When my son was in high school, they called the principal “The Main Man.” He was known for saying and acting on, Stephen Covey’s quote “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.” He was a spirited and enthusiastic human whom the kids loved and because this philosophy actually worked.
The main thing–the most important thing to me–is staying in healthy connected relationship with my children. In two years, my son lost two of his closest and dearest friends in two separate car accidents where no substances were involved. When that happened, he wanted to leave this earth and be with them. Standing at the gravesite of his “brother,” our next door neighbor from the age of 2, he asked me where his burial spot was. I knew then that his will to live was being tested. I was afraid that if I broke the bond, abandoned him or banished him from our family because of his substance use, he would give up his will or addiction would take his life by accident. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if he died and I’d stripped him of love and connection when he was in the depths of grief. The main thing to me was staying in relationship, making sure he felt our bond, our connection, our love and his inherent worth so that he’d try to stay with us and we could sway him in the direction of proper help for a brain disease coupled with overwhelming grief and pain.
Sometimes our most upset moments are fertile ground for understanding what’s important to us, what we can’t compromise on and what we believe must be honored for the foundations to be strong and correct.
On this journey, you might find that the feelings you have about what’s important do not always map on what you’ve been told or taught is important in your situation. You might notice that some common advice encourages you to use coercion or force to elicit change. If this doesn’t sit right in your body, another value might be in place.
As a mother, you have the right and responsibility to honor your values, speak to them in your family and get curious about them to see if they’re coming from a place that moves you towards well-being or more manipulation and control.
Last week I was invited to talk at “Loving Someone with a Substance Use Disorder” at Hope Church in Richmond, VA.
I shared the activity below to help facilitate a discussion around how the family members wanted to feel in relationship to their loved ones. Given the holidays and the often intensifying stress under the circumstances, this activity might help you remember “the main thing” when overwhelm, despair or fear starts to take hold or creeps in. Having a solid sense of what you value in relationship to your loved ones, how you experience the holidays, how you experience connection makes way for balance, understanding and peace in your body, mind and spirit.
Activity:
Draw a generous size circle in the middle of a blank sheet of paper. In the middle of the circle, write the feelings, experiences, scenarios, behaviors or ways of being about this problem that feel supportive and stabilizing in your body. On the outside of the paper, write the ways of being, behaviors, experiences and scenarios that make you feel anxious, nervous, unsure or on edge when dealing with your loved one. Stick to your own experience.
Take a moment to look at what’s written inside and outside the circle.
Can you see any particular values emerging?
Supportive values for recovery you might find are:
Honesty, transparency, openness, curiosity, trust, love, kindness, optimism, directness, security, stability, calm, peace, growth, connection, mutuality or care.
Things that might be undermining to those values might include:
Aggression, control, demand, mistrust, paranoia, mistrust, powerlessness, wishy-washiness, ambivalence, worry, abandonment, alienation
Reflection:
What values do you want to honor on your journey?
What ways of being might feel strengthening and stabilizing for this next part of your chapter?
As you move through the next few weeks, reach for those ways of being that give you a sense of strength and stability. That move you closer to or keep you in your values.
Wishing you moments that fill your heart with deep gratitude and nourishment.
Much Love,
Shelly
You can download The Lay of The Land anytime. It’s a short (less than and hour) read to help orient and map you and your family towards recovery.