personal growth Archives

The past 2 weeks have been super intense for me. I think I kicked off the intensity by taking a Flower Essences blend I made for myself with – not 1, but 2 – flowers for femininity and passion as it flows through the sacral chakra. The revelation gifted to me by that blend is this: I’M REALLY FUCKING PASSIONATE. I knew I was passionate, to a degree, but didn’t realize I was THAT passionate! Surveying my behavior with acute awareness of my femininity and passion, I recognize that I express myself in big, animated ways, feel deeply, dance frequently, and, if my passion is not channeled through healthy habits, react vehemently. Passion is somewhat of a double edged sword – it moves and shakes and can get things done, but, like a fire, it can burn out of control, causing destruction in its path when not attended to.

I’m in a romantic relationship that’s only 4 months old. Despite all the inner work I’ve done, I still find myself somewhat jaded by a past of so called “failed” relationships that have lent themselves to the formulation and maintenance of deficient paradigms. Sometimes, my head tells me that I’m a dejected, rejected, 2nd rate woman – “the fuckable one”, not the long-term relationship one. Sometimes, these false paradigms cause me to flail around in desperation inside romantic connections. Whether I’m flailing inwardly or outwardly, it always leaves me lacking because I’m seeking on the outside of myself for fulfillment, and that’s a clear recipe for emptiness.

I recently started praying for “discernment” with relation to my current romantic connection – I put that in quotations because if you were sitting across from me while I told this story, I would be using air quotes for that word. The reason for the air quotes is because while I was consciously praying for “discernment”, what I was really wanting, in the recesses of my unconscious mind, was a “yes” or “no” answer from the God of my understanding. Because, you know, spirituality is black and white and God operates within duality. I’m being facetious – just in case that wasn’t obvious.

After one particular morning of “praying for discernment”, I got up off the meditation cushion and started my day with flair. On the way to work it hit me – “I feel shoved into a box by him! Whenever I’m around him, he always wants me to reel it in! I’m too passionate for him and he’s too conservative! Ra-ra-ra! Roar! That’s it!”, I thought, “that’s the answer I’ve been looking for. It’s no! It’s clearly no!” I barged to work with resolve. I’ll fix him for not having a container that I deem big enough for my passion! Who does he think he is being himself and trying to meet me where I’m at to the best of his ability with gentle presence?!

Um, yeah, so that’s not how my thought process ended, but with some gained perspective, I can definitely express it as such.

That afternoon, as I shared my fiery thought processes with my sponsor, I felt embarrassed just hearing them come out of my mouth. Undeniably, I heard the judgment and intolerance. It’s ME that’s reeling myself in, keeping my passion under a bushel for fear of further rejection. And then, angry at myself for not being authentic, I lash out, blaming him. Ugh. Later, my sponsor sent me this beautiful poem by Shel Silverstein that, when I read it, brought immediate tears of recognition:

That night, I had a lovely conversation with said lovely man. The next day at work, I meandered over to the retail section of our common space and picked up the book A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson. Would you believe I opened it to these precise words?

“Pure love of another person is the restoration of our heartline. The ego, therefore, is marshaled against it. It will do everything it can to block the experience of love in any form. When two people come together in God, the walls that appear to separate us disappear. The beloved doesn’t seem to be a mere mortal. They seem for a while to be something else, something more. The truth is, they are something more. No one is anything less than the perfect Son [“child” is a more inclusive word for me] of God, and when we fall in love, we have an instant when we see the total truth about someone. They are perfect. That’s not just our imagination.

But the craziness sets in quickly. As soon as the light appears, the ego begins its powerful drive to shut it out. All of a sudden, the perfection we glanced on the spiritual planes becomes projected onto the physical. Instead of realizing that spiritual perfection and physical, material imperfection exist simultaneously, we start looking for material, physical perfection.
…And so no one gets to be a human being anymore. We idealize one another, and when someone doesn’t live up to the ideal, we’re disappointed.”

These words were a spiritual gut punch. The only kind of gut punch I like. I haven’t been able to stop reading Williamson’s section on “Romantic Love” in this book ever since! Here are some other segments that stand out to me:

“Rejecting another human being simply because they are human, has become a collective neurosis. People ask, “When will my soul mate get here?”

…Our soul mates are human beings, just like we are, going through the normal processes of growth. No one is ever “finished”. The top of one mountain is always the bottom of another…

…The idea that there is a perfect person who just hasn’t arrived yet is a major block…

…Thinking that there is some special person out there who is going to save us is a barrier to pure love. It is a large gun in the ego’s arsenal. It is a way the ego tries to keep us away from love, although it doesn’t want us to see that. We seek desperately for love, but it is that same desperation that leads us to destroy it once it gets here. Thinking that one special person is going to save us tempts us to load an awful lot of emotional pressure on whoever comes along that we think might fit the bill…

…Looking for Mr. Right leads to desperation because there is no Mr. Right. There is no Mr. Right because there is no Mr. Wrong. There is whoever is in front of us, and the perfect lessons to be learned from that person…

…We sometimes fail to work on ourselves in the relationships that are right in front of us, thinking that “real life” begins when they get here. This is just a ploy of the ego once again, making sure that we’ll seek but not find.”

