Emotional Healing. Child of an alcoholic. Young adult depression. Inspiration.

I was once told by a wise woman that emotions are a strong force to be reckoned with. They breathe their own life and have their own destructive force. If one does not allow their emotions both happy and sad to escape and feel acknowledged, they will eat away at the life they live in. My journey in life has been a road filled with many peaks of happiness and many valleys of depression. But through it all I have held those words of wisdom with me. I have always found it easy to release my anguish, my depression, my sadness, and my happiness to those around me who love me and to my best friends “pad and paper.”



With this blog I hope to inspire others to write their emotions on paper, let the forgiving page hear all the words of hurt, pain, contentment, joy. With this blog I hope to inspire myself to forgive all that hurts in my life, to let go of old grudges and to grow, from the inside out.



Thursday, September 30, 2010

Cookie Cutter Casualty

“Your Fired” In a simple game of word association you probably relate that phrase with Donald Trump and his motionless hair. But for my father and our family it brings up a completely different memory. It was a tipping point from a life some could call cookie cutter with a wife and daughter to come home to with dinner on the table, to a life where uncertainty ruled the roost. After loosing three jobs in a two year period, it’s almost plausible to see where a recovering alcoholic could see the bottle as a valid option. He certainly did.

I often wonder what his thought process was when he took his first sip after so many years sober. Did he think of our trips to the beach or our long talks on the evolution of music as he touched the poisoned glass to his dry lips? I could drive my self crazy thinking about what I could have done to some how prevent that drink. How I may have been the butterfly that flapped the wings that caused the hurricane.

I know that at some point all of us out there have felt that there is something we could have done, that there was one moment that you could have stopped it all from happening. But something we all need to remember, although the lines of their disease may bleed over and begin to engulf us, is that it is their disease. The logical part of me knows that it’s not my fault that nothing I could have done would have been able to change the choices he has made. The emotional part of me still feels that I’ve let him down; I didn’t try hard enough or love him enough. But that’s where my head and my heart will always fight. Do you too have the external fight between yourself and the disease and the internal fight between your heart and your head?

Monday, September 27, 2010

Baseball, Bows and Broken Bricks

My dad like so many others is a hero in my life. I have amazing memories of going to baseball games with my dad, wearing my Dodger Blues with an oversized baseball glove engulfing my hand and screaming out the baseball national anthem at the 7th inning. I loved “take your child to work days”; because my dad was so proud of me, I was always a trophy for him to display. And I loved having him help me with my homework, he was the world’s smartest man in my eyes, and the world’s best dad. And if I can ask, how many other fathers out there allowed their daughters to put curlers in their hair, blue eye shadow on them, with bright red nail polish on their toes, my dad did, and although he looked quite silly, he loved it, because I did it.

But like many things, that age of innocence came to an end, and I began to see my hero’s villain overpower him, till I could hardly see the spark of life in my father’s eyes.

There are 6.6 million children under the age of 18 living with at least one parent who is alcoholic. There are many of us who have seen our parents kryptonite over power them. We’ve all been privy to the downfall of our heroes and that’s not easy to see, remember or even talk about. But something we all should acknowledge on our individual road of recovery from our wounds of disappointment and hurt. In sharing this, my road begins

Friday, September 24, 2010

Again and Again and Again

For as long as I can remember I have know the words “recovering alcoholic” or the phrase “he’s ___ years sober.” When I was younger, these words had no effect on me, and they didn’t start to have significant meaning in my life till about 5 years ago when a new phrase was introduced into my life “he fell off the wagon.” Since that day my roller coaster of life has had more loops, ups, downs, and turns than the newest attraction at Magic Mountain. At the time I thought it’s going to be no problem for him to beat this again, he was successful once, I thought, there’s no reason he couldn’t do it again. And I still believe that he can, I just wasn’t expecting it to be this much work or take such a toll on my life.



For every five people walking down the street two of those individuals have lived with or are currently living with an alcoholic. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had the love for someone to hope and be so sure that they can change. Have you ever had such faith that after a relapse they could recover and be the person you know them to be with out the alcohol?