Between The Devil & The Dow Jones Industrial Average

I guess when I really tuned into this process, I started seeing how I'd let everything control me. And I do mean everything. In my professional life, I am a stock and bond broker. As you might imagine the past 16 months have been a little rocky. I never thought of my profession as one that had care taking attributes, but a year and a half of clients sick with what has happened in the market has taught me better.

When the market decline started, I would wake at the crack of dawn to find out what the market futures were indicating. Then I would hold my breath until the market opened to see what was going to happen. All day long I was a prisoner to some mysterious number over which I had no control. The stress and anxiety were so heavy, I couldn't sleep, I didn't want to eat. And Sunday felt like a portal to hell...what kind of mass craziness was Monday going to bring?

My training and education taught me that my job was to be the calm in the storm. Put on a brave face as you face the day and distraught clients.

Mercifully, somewhere in the middle of all of this craziness I came to begin to know Al-Anon. The practice of identifying what I can control and what I can't, was easier to identify when I used the market as my "qualifier" as opposed to identifying my habits with family and most specifically with my husband. It's fairly obvious to the rest of the world, I'm sure, that I personally hold a miniscule amount of influence over the market. But in my darkest days of despair over Wall Street, I must have thought that if I worried enough about what was happening that it might be pennence enough for either the market to change, or for my clients to feel better about their losses. Because really, knowing that I fretted over their personal situation can really make up for their losses, right?

By really embracing the fact that I had no control over those external forces, I slowly began to thaw out from my place of sheer terror, to a place where I could begin to use logic and reason to start making some necessary moves. I am so grateful to have been able to step outside of my personal life to learn a tough lesson. Hopefully now I will be better positioned to apply this understanding to my family.

I Believe

I have enjoyed for many months now several blogs by folks in recovery in both Al-Anon and AA. As I was perusing blogger today for new sources of wisdom, I wondered if my own blog could be as cathartic as reading about other's experiences. So here I am.

I am a mother to two wonderful children. I am married to an alcoholic. I have a wonderful but stressful career. And last, but certainly not least, my father is an alcoholic who is now in a nursing home.

My experience in the last handful of months can best be described as awakening. It's been both frightening and exhilerating, and I have no idea where it's all going to take me. I want to say that it's OK that I don't know, but the controlling part of me wants very much to know what the next hour, day, week, month, year and lifetime hold for me and the kids. Thankfully, at least part of my brain knows not only does that stuff (i.e., what the future holds) not matter, but that I have very little control over the world in general. Boy, it's tough to really embrace that idea.

It's Christmastime and the stress levels are wicked high. It's all self-imposed, but so much of what I want for my kids are memories of things done together...making cookies, being part of a community at church, helping others. This is where a big part of the anger I have comes in: I resent like hell that I am the only one who cares about doing anything but surviving in my home. My husband hates Christmas, and most other things too, by his own admission.

Husband is just shy of two years of abstinence. I carefully worded that sentence. In my estimation, he is a dry drunk. I'm sure on so many levels that my assesment of his situation is all wrong (as far as taking someone elses inventory), but as I have to live under the same roof and we are all subjected to his behaviour, it is my way of describing where he is in recovery terms. He is angry at the world and has frequent child-like outbursts. This would not be such a large problem, save the fact that he is a stay at home parent to our two smallish kids.

I am most concerned with the effect his anger has on our children. I grew up with a father who drank and still drinks. I am just now seeing how that has changed me. I always knew it was a factor, but I have finally been able to drill down to a very micro level, and to see how insidious this disease is to a family. I do not want my kids to live this way.