Seriously – Marrianne Williamson: are you walking around in my head and now you’ve written a book that is the anodyne to all my insanity in the arena of love and intimacy?

These passages speak right to the core of my mental commotion upon the landscape of love. Especially that last part about “…thinking that “real life” begins when they get here.” I’ve done this in such a protracted way ever since my first heartbreak when I was 23. This thought process dooms whoever I’m dating to a fixed audition for the position of “the Right One” in my life. This also keeps me in constant withdrawal – withdrawing my love, my presence, my full attention, my vulnerability, my closeness. Withdrawing it from everyone and anyone I’m dating until they become worthy of the position, which, they never do because this is an obvious projection of my own insecurities – I’ll never be “the Right One”, so nor can you – or you – or you… and it ceaselessly rolls out as such. Or at least it has…

After reading and re-reading Williamson’s inspired words, I decided to show up to the relationship instead of putting a kibosh on it. I channelled my passion into verbal sharing with others and physical movement. I decided that pigeonholing him into the position of “the Wrong One” is unfair. That withholding love – from anyone – is unfair. Such withholding is conditional love. I decided that maybe, he’s JUST the human I’m intended to be in relationship with right now, or I wouldn’t be in relationship with him. I decided that clearly, our connection is bringing the right lessons at the right time and is actually quite “right” – for both of us. That maybe, the pressure of searching for the “Right One” causes inevitable emotional crumbling and sabotage. I deserve to be loved, and so does he. We all do. I’m an equal contributor to the loving atmosphere of any relationship. And maybe – but more than likely quite certainly – redirecting my newly acknowledged passion into loving my own damn Self is the ultimate remedy to my attempts to overthrow romantic love in my life.

Last week I had a client who compared her experiences to this famous portion of the poem The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A week ago, my sister Maureen posted the same portion of poem on social media, and I thoughtfully “Liked” it. It makes me think of my life’s roads.

I regularly struggle to reconcile within myself one of the roads that I chose. I was barrelling down this road at high speeds long before I became conscious of it.

I’m a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Today, I haven’t had to use mind-altering substances for almost 4 years. Nearing the end of my attempted self-annihilation, I was deeply enmeshed in dark, destructive behaviors, many of which I was carrying out in secret. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t stop doing what I was doing.

I remember my last rock bottom like it was yesterday: I’d driven to Grande Prairie, where I’m from, for a friend’s wedding. My son was 4 at the time. On the road there, I repeated a mantra that went like this: “I’m just gonna take it easy this weekend.” I’d really had enough of my own demise and was in profound pain from being so entirely spent but compulsively and uncontrollably using drugs and alcohol anyways. But an addict, disordered by their addiction, thrives at deceiving themselves.

At that stage of my addiction, I had thrown out all of my drug paraphernalia because in the depth of my self-deception, I thought that would deter me from using drugs. And so I would constantly seek out pop or beer cans and make pipes out of them. I was grossly ashamed and would stash my home-made pipes until I’d inevitably end up angrily putting them in one or two plastic bags and tying them off to conceal the smell, then trashing them. This was followed by my robotically seeking out another can and repeating the same thing.

Arriving in Grande Prairie for the weekend that I had tried to convince myself would be one of ease and manageability, I immediately found a can in my parent’s basement. I secretly used it beneath my old bedroom window, around the corner of the house at the back, like an outcast – having outcasted myself into a pit of disdain long before that moment. Being under that window reminded me of all the times I’d snuck out of the house at night when I was a teenager – back then, this behavior wasn’t as much of a dirty secret. It was deceptively exhilarating, “cool” and fun. This time, the fun had long ended and I felt like a louse, creeping around corners, hiding what I’d become. A slave to my own decay. I stashed the can pipe around that secret corner and snuck there every 2-3 hours. This continued until the wedding ceremony. By the time I got to the dinner portion of the celebration, I thought I’d “take the edge off” with a drink. Such is the hamster wheel of addiction: not liking how I felt, I would seek to change those feelings with something that repressed them, only for the feelings to pop up later, and so I’d have to chase the repressing agents all over again. Repress, repeat, repress, repeat. A tiring and cumbersome existence. Soon I was double fisting and “taking it easy” became, yet again, a mantra of wishful thinking.

