Sharing and Caring

[MajestyJo]

Days of Healing Days of Joy

When I grow up, I want to be a child. - D. H.

Some of us adult children need to grow up before we can be the children we never were. It may take years to grow old and wise enough to be young, but it's possible. With enough insight, determination, and change we can regain our lost childhood.

What does it take to do that? First, it takes a decision, and then it takes the willingness to build the necessary skills. How much is it worth to reclaim that childhood? Is it worth everything? That's how much commitment needs to be behind the decision. No wistful "wouldn't it be wonderful if" will do it.

What are the skills of a child? Openness, lightheartedness, trust, the ability to expect wonderful surprises. Those of us who didn't learn these attitudes effortlessly and naturally will have to practice. But if we choose to, we can learn. We can learn to build sand castles, to wonder about mysterious possibilities, and to expect the good in each new day. The world surrounding little children is the same world
surrounding us. The viewpoint is the crucial difference. For us, a merry heart is a matter of choice.

Today, I will pray for young eyes and a young heart.

A good reminder. One person told me that I was a child that never grew up. Another said that I never learned to play and have fun because I took life so seriously and had so much fear of doing things wrong. I was told I was responsible and I carried the world on my shoulders and thought that if something went wrong, no matter what, it was my fault, I caused it. It was so freeing to learn 3 Cs. I didn't cause it, couldn't cure it, and couldn't change it. All I could change was me. I could go back and learn to have fun. I could go back and give that Inner Child the fun she missed out on. I could let go of the fear that restricted her for years. I can't change others, I can't change my past, put I can change things in today.

I don't remember a lot of things from my childhood. It is ironic that the words that often played in my head were my mom saying, "Look at what you made me do." I think she only said it once. I don't know why she said it; and yet I replayed those words many times over. It is long past time to let them go and recognize them for what they are. For one thing, I didn't have the power to make her do anything. It was not my fault and I couldn't make her do anything. It was a falsehood. That in itself was hard to believe and accept. My mother was a good Christian woman who didn't drink, smoke, and cuss you out. She did have a food addiction, a husband who was an alcoholic and she didn't know about Al-Anon and she had no way of dealing with her emotions and feelings. He left her with three girls and went off to work or to carouse with no transportation on a farm in the country, 3 miles from the highway and a mile from her nearest neighbor. She was a very brave and courageous woman. She died as a result of her disease at the age of 40 when I was 20. She didn't have the tools to pass on to me. She did the best that she could with what she had, the same as I did.

I firmly believe she had Fibromyalgia the same as I have. I also have an eating disorder. On my journey, I was put on Valium at 16 and qualified as an alcoholic many times over, perhaps when I stole that first glass of communion wine when I was 10 years old. It might not have been until I was 26 when I went out with this salesman who drank so much that I worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up to him. At the end of my second marriage, it was "God help his soul if he had one more drink than I did." It was a disease of progression. A family disease that affected everyone who came in contact with the dis-ease of alcoholism.