My Son Is Still Writing His Story.

Sometimes at a meeting words are uttered that are so simple and yet so profound that I leave the meeting going deeper into myself. That happened recently when a woman spoke about her  own codependency, and how it had trained her to focus on her son instead of herself. 

First, she made everybody laugh when she told us about how easy it was for her son, who was her "qualifier," to CON HER. She said;

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A Woman’s Perspective on Emerging as a New Person

            No person enters marriage saying they will divorce.  For me marriage was a dream laced with the expectation that someone in my life who cares for me will replace or sweep away issues that I experienced in childhood and even adulthood.  The problem is that I did not see myself and my role in the demise of the marriage until I had walked into a 12 step meeting and began to work the program.  Working the program sent me to the land of getting real with myself and facing me as I was then, now, and in the future.  A land that I had avoided for so long for fear that if the real me were to emerge, I would be shredded apart again by addiction of a loved one and my need for dependency upon that loved one.  The loved one was at first my ex-husband.  When I realized how unfair it was of me to set expectations of a person who himself did not face his demons, and hold him responsible for my own happiness was undeniable insanity.  To expect him to  replace someone who had hurt me in the past, meant setting him up for failure and creating the stage within me for the insanity play out.  It became a stage production in the life of codependency that was not going to win any awards, but become a total disaster from day one.   Then I found out exactly what was playing on the stage of my life, codependency.

            Once the label of codependency replaced the insanity stage, I was able to accept the fact that my choices had in fact been behind the production of my own life and that no single person was responsible for those choices.  They were merely actors in a life gone array who each played their role to get me to the point to where I removed myself from the rubble I had self-created to building a new life on my terms with the help of my Higher Power to guide me with the clarity necessary to keep me within the confines’ of personal recovery. This allowed me to move beyond my mind controlling everything to finding the balance between thinking, doing, being, and feeling every day.  It has given me the clarity to see things just as they are today and not attempt to project what might be or to fester in what was in life.  It means here, now, and always with the guide of my Higher Power.  Recovering from codependency has brought me into an authentic adulthood.  An adulthood that means I am mature due to my experiences, not naïve about what will be from now on, and living as an independent person with compassion. I see situations now with a considered lens that allows to me ensure my own spiritual safety and sanity every day.  The lens does not define me, but brings about a filter that allows those situations that occur to bounce around in me in a fashion that yields happiness all my own and not dependent upon another to label for me.  I can place my own labels upon each situation in my life knowing that I am the one who has chosen the manner in which I allow everyday situations to affect me.  I can choose to allow something’s into my life and I can choose to disallow other things, people, and situations to happen to me.  I am moving from being a completely ego centered codependent to a more balanced soul centered person.

by Carrie-C-B, co-author of the new book We Codependent Men-We Mute Coyotes, copyright 2011, Recovery Trade Publications.

Dana kept getting hooked in a relationship that was going nowhere.  He came for counseling because he understood the self-defeating nature of his association with Kim.  What he didn’t comprehend was how to break a convoluted connection that had a tight grip on his life.

Dana confided that Kim would steal his prescription medication, exploit him for money, “guilt” him for not caretaking for her kids, and abusively berate and belittle him.  According to Dana, no woman had ever treated him this poorly, and yet he kept going back for more torment.

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