My parents arrived to pick up my son so I could continue with the debauchery. The pain that I feel even now as I recount that part of the story churns in my belly – putting the debauchery before my son. So desperately wanting my love for him to translate into action, but being a captive of my dependency instead. My enslavement had been in the driver’s seat for a long time.

I had bought a white and blue dress for that wedding, strapless and thin, the wispy fabric flowing down my legs, concealing their wobbliness – or at least that’s what I had convinced myself of. I loved that dress from the moment I saw it through a shop window on Whyte Avenue. It was elegant – like a fluent doily. The contrast was striking to me as this elegant sheath contained the epitome of crudeness. I made my rounds from one social scenario to the next, deeply insecure about my unmanageability and never quite making any sense. Soon I was spilled out onto a dirty bathroom floor. Again. I felt worried about my white dress getting dirty, but was completely unable to lift my poisoned body. The toilet seat was a cold, hard pillow. Again. I hated this existence more deeply than ever before. Maureen was also at this wedding. Having discovered me, some common friends summoned her to my rescue. Again. (Bless you Maureen. It was never your responsibility to collect the debris of my self-absorbed downward spiral.) She made her way into the bathroom stall and repeated the tiresome routine of holding my hair back, forcing me to drink water, and soldiering me onto my feet while I cursed her ungraciously. She helped me to a camper somewhere close by and arranged me on a bed. Inside that camper, I was unable to move or speak. My head was spinning. Again. I felt ashamed – unable to do anything for myself. Again. People came in and out of the camper regularly, some partaking in drugs that were on the table, drinking, being rambunctious and crass. There was another guy passed out in the camper too, and every time the camper emptied of everyone but us, he’d try to make small talk, but I couldn’t talk. He was the owner of the camper and Maureen had earlier told me that he and his partner had a young son – somewhere in the avenue of 8 to 10 years old. Someone made mention of the boy, wondering where he was. His dad called out his name and, to my horror, a vulnerable, shaky voice answered from the bunks above. That moment shook me in a way that is hard to put into words. All the while, this young boy was being exposed to this chaotic, confusing, irresponsible debauchery – quietly hiding in the bunk in the middle of the night amidst circumstances that made it impossible to sleep, rest or feel safe. The potential of that being my son was a blessed and harrowing admonition that cut right through my inebriation. In that moment, my spirit broke in a way that I never knew before and I haven’t had to know since.

Eventually, even though there was a shuttle service for drunks like me, my other sister Katherine was called to come collect me. This intensified my shame because now Katherine was being inconvenienced and made to pick up my broken pieces too. Again. (Thank you Katherine. Nor was it ever your responsibility to gather my wreckage.) When she arrived and began helping me walk out of the camper to the vehicle, I managed to ask “Where’s Katherine?” I had no idea that she was right beside me, carrying me.

That night was gross. My unrestful sleep was no comfort to the shaken state of my spirit and the riddled state of my body and mind. The drive back to Edmonton the next day was painful. The emotional turmoil that followed is unforgettable. That wedding was on June 8th, 2013. The last time I used a mind-altering substance was June 22nd, 2013.

The way I see it, I took 2 roads less travelled.

1. The road of addiction. It seemed to me that most of my peers – especially those who had kids – were slowing down over the years. I kept thinking that something – anything – and most especially becoming a mother – would slow me down too. It didn’t. Nothing did. In fact, motherhood had sped me up and caused me to start acting out in secret. The fun had become bondage and I didn’t know how slowing down was even an option. The majority of people who try alcohol or drugs don’t turn into addicts.

2. The road of recovery. The meeting rooms of addiction recovery are relatively low in numbers considering how many millions of people struggle with addiction. Many die of or in the throes of their addictions. Working a program of recovery that keeps one away from their addictive behaviors is not only a success, it’s a fucking miracle. The majority of those that suffer from addiction don’t make it into recovery.

It’s easy to say that road #2 has “made all the difference” for me and in my life. That’s undeniable. But I’ve always had difficulty believing that road #1 “made all the difference”. I’ve often rolled my eyes at such commentary as “if you didn’t do all that, you wouldn’t be who you are today”, but that periodically irritating commentary is true. Suffering particular types of pain makes us more able to offer empathy and compassion to others who suffer similar types of pain. I had to learn empathy a really hard way, but I had to learn empathy. And I’m so glad I did. I wouldn’t take it back for a second. And had I not struggled in the grip of addiction and then struggled so much and for so long to get into recovery, I wouldn’t have learned about surrender, faith, humility, perseverance, commitment, discipline and integrity. Listing all those auspicious lessons makes me certain that road #1 made all the difference.

And so…

Three roads converged in the woods of my life, and I –
I took the ones less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Tag: personal growth

Lessons on Passion, Love & Romance

The Road Less Travelled