled by how much she has stuck by me all these years.

My sister was also a victim to my using as our relationship was cool and distant throughout those years when I felt I was better than everyone else and I didn't need to nurture relationships. But, her love for me and care and concern came when I needed it most: I was struggling with a few years clean in recovery and wanted to give up and die, but she wouldn't let me and confronted me hard when I needed it. I am amazed at her willingness to do this after years of kicking her to the curb. She was - like she usually is - right on the mark about my need to get up, out of bed, stop moping around and get busy with recovery. I am grateful for that.

My now full-grown children also stuck by me and are important parts of my life today. There should be no way that my daughters should be involved with my life after my leaving them at an early age because I was in the throes of addiction and self-centered behaviors. But, here they both are willing to be a part of my life and share their's with me. It's only because I have been present in their life since I got clean that they decided to jump back on my boat as I sail on the river of my life. My son is a joy to me. He never really saw the effects of addiction in his life because he was so small when I left him. I was clean, but I was not well when I lived with him in recovery and he has stuck by me through thick and thin times. He remembers financial poverty, but the abundance of love and I am grateful for him in my life today. These adult children have always made me proud, especially since they have had to overcome the fact that they are children of an alcoholic and addict. I am immensely grateful to them today.

Of course, there is my extended friends and family that has always boosted me up and made me feel very special. This was a liability when I was using because it made me feel I didn't need them and I walked away many times back then. But, in recovery I have grown to appreciate the bonds of extended love in my family and I also have gratitude for this. Like most people, I have a few stalwart friends who never seem to tire of me, my stories and my needs.

I am also grateful for my life today. There was a point once when I didn't want to have a life, when things never made sense to me and I wanted to die. But today, surrounded by family and recovering friends, I feel alive like I had never thought possible before. One of the things that sustains me in this is the freindship I have forged with other members of the 12 Step community, especially Narcotics Anonymous. Fellow addicts have been an inspiration for me since the very beinning of my recovering life and continue so to this day. I am especially grateful for my brothers an sisters who do Hospital and Institutions work with me today.

Gratitude...not only a belief and a feeling, but also a practice that has been in my life since the beginning of my recovery.