January 2

ACCEPTANCE MONTH: DAY 2: “For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I love this one! Oh boy! The rain is falling, but it isn’t wet water. It is all the things that were put on hold over the last months…due to elections in January, due to holidays for two months.

Today is THE DAY for all of it to come to my door. How fun this day has been! How wonderful to be able to let others be disappointed when I just keep telling them NO. And how fun when they do NOT want to hear that. And come at it from another angle.

If you want to be entertained by how much dysfunction we have around hearing NO, read “Green Eggs and Ham.”

A great illustration on how it might be different in a box or with a fox, here or there…etc. This book is all about how people will try anything to get you to do what they want, without hearing NO. Check it out…it will make you laugh or make you cry, depending on where you sit with this.

So, it was THAT day at my house…texting, phone, emails…all day. I just finished clearing up what I needed to do with it all. Shit be crazy! And, here I am, doing what I regularly try to get off my plate by 8:00am, but some days are like this. 4:00pm is still getting it done.

So, this is what acceptance is all about. Some days the music playing is not what I want to hear, but I listen anyway. Who knows? I may learn to appreciate a different kind of music. Happens all the time. I think I know that I don’t like or do like something and new evidence proves me wrong in either direction. Okay. I get it.

Rather than resist what was happening, even though a lot of it was rather distasteful, I allowed it all and dealt with what I could, the best I could. And then I got all of my tasks completed in time to respond to each thing I needed to attend to. Even my printer, which decided it needed ALL the ink cartridges changed at varying times in the day. Okay.

And here I am, none the worse for wear. A couple of phone calls to a friend, a couple to my sponsor, and about 100 others to deal with things that came up that I totally did not know were going to happen today. I love my life. No one has called in weeks for anything like this, then everyone at once! Woohoo! It is so funny.

So, I got to really work with some boundary stuff today. I get it. It is so much easier when we get others to do for us what we don’t want to deal with. I get that. Like it when I can work it for my benefit too. But that does nothing for the person, because they are still entitled and believe they can get others to take care of them. Stuff we get to do all the time, if we are truly done with enabling others and having those resentments when they think we are here to do it for them. Crazy, but this is the dynamic of recovery, as I see it.

Owning my stuff and allowing you to own (or not) yours. No matter, I am not a people pleaser any more. I have no problem with NO. And consistently going back to that. Life is great. I teach by example. You will always get a story from me to illustrate how this stuff works. Today I defer to Dr. Seuss…been a long day, I am ready for a nice hot shower. And dinner. And a meeting. See ya tomorrow!