Celebrating Each Person's Unique Multiplicity
I’m so jazzed that I’m over at the National Association of Memoir Writers today to host my friend, former student and brave writer Dawn Novotny to celebrate her book Ragdoll Redeemed: Growing up in the Shadow of Marilyn Monroe. I was with her during the birth pangs of her stories, which at the time she had no intention of putting into a book–but now, she’s an author. [Read more...]
Research has shown that the people with whom we bond as children become the internal working models that influence the formation of attachment in later relationships. I believe this to be true about all our relationships. All of my life I have been blessed with friendships of remarkable women. I begin this blog series with the following four angels with skin. My earliest attachment was with my grandmother. For my first twelve years, we shared a bedroom so tiny that our knees touched as we shared secrets beneath her makeshift altar that supported the Jesus, Mary and Joseph statues. She began sharing her cigerattes with me when I turned twelve, which felt like a loving ritual that we shared. I loved her so much I thought I would die if anything happened to her. My childhood church told us that we all had a guardian angel. I was certain that my grandmother was my wingless angel. [Read more...]
Perhaps by now my book will be published. Actually, it was published and on the market for five days, when it was brought to my attention that there were grammatical and punctuation errors in the book (so like me) that far exceeded any acceptable mistakes, I took it off the market for additional editing. But before that happened, my plan was to write blogs that paralleled the stories, events, and people in my book. [Read more...]
As my eyes slowly focused on the open hatch, I realized that it was the rocking of the boat, and not my hangover, which was causing the movement. My sense of relief was short lived as I tried to recall the night before. I remembered the guests that we had invited for dinner coming down the stairs into the boat galley. What else, what else? But no matter how hard I tried absolutely nothing else would come to mind. Terror slowing began to creep through my body like strangling vines. What had I done? What had I said? Had I embarrassed my husband? Was he angry or disgusted with me? Oh God! Now shame flooded over me and I could feel my heart beating in my head. [Read more...]
As if the use or participation in an addiction /attachment were not problematic enough, the in-between times can be even more painful to deal with for both the addicted person and those around them. The experience is like shadow boxing (sparring with an imaginary opponent), you can never actually connect with the addict while they are moving to the dance of their drug of choice. Nor can the addict connect with themselves when preoccupied with the thing that has captured their energy. [Read more...]
I thought I was through writing blogs about addictions, which was totally unrealistic since the components of this topic appear to be endless.
According to Gabor Mate, MD, author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts “Any passion can become an addiction; but then how to distinguish between the two? The central question is: who’s in charge, the individual or their behavior? It’s possible to rule a passion, but an obsessive passion that a person is unable to rule is an addiction. And the addiction is the repeated behavior in which a person keeps engaging, even though he knows it harms himself or others. How it looks externally is irrelevant. The key issue is a person’s internal relationship to the passion and its related behaviors.” [Read more...]
I have been reflecting on the tragedy of addiction for the last few posts, and now I want to turn my attention to those in relationship with addicts, and even more broadly examine dysfunctional patterns that are learned by association with addicts and other troubled friends and family. The term codependency was originally associated with a person in relationship to an alcoholic. Over the years, the term has expanded to include any person in relationship to dysfunctional patterns of living. Co-addicts learn ways of acting and reacting when relating to an addicted person, or someone affected by mental illness or who is abusive. Living in dysfunctional or traumatic environments sets up a pattern where a person’s way of being in the world is contingent upon the behavior of others, especially if the person is unstable in some way. [Read more...]
