Parent Partners: Making an Impact

Forgive Me

Before I began my Recovery from addiction I was so afraid to forgive others and myself because I thought I must remember the wrongs they did to me and I did to myself.  And if I did not remember them I would not profit or learn from them in someway.

But in Recovery I have discovered that the opposite is true. Today I find that in forgiveness, the wrong is released from its emotional and psychological stranglehold on me and I can indeed learn and grow from it.

Recovery has also taught me that through strength and compassion of the heart, the release of forgiveness brings expanded intelligence to work with others and myself more humanely.

And so forgiveness, like acceptance, is indeed the release of all hope for a better past.

 

Take it easy God!!!

We have learned so many things since our son David's passing from addiction at the age of 16. Prominent among them is that pain will always be visited upon us by life but that we do have a choice whether to allow the misery that always acco...mpanies that pain...to consume us.

My wife and I have often mused about the conundrum that our son's death gave us a great and powerful gift. A gift that permits us, if we allow it, to understand pain, suffering and in some cases sudden tragic loss in a way that others in this world do not. And that the compassion and strength we can share with others in time of need comes not from empty words of solace but rather from the personal experience of walking the path.

And having walked that path we can also serve as guides and pathfinders for  those in pain so that misery does not become a legacy of loss.

I am so fond of the Mother Theresa quote I heard many years ago in one  of my AA meeting which goes:

"I know God only sends me what I can handle....I just wish he wouldn't  trust me SO MUCH!!!!"

So God.....I guess you do trust us very much....just take it easy sometimes...will ya!!!